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This article gives an overview of the recent history of the relationship between the European Baptist Federation (EBF) and the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE), which is highly important for overcoming the schism of Protestantism. Starting in 1973 with the Leuenberg Agreement, the CPCE now includes nearly every Lutheran, Reformed, and United church in Europe, as well as important pre-Reformation churches and seven European Methodist churches. The EBF, which represents the largest free church in Europe, is not yet included, primarily because Baptists do not recognize the baptism of infants. Nevertheless, the dialogues since 1999 have shown that there is so much common ground between the two sides that they are earnestly seeking to find a binding cooperation., Introduction The Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE) at its Sixth General Assembly, September 12-18, 2006, in Budapest, decided that it wanted 'a closer cooperation' with the European Baptist [...]

The debate on the women's ecclesiastical suffrage unfolded in the territory of Alsace-Lorraine provides important evidence of Alsace-Lorraine's integration into the Empire as a whole. The initial success of the suffrage campaign owed much to the particular organization of the Reichsland's Protestant churches.

The relative effectiveness of strictness theory and modernization theory in explaining congregational growth is tested using a random sample of white, Protestant churches in Middletown (N = 98). Although the former theory predicts that growth is positively related to an authoritative structure and to enforcing rules of ascetic strictness, modernization theory predicts the opposite pattern. For our sample, authoritative leadership seemed not to produce congregational growth. The main finding was that strict rules positively related to growth among working-class congregations, but negatively related to growth among middle-class congregations.

THIRTEEN YEARS AGO I became the pastor of a downtown church that had once been a major force in the community. At one time, 2,000 people filled its huge sanctuary [...]

Chi and Houseknecht found partial support for a negative relationship between Protestant fundamentalism and marital success, but among 44 Protestant couples randomly sampled from a midwestern community, no over-all relationship was observed between fundamentalism and self-esteem and each of seven measures of marital quality. For a small subsample, subjects who attended the same church frequently, fundamentalism may have been associated with greater apprehension about marital and/or aversive communication. Negative effects of fundamentalism, if any, on marital quality may operate selectively in marital interaction.