LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 325

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

vidual estates of the empire but not to every German—and even that recog-
nition did not extend to Calvinists or to the Anabaptists. Calvinist princes,
therefore, remained a destabilizing element in Germany and eventually set
out to shatter the fragile compromise by the end of the 16th century.

The period from 1555 to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618
was one of the longest periods of peace in German history. But the war,
when it came, was one of the most destructive in German history. It was a
struggle between the estates and the monarchy in the Holy Roman Empire
that set fire to all of Germany and involved the European continent.”’

Actually a series of four wars (the Bohemian, the Danish, the Swedish,
and the French), the Thirty Years’ War left Germany (which was the bat-
tleground for the European armies) devastated. After 30 years of war much
of Germany lay in ruins, the fields untied, the forests untended, the towns
devastated, their crafts and industries destroyed. One-third of the popula-
tion had died either in battle or from plague, malnutrition, or similar war-
related catastrophes.

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 tumed out to be a confirmation of the
long-scorned Peace of Augsburg—only this time the Calvinists were also
explicitly included. Once again, the sovereignty of territorial princes was
affirmed. While some efforts were made to guarantee individual liberty of
conscience to Catholics living in Protestant states, and vice versa, most
Germans accepted the creed of their ruler. After 1648, the northern half of
the Holy Roman Empire was for the most part solidly Lutheran and the
southern half quite solidly Catholic, with important pockets of Calvinism
along the Rhine. Anabaptists and members of other sects, however, con-
tinued to suffer persecution and thousands of them emigrated to America.

While the war had, in fact, been fought largely over matters other than
religion, one outcome of the devastating conflict was widespread revulsion
at the notion of religious war (a revulsion that has persisted and had
noticeable consequences well into our own time). The Peace of Westphalia
ended the wars of religion in central Europe. The philosophers and kings
of the succeeding Age of Entightenment looked back on them as models of
how not to conduct warfare. What followed, for two centuries (until our
own), was a more controlled style of warfare with armies professional
enough to reduce the plundering and pillaging, and objectives limited
enough to reduce the bloodshed.

“ “Not until the twentieth century would the Western world again know the wanton
pillaging, raping, and killing of a serniguerilla force which no government could command.
As the last great war of ... those men who hired themselves out to governments, then raised
armies which preyed on the peasants and townsmen, the Thirty Years’ War stands unique—
a series of bloody campaigns in which civilians often suffered more grievously than sol-
diers.” John A. Garraty and Peter Gay, eds., The Columbia History of the World (New York:
Harper & Row, 1972), 584.

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By the end of the 18th century, theological differences between the Luther-
an and Reformed churches had been downplayed so persistently that there
seemed to be little serious opposition to a union of the two. The reorgani-
zation and merger of the Lutheran and Reformed churches began in 1808
but it was not until 1817 that a formal union of the two was effected.

After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Prussia emerged as a greatly
enlarged German state. Within 55 years, Prussia would complete the mon-
umental task of unifying Germany under its headship. The government
believed that such unity could be better strengthened by a centrally admin-
istered and confessionally united Protestant state church. The Prussian
king, Frederick William If!, made his own contribution by drafting a new
communion liturgy (Agende) in 1822. While the king denied that congre-
gations would be forced to use the new rite, the government exerted strong
pressure to make the clergy conform and most Lutheran clergy in Prussia
were simply unwilling to jeopardize their appointments. By 1830, “the
king could congratulate himself upon the fact that the liturgy had been
accepted throughout the greater part of his realm.” The pockets of strong,
opposition, mainly in Silesia, were met with force, as the government
largely ignored any public outcry against the “Union” liturgy. The contro-
versy was eventually settled by compromise—one unacceptable mainly to
the so-called “Old Lutherans” who, in search of religious freedom, helped
to create, support, and populate the Missouri Synod in America.

E. The American “Experiment”

The America created in 1776 and 1789 was unique, a risky endeavor in
which the government was shackled with checks and balances so that the
people might be free. It was an “experiment” grounded in the Founding
Fathers’ understanding of the liberty and equality that God Himself
intended for humankind. America was, as Lincoln said in his address at
Gettysburg (1863), “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to
the proposition that al! men are created equal.” As a result, according to
Richard John Neuhaus, “America is not a fact of nature but a product of
human decision. It is a nation on purpose and by purpose.” Thus, while all
citizens may confront questions about why their own nations exist, for
Americans the questions are particularly acute. And they are even more
acute today because so many of the old answers no longer satisfy:

Who today, apart from some politicians on ritual occasions, says that

America is embarked upon a providentially guided errand into the wilder-

“Robert M. Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Protestant Church
Elite in Prussaa, 1815-1848 (Berkeley; University of California Press, 1972), 38.

