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The schoolteacher and poet Hilja Pärssinen (1876–1935) was the most influential and internationally best-known female socialist in Finland before the Finnish Civil War (1918). She was a member of the Finnish Parliament, the leader of the Finnish Social Democratic Women’s Movement, and the most prominent ideologue of the Finnish Social Democratic Party’s (SDP) welfare programme. For instance, Pärssinen promoted paid maternity leave, public daycare, legalised abortion, and compulsory education with free meals and school supplies.Historians have acknowledged Pärssinen’s leading role as the architect of Finnish socialist welfare, but also pointed out that she was an aggressive opponent of the Evangelical Lutheran church. However, the studies have mainly failed to note that instead of rejecting religion itself, Pärssinen claimed all the reforms demanded by socialists were based on Christianity. Finnish scholars have argued—mainly based on writings by the party male elite—that the SDP rejected religion and adopted secular/antireligious ideology at the beginning of the twentieth century. I argue that this paradigm is based on an oversimplified and gendered interpretation. This paper will show that shifting the perspective from male socialist leaders to female ideologues can change and widen the comprehension of the history of socialism drastically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Thirteenth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) marked a pivotal moment for global Lutheranism. The assembly served as a platform for Lutherans worldwide to converge in Krakow, where they collectively discerned their shared future. While critics have claimed that the LWF has departed from its confessional identity, the Thirteenth Assembly of the LWF nevertheless demonstrated continuity with its historical and confessional roots, now underscored by a renewed focus on hope as the central theological principle. Numerous contextual and global challenges necessitate a theological agenda for a unified movement forward. Through an eschatological lens of hope, Lutherans globally are encouraged to deepen their reflection on biblical interpretation, theological contributions, and ecclesial missional practice. A realistic understanding of Christian hope shapes how one thinks and acts in the here and now in the most difficult of circumstances. This shift is already evident in the new LWF strategy and has begun to manifest regionally. This essay is an invitation to a hopeful theological agenda for the Lutheran communion and aims to make a significant contribution to world Christianity and society at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Timothy Wengert's reflections on the evolution of his understanding of the church in light of Lutheran theology. Topics include the relationship between change and continuity in Christian practice, the misconceptions about church bodies versus the church of Christ, and the significance of recognizing the church as a gathering of believers around Word and Sacrament.

The article focuses on Gilbert Meilaender's evolving perspective on Lutheranism, particularly regarding its ethical implications. Topics include the influence of finitude on moral understanding, the limitations of traditional law-gospel theology in ethical reflection, and the necessity of recognizing personal transformation within the Christian life.

In this article, we propose an alternative Foucauldian reading of Martin Luther's thought and early Lutheranism. Michel Foucault did not mention the Reformation often, although he saw it as an amplification of pastoral power and the governing of people's everyday lives. We aim to fill the gap in his analysis by outlining the disciplinary and biopolitical aspects in Luther and early Lutheranism. Therefore, we also contribute to the ongoing debate regarding the birth of biopolitics, which, we argue, predates Foucault's periodisation. Our approach to tackling these questions is three-pronged. First, we establish the context by highlighting a few Reformation-era examples of the conceptual opposite of biopower, namely, sovereign power. Second, we scrutinise the disciplinary aspects of early Lutheranism, underscoring the fact that disciplinary institutions appear to subject people to new models of behaviour. Third, we describe the biopolitical undercurrents in Luther's thought and its early reception. We argue that the reformer's views on issues such as marriage and poor relief appear to carry a biopolitical significance before the alleged birth of biopolitics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines an aspect of early Lutheran passion piety overlooked in present scholarship: namely, how believers were taught to discern Christ’s suffering body in the present and to identify themselves with it. It shows how the fear of persecution shaped the unfolding Lutheran Passion tradition, while arguing that authors aimed to heighten fear of the other by setting the Roman party outside the bounds of Christianity and to assure the faithful of their invulnerability to genuine harm and death as members of Christ’s body. William R. Reddy’s concept of “emotives” is employed to show how readers were encouraged to engage in self-examination and self-alteration through meditation on the thoughts and feelings of Christ and his friends and enemies, scriptural and present. Lutheran Passion books depict self and society as a battleground between God and Satan and their respective human allies, thus setting the reader in God’s “emotional regime.