The so-called Revival Movements that came up as a symptom of differentiation and pluralisation of Protestantism in reaction to the Enlightenment, rationalism, and criticism of religion, represent still a considerable historiographical challenge. The conference focused on Revival Movements in reference to the transformations of the popular that they implicated, and in this regard for the potential of conflicts, as the leading aspect. The relevance of such an approach is obvious because those movements attempted theological self-empowerment of Christian laymen and laywomen which challenged the resistance of academic theology, traditional churches as well as secular authorities, as VERONIKA ALBRECHT-BIRKNER (Siegen) pointed out in her introduction.

The first section of the conference titled “Groups and Awaking” was started by the historian DIETHARD SAWICKI (Gütersloh). His contribution offered new perspectives on the emergence and inner structure of the religious awakening in the German-speaking territories around 1800 due to the fact, that many of the protagonists were Freemasons. Sawicki explored what it meant to combine the identities of being a Christian and a Freemason at the same time not only in the case of well-known religious virtuosos, but also in the case of Protestant clergymen who are less well-known today and in the Bible societies in which Freemasons often held leading positions. The contribution by WITALIJ MOROSOW (St. Petersburg) who is currently a visiting researcher at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg and at the University of Cologne was devoted to the position of the art of alchemy in the literature of Martinists in the Moscow region in the early 19th century. He showed the importance of their contacts with Prussian Rosicrucians, who had organized access to old alchemical editions for Russian Martinists for the realization of the project of the so-called Hermetic Library. Furthermore, he explored the ways of distribution alchemical literature by the Moskow Martinists and discussed the popularity of such literature in Russia in the beginning of the 19th century. Finally, he pointed out the conflicts between the Martinists and Cathrine II of Russia that led to the banning of distribution and even translations of Hermetic literature. The religious studies scholar YAN SUARSANA (Bremen) shed light on the Revival Movement located in Pune’s Mukti Mission in India in the early 20th century that is usually interpreted as one of the starting points of the Indian Pentecostal movement. He emphasized the emergence of Pandita Ramabai (1858–1922), a prominent native woman, as the authoritative figure of the revival there, who had previously attracted international attention not only as a champion of women’s rights in India but also as an anti-colonial activist. Against this background he placed the Mukti Revival in the context of anti-colonial resistance and read the reception of this Revival Movement as a negotiation process of popular culture, which can be placed within the larger framework of colonial hierarchical models of culture and civilization. The last lecture of this section was presented by the historian SUSANNE KOKEL (Siegen). She dealt with the Moravian Church that relied from the beginning of its existence in the first half of the 18th century onwards on private and common business as it proved to secure independence and growth of the pietist community irrespectively of the small number of members. Only in the end of the 19th century this concept of a church entrepreneurship seemed to be more and more challenged. Kokel offered a deeper understanding of this process which reflected a thorough change in the theological assessment not only of church finance but also of church entrepreneurship mainly brought forward by the laity.

The second section titled “Agents between conflict and empowerment” was opened by LAURA POPA (Gießen), Ph.D. candidate in History and Cultural Studies at Justus Liebig University Gießen and currently Visiting Scholar at Sidney Sussex College Cambridge Oxford. Her contribution dealt with the so far only little researched topic how laywomen in Catholic countries across Europe experienced revivalism. This archival-research-based paper focused on a converted Waldensian, Giuseppina Pusterla, argued that theological changes made under Swiss revivalist influence in the Waldensian Valleys in the 1830s and 1840s led to an ambiguous form of (self-) empowerment of laywomen during the second half of the century. The Church historian RUTH ALBRECHT (Hamburg) stated in her paper an increasing interest in the phenomenon of evangelism in the German-speaking world by the end of the 19th century, especially in the groups that had emerged from the Revival Movements. Albrecht explored the conflicts between churches and those movements that came up in this context, such as the use of non-church spaces, e.g., restaurants, dance halls or tents, the reducing of sermons to a few descriptive contents focusing the person of Jesus, the songs and the musical arrangements that based on Anglo-American models, and the direct call for immediate conversion. Based on selected examples, she dealt also with the conflict that arose from the fact that female as well a male lay people acted as evangelists. The contribution by the Church historian JACOB DAHLBACKA (Turku) focused on the shift in power relations in the spiritual sphere that took place in the late 19th century in Finland that was part of a process in which the Lutheran state church in Finland was forced to retreat from several societal areas it had previously dominated. An important event in this development was the abolition of the so-called Conventicle Act in 1870 and the inclusion of the venia con-cionandi paragraph in the Church Law, which gave laypeople the right to preach. Dahlbacka examened in this context the unpublished autobiography by Gustaf Roos (1846–1918) who was one of the very first colporteurs both in Finland and in the Evangelical Revival Movement. It provided first-hand insight into the tug-of-war between religious high and low culture, the religious elite and the popular. THOMAS IJEWSKI (Freudenberg), pastor and doctoral candidate in Church history at the university of Münster, provided a diachronic approach to the Siegerland revival in Westphalia in Germany as an initiative especially of craftsmen and manufacturers, referring to a timespan of 200 years and with the example of the parish of Freudenberg as its center. In the 19th century Tillmann Siebel (1804–1875), a tannery-owner, became the unrivaled leader of the Siegerland Awakening. In 1930 Walter Alfred Siebel (1867–1941), a descendent of Tillman and leather-manufacturer, managed to award an honorary doctorate in theology from Münster University even though he never studied theology but published several tracts on controversial dogmatic and ecclesiological topics.

