Piety and Modernity

337 Pages·2013·40.778 MB·English

by  Anders Jarlert

THE DYNAMICS OF RELIGIOUS REFORM IN NORTHERN EUROPE, 1780-1920
PIETY AND MODERNITY
THE DYNAMICS OF RELIGIOUS REFORM IN CHURCH, STATE AND SOCIETY
IN NORTHERN EUROPE, 1780-1920
Editors-in-chief: Joris van Eijnatten and Nigel Yates †
Before the last quarter of the eighteenth century there was a generally clear and remarkably
uniform pattern of church-state relationships across Europe, which had emerged from the reli-
gious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the course of the ‘long’ nineteenth
century this firm alliance between political and religious establishments broke down all over
Europe. A substantial degree of religious pluralism developed everywhere, requiring church and
state to accommodate change. Defining religious reform as ‘the conscious pursuit of renewal
with the aim of adapting organised religion to the changing relations between church, state
and society’, this series examines the reforms initiated by the organised religions of Northern
Europe between c.1780 and c.1920. There has been an assumption that it was the change in
the church-state relationship that was largely responsible for the ecclesiastical reform move-
ment of the nineteenth century, and that it was the state that was the principal agent of change,
with the national churches seen as resisting changes that had to be forced upon them. Recent
research across Europe has shown that in some parts of Europe ecclesiastical reform was initi-
ated by the churches; and that there were times and places when it was the state rather than
the church that was hostile to alterations in the status quo. This series explores this process
of change from different angles, looking particularly at its impact on the question of religious
reform, in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark,
Sweden and Norway.
Board members: Jan De Maeyer (KADOC-KU Leuven), Joris van Eijnatten (Utrecht University),
Andreas Gestrich (German Historical Institute, London), Anders Jarlert (Lund University), James
Kennedy (University of Amsterdam), Liselotte Malmgart (Aarhus University), Peter Jan Margry
(Meertens Institute Amsterdam), Keith Robbins (Emeritus Vice-Chancellor, University of Wales,
Lampeter), Nigel Yates† (University of Wales, Lampeter), Paula Yates (St Michael ’s College,
Cardiff).
Financial assistance for the research programme on ‘The Dynamics of Religious Reform in Northern Europe,
1780-1920’ is gratefully acknowledged from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO),
University of Wales, Trinity St David (formerly University of Wales, Lampeter) and the Documentation and
Research Centre for Religion, Culture and Society at KU Leuven (KADOC).
THE DYNAMICS OF RELIGIOUS REFORM IN NORTHERN EUROPE
III 1780-1920
LEUVEN UNIVERSITY PRESS
EDITED BY ANDERS JARLERT
PIETY
MODERNITY
A
N
D
The series ‘The Dynamics of Religious Reform in Northern Europe, 1780-1920’ is a sub-series of
the ‘KADOC Studies on Religion, Culture and Society’, published under the supervision of the
KADOC Editorial Board:
Urs Altermatt, Université de Fribourg
Jan Art, Universiteit Gent
Jaak Billiet, KU Leuven
Jan De Maeyer, KU Leuven - KADOC
Jean-Dominique Durand, Université Lyon 3
Emmanuel Gerard, KU Leuven - KADOC
James C. Kennedy, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Mathijs Lamberigts, KU Leuven
Emiel Lamberts, KU Leuven
Jean-Michel Leniaud, École pratique des hautes études, Sorbonne, Paris
Patrick Pasture, KU Leuven
Andrew Saint, University of Cambridge
Liliane Voyé, Université Catholique de Louvain
© 2012
Leuven University Press / Presses universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire Pers Leuven
Minderbroedersstraat 4 bus 5602, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium)
All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be
multiplied, saved in an automated data file or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior
written consent of the publishers.
ISBN 978 90 5867 932 1
D/2012/1869/70
NUR: 694
Contents
Introduction 7
Anders Jarlert
Bibliography 24
The United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland
25
Christian Piety in Britain during the ‘Long’ Nineteenth Century, c 1780-1920 27
Mary Heimann
Sport and the Reform of Piety in England. A Case Study 55
Hugh McLeod
The Reform of Piety in Ireland, 1780-1920 65
Janice Holmes
Bibliography 93
The Low Countries
99
Reform of Piety in the Southern Netherlands/Belgium 101
Tine Van Osselaer
Dutch Devotionalization 125
Reforming Piety: Grassroots Initiative or Clerical Strategy?