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the early incorporation of reinforced concrete in the architecture of Historicism in Austria–Hungary. Spanning the late 19th to early 20th centuries, the research illuminates the period's stylistic pluralism and the transformative impact of reinforced concrete. The paper examines the integration of reinforced concrete into traditional forms, providing detailed case studies and architectural examples. It navigates through various aspects, including the evolution of reinforced concrete during the historicist period, its adoption in notable structures, and its documentation in contemporary literature. Case studies, such as the Lutheran Church in Battyánd (now Puconci, Slovenia), the Roman Catholic Church in Topolya (now Bačka Topola, Serbia), and the former Synagogue in Český Krumlov, Czechia, showcase the innovative ways reinforced concrete addressed structural challenges while adhering to historicist aesthetics. The research concludes by reflecting on the transformative role of reinforced concrete in challenging the conventions of Historicism, paving the way for modern architectural expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion of theological beliefs and practices in the analysis of domestic violence is needed, hence this paper explores how Christian theological framings shape men’s perpetration of domestic violence. Through engagement with the Lutheran Church of Australia, interviews and a survey with Pastors found that gender was dominant in the themes and provided a framework for how Pastors understood domestic violence and how they articulated their explanations for why they perceived a denial of domestic violence in their religious contexts. The interviews in this study brought out the capacity of gendered theological discourse and the truth valency of scripture to both inform domestic violence and potentially be part of the solution, while at the same time the narratives express the inherent tensions and the resistance to change in the religious culture. The paper argues for the coming together of sociological, feminist, theological and spiritual understandings of gender identity to shape responses to domestic violence in Christian contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A seminar of the North American Academy of Liturgy met to explore how understanding of liturgy can contribute to church unity between Lutherans and Catholics. The seminar participants, including Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and others, focused on Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry as fundamental issues. They found that there is agreement on the meaning and practice of baptism, the real presence in the Eucharist, and the nature of ministry. The seminar concluded that there should be no obstacle to eucharistic sharing and no significant obstacles to the mutual recognition of ministries between Lutherans and Roman Catholics. [Extracted from the article]

In this article I argue that the "Credo" from Bach's Mass in B Minor is marked by music whose counterpoint puts a decisive Lutheran spin on the work's broadly Christian verbal text, and I also argue, from new liturgical and manuscript evidence, that this "Credo" was most probably meant to be performed as a discrete "work" on certain special occasions in the liturgies of the Lutheran churches in eighteenth-century Leipzig. Historical Lutheran theology (from well- known sources known to have been in Bach's personal library or in the library of the Thomaschule in Leipzig for directed use by the faculty, including by Bach) is drawn on throughout the discussion, not with a view to weighing its religious truth claims but rather with a view to making capital out of its potential explanatory power for interpreting and understanding how and why Bach's music is put together the way that it is. From this context, Bach's setting of the Latin texts of the Ordinary of the Mass appears, against some wide- spread modern claims, to be neither "universal" nor "Roman Cath- olic." Bach's Mass in B Minor evidently reflects and projects Lutheran patterns of thought with which attentive Catholics would have seri- ously and markedly disagreed, and the work evidently never reflects and projects Catholic patterns of thought, or anything at all, with which Bach's fellow orthodox Lutherans would have disagreed. Par- adoxically, perhaps the more our reception of Bach is historically informed and the more we moderns-Lutherans and non- Lutherans, alike-receive his work as "other" (not as "ecumenical," or "universal," and the like), the more powerfully and meaningfully his art can actually speak to us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyse how Communion as a religious ritual is perceived in rapidly changing circumstances. As a case study, we examine the views of Finnish Lutheran ministers and parishioners regarding online Communion and use empirical data (N = 333) collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of focusing on the pandemic period per se, we treat Communion as a religious ritual that is under renegotiation during a time of change. We ask whether there are differences in the stances of pastors and lay people, and in what ways do similarities and differences occur among the respondents. We identified two main stances towards online Communion – preservers and transformers. For preservers, adherence to canonized ritual was most important, whereas transformers were keen to create new ritual practices and consider ritual objects anew. However, the majority of respondents held quite a negative stance regarding online Communion. Ministers and lay respondents had similar arguments about online Communion regarding practical, church ordinal, and doctrinal perspectives, while divergent views emerged on authority and lay agency. It seems that for the vast majority, preserving a key religious ritual serves as a means of maintaining stability in unstable times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on how the Lutheran practice of interpreting texts within the context of worship shapes one's understanding of divine grace and vocation. Topics include the exploration of faith through a Lutheran lens, the influence of feminist theology, and the impact of academic and personal experiences on the author's evolving understanding of Lutheran theology and practice.

