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[German Version] (Aug 22, 1877, Berlin – Aug 19, 1955, Kassel) studied theology in Berlin, particularly with A. v. Harnack. In 1906 he received his habilitation in Berlin in church history. He wrote extensively on the theology of the Enlightenment, classical literature, and German Idealism within the school of Harnack, guided by an interest in signalizing the contributions of critical, rationalistic theology to a modern reformulation of a reasonable Christianity. In 1910 he became a titular professor and co-editor of the first edition of Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. He was…

[German Version] I. Concept – II. Methodological Individualism I. Concept Individualism is a programmatic concept that surfaced around 1900 amid the ideological and ideopolitical debates of the modern bourgeois cultural world. Even at the time of its historical origin, it had negative overtones: it was thought to express a Zeitgeist that made the individual absolute, subordinating institutions and communities to the self-defined ends of the individual, and thus undermined the basic foundations of society (Community and the individual). Collectivism came into use as the …

[German Version] I. Concept and Origins – II. Catholic Church – III. Orthodox Churches – IV. Protestant Church I. Concept and Origins Church dedication is the ceremony which commits a church building to its liturgical use ( dedicatio). It is first attested in Tyre (Eus. Hist. eccl. X 3f.); the translation of the relics of martyrs for the first celebration of the eucharist appears as early as the 4th century (Ambr. Epist. 22). Since the early Middle Ages, the dedication of the altar underwent a rich develop…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Fundamental Theology – III. Ethics – IV. Practical Theology I. Philosophy Because the term life-world (Ger. Lebenswelt) usually refers to the concrete world of our everyday life experiences, it has sometimes been equated with everyday life. This interpretation overlooks the fact that it is a highly ambitious concept of theoretical philosophy, which has, however, taken on greatly different forms. Historically, the first hints of its conceptual development appear in the studies …

[German Version] I. History – II. Philosophy – III. Social Sciences and Ethics – IV. Religion I. History 1. General Since the 18th century, European liberalism has fought for a civil society, demanding three kinds of civil rights: (1) equality before the law, guaranteed by the rule of law; (2) equal opportunity for political participation, made possible by the right to vote and free access to the public arena; (3) provision of basic social opportunities. Legal equality was the first of these demands put forward…

[German Version] I. Study of Religion – II. History – III. Sociology – IV. Practical Theology – V. Missiology I. Study of Religion The term modernization usually refers to mutually reinforcing structural changes in various social sectors: nation building and democratization in the political sector; industrialization and tertiarization (i.e. the development of services) in the economic sector; urbanization, educational expansion, and mobilization in the social sector; diversification and individualization in the c…

[German Version] I. Church History – II. Philosophy – III. Practical Theology I. Church History 1. The German term Neuzeit, which first appeared in church historiography around 1870, and which corresponds to the English term “modern times,” encompasses a broad spectrum of heterogeneous meanings. Terms such as tempus novum, historia nova, or neue Zeit (“new times”) – in contrast to the Middle Ages (I) – were coined in the 17th century to express experiences, both fascinating and frightening, of accelerated change in many areas of life along with…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Church History – III. Philosophy – IV. Fundamental Theology – V. Ethics – VI. Culture, Art, and Religion – VII. Practical Theology I. Religious Studies The word “culture” derives from Latin cultura, “tilling of land”; since antiquity it has been used metaphorically for cultura animi, “cultivation of the mind,” and for status culturalis, the desirable refinement contrasting with the human status naturalis. Since the Enlightenment, the word has taken on different meanings. In the European context, culture co…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies In the 1960s, religious studies began to discuss the continuing decline of religious commitment in Europe intensively. In particular the writings of Bryan Wilson ( Religion in a Secular Society, 1966) and Peter L. Berger ( The Sacred Canopy, 1967), drawing on the ideas of M. Weber, É. Durkheim, and others led to formulation of a so-called theory of secularization, where secularization denotes a natural aspect of the process of modernization, in which the traditional religious legitimation of the world has increasingly lost…