Peter Jan Margry
Reforming Dutch Protestant Piety, 1780-1920 157
Fred van Lieburg
Bibliography 186
Germany
191
Reform of Piety in German Catholicism, 1780-1920 193
Bernhard Schneider
Evangelical Germany 225
Anders Jarlert
Bibliography 255
The Nordic Countries
263
The Dynamics of Reform of Piety in Denmark, c 1780-1920 265
Johs. Enggaard Stidsen
Reform in Sweden 286
From Confessional Provincialism towards World Ecumenism
6 Anders Jarlert
Reform of Piety in Norway, 1780-1920 307
Ingunn Folkestad Breistein
Bibliography 326
Index 329
Map of Northern Europe c 1870 333
Authors 334
Colophon 336
Introduction
Introduction
Anders Jarlert
Piety is a somewhat diffuse word - it covers a wide range of religious phenomena, 7
partly with other accents than the German Frömmigkeit or the French spiritualité. In
this volume, piety is used in a broad sense, covering different manifestations of Chris-
tian spiritual life during the long nineteenth century.
Piety should not be confused with Pietism, though its Pietistic expression was
widely influential in Protestantism in this period. Further, the reform of piety is much
wider than the reform of private devotion only, since it includes reforms of liturgy,
hymns, Bible translation, etc, but also changing patterns and methods for religious
expression on a wide scale, both collective and individual. In his chapter on the Catho-
lic Netherlands in the present volume, Peter Jan Margry defines piety as “the behaviour
expressed in relation to a devotion”, a definition most relevant in that Catholic context.
However a modern, secularised Protestant concept of piety as something internal and
private is too restrictive. Protestant piety did have a wider scope, sometimes expressed,
for example, in public manifestations, missionary work, or collective Sunday stillness.
Modernity has sometimes been identified with secularisation, but this is miscon-
ceived since it merely stages a possible setting for secularisation. The drama being
played in the long nineteenth century, however, could develop in different directions
and to different ends, sometimes reducing the impact of Christian piety to a minimum,
sometimes restoring it in unexpected ways, and sometimes modernising piety without
secularisation. Indeed, the use of modern means and methods for pious purposes is
characteristic for both Catholic and Protestant institutions and associations, though in
different ways, and often not simultaneously.
The case of Modernity was especially complicated on the Catholic side, where
some modern means were immediately taken into the service of the church, while
some - like electricity - were not entirely accepted for liturgical use until the middle of
the twentieth century. The Papal Syllabus Errorum (Syllabus of Errors, 1864) went so
Anders Jarlert
far as to exclude possible accommodation to “modern civilisation” - a concept often
interpreted in a much broader sense than originally intended.
The accepted use of modern methods included mass-translating and mass-
printing of books, journals, and pamphlets, and an intense international extension
also in rapidly expanding missionary work, producing vivid and dramatic reports from
far ends of the world. Significant examples of modern means and methods used in the
promotion of piety are found in the chapter by Hugh McLeod in the present volume on
sport and the reform of piety in England, and by Mary Heimann’s reference to Holman
Hunt’s “The Light of the World” (1853-4), a painting which toured the British Empire
and was seen by over 7 million people. A later, continental parallel was the Hungarian
Mihály Munkácsy’s painting “Christ before Pilate” (1881) which toured even remote
places in Scandinavia as well as the United States and left a strong, spiritual impres-
sion on many people.