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The Peace of Westphalia also clarified the right of the territorial princes
to determine the religion of their states. The ruler was not permitted to
impose a religious faith on his subjects but only to regulate public religion
in his territory. For the first time, the door was open to those rulers who
wanted to practice a policy of religious toleration. Indeed, the devastating
Thirty Years’ War had led many to think that political and social stability
in Germany would require transcending religious differences and, among
the highest classes of society, a great deal of skepticism about the truth of
traditional religion crept in as a result of the war.

Germany at the opening of the 18th century was partitoned, entangled,
and confused. The Holy Roman Empire still existed in name, and at its head
there was still an emperor, but the individual states were everything and the
empire was nothing. Everywhere in Germany, the princes emerged as
absolute nilers. For more than a century after 1648, Germany stagnated as
political absolutism evolved, including an exacting administration, depen-
dence on a standing army, and oppressive bondage of the peasants. It was in
this climate that Prussia rose to prominence among the German states.
Exploiting divisions among the European great powers, Prussia began a
steady expansion by means of its large and powerful army. In addition to this
army, however, Prussia also had the solid support of its Protestant church.

Since the 16th century, Lutheranism had been the predominant reli-
gion in Brandenburg and East Prussia. In 1613, however, John Sigismund,
the Elector of Brandenburg, converted from Lutheranism to Calvinism. In
doing so, he announced that he would not make use of his right to impose
his religion upon his subjects and, indeed, that all would enjoy religious
freedom—highly unusual in an age of religious intolerance. From then on,
Brandenburg-Prussia became a haven for people fleeing religious oppres-
sion. Much of the rise and success of Prussia as a great power was due to
its ability to attract talented subjects from other European states.

The Calvinist rulers of Prussia, the Hohenzollern dynasty, may not
exactly have imposed their religion on their subjects, but they were very
interested in improving the relations between Lutherans and Calvinists.
They looked upon theological controversy as harmful and sought to pre-
vent it. In 1664, the Great Elector Frederick William demanded a signed
declaration from all ministers in Brandenburg-Prussia that they would use
moderation in the discussion of controversial subjects, not identify their
adversaries by name, and lay aside the Formula of Concord. Strong
Lutheran resistance forced a relaxation of the policy, but the handwniting
was on the wall.

Permitting no church government independent of the state, the
Hohenzollerns sought to mold the teachings of the Protestant churches
through control of church appointments. As agents of the state, Protestant
clergy were to carry out the orders of the ruler faithfully and unquestion-
ingly, so as to assist in strengthening and consolidating the Prussian state.

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ness? Lincoln declared that “we shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last,
best hope of earth.” What is lost today—meanly or otherwise—is the belief
that America is in any way the bearer of a universal hope.

Neuhaus suggests that part of the reason that we have lost confidence in
the old answers is that they were unabashedly moral, even religious.”

At the time of the American Revolution, at least 75 percent of the pop-
ulation of the colonies had grown up in families exposed to some form of
Puritanism. Crucial to Puritanism was its concept of the covenant, an
agreement that placed obligations on both parties. The Puritans believed
that when God called individuals to salvation, He also placed responsibil-
ities, duties on their shoulders. The Puritans’ Massachusetts Bay colony
was a Geneva-style Calvinist theocracy without religious toleration. The
Bible was the source and norm for both ecclesiastical and civil law. How-
ever, weakened by internal conflicts, the “half-way covenant,” and the
British Parliament's Act of Toleration in 1693, the Puritans’ vision of a
Christian Commonwealth did not thrive in America as it had in medieval
Europe. America was shaped, from the beginning, by a strong dose of indi-
vidual freedom—in religion as well as in politics. Yet, the notion of
covenant—of accountability as well as of blessing—in the American view
of God has been an enduring notion. The Puritan notion that America was
blessed to be a shining city upon a hill with an evangelical mission to the
world is with us still.

Many historians agree that the foundation for the American revolution
was laid by a spiritual Great Awakening, begun by Jonathan Edwards in
1734 and carried forward by George Whitefield up and down the Atlantic
coast. In this revival, Americans came to believe that their evangelical mis-
sion first required political independence:

But it was the evangelical New Lights of the interior, viewing nation-
hood as the essential first step in God's plan for America, who rallied the
farmers, mechanics, and small-town merchants whose participation was
to prove crucial in the struggle for independence. “What do we mean by
the American Revohition?” John Adams asked long afterward. “Do we
mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war com-
menced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a
change in their religious sentiments. ...” The change in sentiments that
Adams recalled was rooted in the Great Awakening, in the dawn of a new
conviction that America, like ancient Israel, was a God-chosen nation, des-
tined, as Edwards wrote, to begin the glorious work that in God’s good
time would “renew the world of mankind.” “

™ Neuhaus, 52-53.

™“ A. James Reichley, Religion it American Public Life (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings
Institution, 1985), 74.

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