The Romanicist GRAZIA DOLORES FOLLIERO-METZ (Siegen) opened the third section titled “(Lay-) Theology”. She showed the literary and artistic implications of some textual passages by Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740–1817) as a representative of the early German Revival Movement and very successful author of lay-theological publications. She reconnected them to the dominant aesthetics of his time, i.e. to the aesthetics of Romanticism, and compared his afterlife vision’s with Dante’s illustrations by William Blake. Following Italian studies on German Pietism, and Jung-Stilling’s literary reception in Italy, she examined Jung-Stilling as an author of Romantic sensibility who didn’t even hesitate to adopt the catholic doctrine of purgatory. JOHAN SMITS (Amsterdam), Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies, elaborated processes of professionalisation in theology during the 19th century that went along with including non-academic scholars in the publication of scholarly journals. He developed how the rise of scholarly journals in the 19th century created platforms which allowed non-academic scholars to publish as well as academic scholars. His thesis was that the fates of these journals show both the fluid character and the persistence of high-low distinctions on an intellectual level. CAT ASHTON (Toronto), currently Postdoctoral EU STAR Fellow at the university of Siegen, pointed out that by the end of the 20th century, premillennial dispensationalism had seized the American evangelical imagination to the point where its interpretation of the Book of Revelation dominates popular culture, even among non-Christians, in ways that have implications e.g., for American political culture. Against this background, she asked in her contribution for the premillennial dispensationalism’s entrance into the mainstream American imagination in the early 20th century and traced its enmeshing with broader evangelical and popular culture.

Connecting the results of the single contributions and the research program of the transformations of the popular, some key findings has been discussed, finally. Thus, it was found on the one hand that in different branches of the Revival Movements conflicts were relevant that resulted from relativizations of high-/ low-differences. Especially the attitude of claiming to be new and true elites by laity played an important role, as a matter of making new differences in religious, connected with social as well as economic regards. E.g., in the case of freemasonries and alchemists we can speak about popular movements in the nobility or high- and middle-class intellectuals who claimed to play a special and singular role for Christianity and Church by having access to secret sources that are crucial for Christianity. In Finland evangelistic colporteurs as well as in Germany craftsmen and manufacturers challenged the authority of church officials by claiming to be true elites in religious matters. In the case of Moravian church, we can see a close connection between self-understanding as a religious as well as an economic elite.

On the other hand, there are to state close connections to political purposes and consequences. In several cases, Revival Movements were closely linked with conservative political, sometimes national or fundamentalistic positions, e.g., in reaction to the French revolution in Central Europe, or during the 20th century in North America. In some cases, as in the case of the alchemists in Russia, political repression resulted from their religious interpretations. In the Indian Mukti revival in turn we see a close connection to anticolonial and emancipatory aims and partly to women rights movements. Emancipatory impulses regarding the social role of women can also be observed e.g., in the case of laywomen in Catholic Italy or in German Evangelism movement, which are to be discussed as part of the gender discourse since around 1800.

On the third hand there is frequently detectable the claiming to be new and real experts in theological terms by laity. This was connected to the integration of bodies of knowledge that were not part of the dogmas of the confessional traditions respectively, e.g., in the case of Freemasons theosophical mysticism or in the case of Jung-Stilling, imaginations of purgatory or in the case of American evangelical and popular culture the premillennial dispensationalism. Furthermore, we can see that the borders between academic theology and non-academic scholarship got relativised – even though there were strong processes of professionalisation in the 19th century.

Conference overview:

Veronika Albrecht-Birkner (Siegen): Introduction

Section 1: Groups and Awakening

Diethard Sawicki (Gütersloh): „But who else than masonry would be better suited as a strong educator of real children of Christ?“ Considerations on the Relationship between Freemasonry and Awakening in Central Europe

Witalij Morosow (St. Petersburg): Moscow Martinists as Distributors of Alchemical Literature: Texts Networks, Prohibitions

Yan Suarsana (Bremen): Of culture and (Indian) Nation: The Mukti Revival in Colonial Discourse

Susanne Kokel (Siegen): To be or not to be an Entrepreneur – Conflicts in the Moravian Church

Section 2: Agents between conflict and empowerment

Laura Popa (Cambridge): „Basta studiere la Bibbia“: Revived Protestantism and (Self-) Empowerment of Laywomen in Italy, 1860–1915

Ruth Albrecht (Hamburg): Conflict Area Evangelism. Controversies about Lay Preachers in the 19th century

Jakob Dahlbacka (Turku): Between the hammer and the anvil, or: the peril of being a colporteur in 19th-century Finland

Thomas Ijewski (Freudenberg): From Anabaptists to an Honorary Doctorate in Theology – 200 Years of Lay-Theology in Freudenberg as a Model for the Siegerland Awakening

Section 3 (Lay-) Theology

Grazia Dolores Folliero-Metz (Siegen): Jung-Stilling`s Afterlife visions and William Blake`s Dante illustrations. A paradigmatic comparative analysis

Johan Smits (Amsterdam): Linking up to academia: theological journals as gateways for non-academic scholarship

Cat Ashton (Toronto): Revelation Remix: The Ascendance of Premillennial Dispensationalism