Modernity is closely linked to individualism, though pious individualism by no
means excluded an emphasis on the authority of the Pope, as in ultramontane piety,
or stress on Lutheran confessional teaching, as in neo-Lutheran piety. Even an indi-
vidualistic effort to be liberated from all ecclesiastical authorities, when connected
8 to a strong faith in the authority of the Bible could turn out to be an individualism
which was at the same time pious. Modern individualism gave individuals the choice
of what to believe, or - more frequently - how to believe, including the right to choose
to believe in the infallibility of the Pope or the inerrancy of the Bible. On the other
hand, the combination of individualism and the believed supremacy of human reason
could be expressed in a rational piety, or lead to a secular rationalism. A private piety,
without church attendance or other public, religious activities, could pave the way
for secularism. As Hugh McLeod has remarked, what in France may be described as
a “step-by-step conversion to some kind of humanism, as, in effect, the highest form
of Protestantism”, occurred also in Germany in the 1850s and 1860s, and is hinted at
in the British Labour Churches, formed from 1891 onwards.1 However, when combined
with other influences, such privatisation could be the prelude to a religious awakening
in the next generation.
A significant example of a highly Christian anti-clericalism is the Danish theo-
logian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), who criticised the “profession-
al priests”, and emphasised Christian faith as an individual following of Christ “in
passion and poverty” (Johs. Enggaard Stidsen). Kierkegaard was neither a pietist nor
a rationalist. He was certainly not a secularist, but his individualist approach to faith
and church created a gap between the individual and the institution.
The nineteenth century has been described as a period of secularisation. This
is true for large parts of the working class in the German big cities; while in Britain
the big decline in religious practice did not occur until after 1920. The debate on secu-
larisation has been huge, however mostly on secularisation in the twentieth century.
1 McLeod, Secularisation, 139.
Introduction
As to the nineteenth century, Hugh McLeod in his book on secularisation in Western
Europe, 1848-1914, and Hartmut Lehmann in his concept on the secularised Europe
as a “Sonderfall”2 has influenced my own view to a great part. In the present volume,
Mary Heimann states that “at perhaps no time since the sixteenth century were Britons
so intensely preoccupied with religion as from about 1780 to 1920”. Even so, a simpli-
fied picture of secularisation cannot be replaced by one which is just as simplified.
Victorian Britain has left us with “contradictory impressions of the period as an Age
of Faith and at the same time an Age of Doubt”, resulting in a fragmented piety in the
twentieth century. Thus, rechristianisation and secularisation were often simultane-
ous processes.
By 1900, over five million British children went to Sunday school, but in Sweden
the Sunday school did not reach its peak until some twenty years later and in small
towns several decades thereafter. The development of secularisation was in some
countries later than in others, it was not even, but described a curve with many varia-
tions. The efforts of rechristianisation, an important concept, emphasised by Hartmut
Lehmann3, followed a different time-table in different countries, or, as Hugh McLeod
has shown, in different provinces within the same country.4 And, most important,
secularisation and rechristianisation did not succeed each other; the development 9
was often coincident so that both secularisation and rechristianisation gained ground
at the same time, in the same country and within the same church. The period thus
“ended on a note of uncertainty and doubt” (Heimann).
Typically in many Protestant milieux the number of communicants fell as a
result of a greater distance between the ‘awakened’ and other church members. Thus,
making faith more visible could simultaneously create both a higher spiritual tempera-
ture and a sense of detachment in the parishes. The ‘awakened’ sometimes formed an
active nucleus in congregations, sometimes adding separate chapel services comple-
menting the ordinary ones, sometimes separating themselves in practice from the
established church, sometimes formally so.
Especially during the early decades of this period, secularisation was relevant
also in its historical, material meaning. The secularisation of monasteries and church-
es - through confiscation, destruction, or reformation - was frequent not only in revo-
lutionary France and in regions dependent on it, such as Belgium, but also in strong
Catholic areas, such as Bavaria, 1802-03. The latter secularisation of institutions and
buildings was not directed against the Christian faith or piety as such, as it was in
France, and it is not to be identified with de-christianisation or a withdrawal of the
Christian faith from the public sphere. The strivings for a reduction of ecclesiastical
power in the political or economical sense may not be confused with de-christianisa-
tion, especially not at a local level.
2 Lehmann, Säkularisierung. Der europäische 3 Id. (ed.), Säkularisierung, Dechristianisierung,
Sonderweg. Rechristianisierung im neuzeitlichen Europa.
4 McLeod, Secularisation.