Protestant Pluralities: Cultures of Correspondence and the Formation of Religious Groups in the Early Eighteenth Century
Protestant Theology
Final Report Abstract
The research project combines early modern history and Church History. It investigated religious plurality at the intra-confessional level. Analysing community-building within German Protestantism around 1700, it was based on extensive correspondence from the papers of three theologians who have been assigned by previous research to different religious milieus with considerable impact: Lutheran Orthodoxy (E.S. Cyprian), Reformed Irenicism (D.E. Jablonski) and Halle Pietism (A.H. Francke). The project followed a new approach: It focused on letters as sources for group formation processes, both in terms of content and correspondence practices. The aim was to use the letters of theologians with supposedly like-minded people to investigate Protestant groups, to work out communication practices and to analyse mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. As a result, conventional classifications of Protestant milieus around 1700 (“Lutheran orthodoxy”, “irenicism”, “pietism”) were deconstructed as products of scholarly (controversial) practices. Far more than previously known, religious truth claims were intertwined with social, gender-specific and everyday aspects as well as with an asymmetrical distribution of power. The construction of different groups within Protestantism must therefore be regarded as dynamic and fluid. The project has revealed plenty of information regarding Protestant theologians around 1700 and made previously unknown sources available. In terms of content and methodology, the significance and limits of epistolary communication for religious-social group formation in Protestant Central Europe around 1700 have been worked out. It thus contributed to research in several fields (history of religion, mobility, communication and social history). The analysis of religious community formation within supposedly homogeneous confessional groups and along local and trans-local links offers important insights into the function and transmission of competing truth claims in different social segments, even beyond the period and region studied here. Results have so far been presented in ten (already published) international publications and 21 lectures by PI Alexander Schunka and researcher Sebastian Kühn.
Publications
-
Scholarly households. The Routledge History of the Domestic Sphere in Europe, 134-154. Routledge.
Kühn, Sebastian
-
Adam Bernd, in: Joachim Bahlcke (Hg.): Schlesische Lebensbilder, Bd. 13, Würzburg 2021, 33-44
Schunka, A.
-
Johann Fabricius, in: J.A. Steiger u.a. (Hg.): Frühe Neuzeit in Deutschland. Verfasserlexikon 17. Jahrhundert (VL 17), Bd. 2, Berlin 2021, Sp. 785– 794
Schunka, A.
-
Konversion, Toleranz – oder doch Union? Protestantische Optionen um 1700, in: M. Pohlig/S. Steckel (Hg.): Über Religion entscheiden – Choosing My Religion, Tübingen 2021, 135–158
Schunka, A.
-
Pietismus und Ökonomie (1650–1750), Göttingen 2021
Schunka, A., W. Breul & B. Marschke (Hg.)
-
Mobility and Religious Practices among Protestants in the Early Modern Age. Migration and Diaspora Formation, 113-136. De Gruyter.
Schunka, Alexander
-
Reformed Irenicism and Pan-Protestantism in Early Modern Europe. Searching for Compromise?, 299-329. BRILL.
Schunka, Alexander
-
Faith and Its Discontents:. Religious Plurality at Princely Courts, 38-58. Berghahn Books.
SCHUNKA, ALEXANDER
-
Fromme Kutschenbriefe. Reisen, Religion und Schreiben im Protestantismus um 1700; in: Themenportal Europäische Geschichte
Kühn, S.
-
Heinrich Julius Elers: Kutschenbrief an August Hermann Francke (Berlin, 1698), ediert von Sebastian Kühn; in: Themenportal Europäische Geschichte
Kühn, S.
-
Religious Plurality at Princely Courts. Berghahn Books.
Marschke, Benjamin; Riches, Daniel; Smart, Sara & Schunka, Alexander
-
Unterwegs im Konfessionellen Zeitalter: Ein Literaturbericht, in: Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 76 (2025), 1/2, 96–114
Schunka, A.
