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THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE EDUCATED CLASSES IN PROTESTANT GERMANY...
far from totally rejecting religion, addressed itself to religious guestions and
attempted to provide its own answers and new justifications of religion.
This structural transformation in the religious beliefs of supporters of the
Enlightenment during the second half of the eighteenth century is the subject
of this essay. It limits itself to a reconstruction of the main features of the
Enlightenment religious-philosophical discourse, and it is not intended as a
comprehensive study of the history of piety.’” Section II begins with an analysis
of the subjectivization and individualization of religious conviction. Since the
middle of the eighteenth century, the claim by supporters of the Enlightenment
that they had “come of age” in religious matters was both a starting point and
the aim of the debate that subjected dogma to critical scrutiny. This claim in¬
creasingly came to be recognized as the principle behind Enlightened theology,
guiding the selection and substantive revision of the traditional articles of reli¬
gious faith. Criticism of traditional dogma led to careful reinterpretation and
ultimately rejection of substantial parts of orthodox dogma, such as the ortho¬
dox idea of God and the doctrine of original sin, as well as the traditional notion
that man had been created in the image of God (Section III). The development
of a religious subjectivity and Enlightened criticism of dogma converged in
the rationalization of religion. Traditional historical dogma was replaced by
a practically-orientated, seemingly undogmatic conception of “the essence of
Christianity” (Section IV).¥ In the final section Enlightened religious beliefs
are presented as beliefs that were predominant among the educated classes
(Gebildeten). A fundamental feature of the Enlightened religious discourse was
the differentiation between Christians with and without a formal education.
In theoretical terms this differentiation of two classes of Christians went back
to the distinction between church theology — for the uneducated people — and
religion - for the educated minority (Section V).
On this cf., among others, FURSTENBERG, Friedrich, Der Strukturwandel Protestantischer Fröm¬
migkeit als soziologisches Problem, Archive de Sociologie des religions, 4 (1959), 71-80.; Bour¬
DIEU, Pierre “Genése et structure du champ religieux”, Revue frangais de sociologie, 12 (1971),
295-334.; DÜLMEN, Richard van, “Religionsgeschichte in der Historischen Sozialforschung”,
Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 6 (1980), 36-59.; DREHSEN, Volker, “Protestant Piety Movements
in the Process of Modern Social Differentiation”, Social Compass, 29 (1982), 167-85.; THAD¬
DEN, Rudolf von, “Kirchengeschichte als Gesellschaftsgeschichte”, Geschichte und Gesellschaft,
9 (1983), 598-614.; see also as a synthesis HOLSCHER, Lucian, Geschichte der protestantischen
Frömmigkeit in Deutschland, München, Beck, 2005, chapter 2.
12 Cf. WAGENHAMMER, Hans, Das Wesen des Christentums. eine begriffsgeschichtliche Untersu¬
chung, Tübinger Theologische Studien 2, Mainz, Matthias Grünewald, 1973.
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