Literary and artistic sources from the era of the Thirty Years War provide vivid accounts of the destruction and desecration of churches. This essay looks beyond these highly emotive descriptions and explores the fate of churches in Electoral Saxony, one of the worst-affected areas of the Holy Roman Empire. It considers patterns of destruction and argues that the plundering and desecration of Lutheran churches by Swedish troops was especially shocking to contemporaries. After the war, the reconstruction and refurbishing of churches was a key part of recovery. Records emphasize the importance of local communal endeavours in restoring what had been lost, from whole buildings to furnishings such as altarpieces and liturgical vessels. Wartime destruction reinforced the Lutheran proclivity for well-ordered and ornate places of worship. The essay ends with a consideration of wartime commemoration, investigating how the traumas of the period registered in the material fabric of Saxony's churches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to show how the church public received the process of uncovering the past in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hungary in 2005, which is centred on the secret agent activities of those church members who collaborated with the communist-socialist system. One of the objectives of the political authorities was to eliminate, or at least weaken, the religiousness and the internal activity and social influence of the churches. The presentation and critique of the fact-finding work will focus on the testimonies of those who, as descendants of those involved, have been closely confronted with the disturbing revelations and who have seen the process of fact-finding from a particular perspective. The study points out the complexity and difficulties of fact-finding work, without losing sight of the conviction that reconciliation with the past is always justified. A unique feature of research on church collaboration is the examination from the perspective of descendants, which is the focus of this st [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally known that during the Reformation, there was no good relationship between the Protestant denominations, and rather discord and intolerance characterized the relationship between the Lutheran and Calvinist churches in particular. The same applied to the rejectionist and sometimes-persecutory attitude of the two leading Protestant doctrines towards radical tendencies. This was manifested on several levels and for different reasons. First and foremost, it was caused by theological differences, i.e. each Reformation doctrine was convinced of the sole truth of its own doctrine. These disagreements were manifested in the first joint Protestant synods and later in disputes between individual theologians, in polemical writings, but also in the denial of any unification of religions. Another important factor that influenced the bad relationship was, of course, the loss of believers. Especially the Evangelical Church, which had been established in the mid-16th century, feared that the later spreading Swiss Reformation doctrines would cause a loss of believers. However, there have been individual, local examples where different Protestant religions have been able to cooperate and ally with each other very well and profitably when mutual benefit or even existential motivation was at stake. The paper would like to outline some examples of this: the union between the Protestants and the Reformed in Zemplín County existing throughout six decades in the 17th century, the union between the Reformed Church and the Bohemian brethren concluded in 1647, and the union in the form of smooth coexistence between the Protestants and the Reformed in Košice in the first half of the 17th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Jülich-Cleve-Berg-Mark, the Reformed and Lutheran churches had been governed almost independently by synods since the 17th century. With the establishment of the Prussian western provinces in 1815, however, consistories were installed alongside, whose legal claims competed with those of the existing synods; these, however, tried tenaciously to preserve their traditional rights. Considerations that this ecclesiastical demand correlated with contemporary democratic thought and its demand for a state constitution were vehemently rejected in the Prussian West for theological reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1926, a New York Times article described the cultural and ethnic flows in south Brazil as a "Melting Pot". The report predicted that German Brazilians, tied to their ethnoracial origin, would soon be Brazilianized. The study of congregational song practices offers insight into the relationship between migration, race, culture, and ethnicity. Moreover, investigating Brazilian Lutheran singing practices helps us understand how the New York Times' prediction unfolded on the ground. This paper examines the Brazilian Lutheran hymnal Livro de Canto, published in 2017, and displays how Brazil's ethnoracial diversity is manifested and negotiated in the Lutheran context, both musically and theologically. By interviewing members of the hymnal committee and investigating how they dealt with Brazil's ethnoraciality in the context of the hymnal compilation, this paper demonstrates ways denominations and churchgoers negotiate theological, cultural, musical, and ethnoracial identities through congregational singing. More importantly, it showcases how Brazilian Lutheran church music practices inform broader social conversations around racism, nationalism, Blackness, and Brazilianness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1557, the Danish Queen Dorothea, wife of King Christian III, gave a large bridal jewel of gilt-silver with stones, enamel and pearls to the city of Copenhagen for daughters of mayors and councillors to borrow for their wedding celebrations at the town-hall. The jewel, created to be used either as a brooch or a pendant, is made of multiple components. The central pelican has a tail that had, at some stage, been extended to hold a setting with an enamelled shield plaque featuring the year 1557, the year of the gift, and also the coat-of-arms of Sachsen-Lauenburg, belonging to Dorothea and her ancestors. In 1986 the Museum of Copenhagen gained funding for scientific analysis of individual parts of the piece. Analysis of the backpanel and the scroll-work of its framing proved it to be of fine silver but other parts of the jewel are of lesser quality. This study of the bridal jewel found it to be composed of components of different materials and different standards of workmanship. It is proposed that these components were brought together, probably in 1557, and that the frame and back-panel could have originated from a small pax/reliquary. The other parts may be reused from items in the queen's jewellery box or outdated costume jewellery. This paper presents the historical background to the creation of this jewel, as several issues seem relevant to the royal couple's situation and interests: Christian had come to power after a civil war, forcing the entire state to convert from Catholicism to Lutheranism. He and Dorothea had for several years to 'make ends meet' and present an exemplary Lutheran face while maintaining royal dignity. Dorothea is known to have re-used parts of her coronation crown in a hat ornament for her husband, so it would not be surprising that she re-used other items to create this jewel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It can be debated whether a Lutheran identity is still relevant in the midst of ecumenical development in (South) Africa, with special reference to theological education and Christian education. The Lutheran Church is a unique body within the ecumenical family as it contributes to work on the mission of God. Theological education and Christian education are educational centres which aim to promote social justice towards community development. These two educational centres are branches of the Lutheran Church. Taking into account the fact that theological education and Christian education were introduced by European and American missionaries with various church traditions in (South) Africa as part of community development, the purpose of this article is to discuss the impact of Lutheran theological education and Christian education, to demonstrate their contribution in the church, and call for their decolonisation and contextualisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys and examines the translations into English of Luther's works during the early modern period. Certain themes emerge, with anti-Catholicism, devotion, and consolation particularly noted as safe and unobjectionable Lutheran topics for English audiences. English reformers chose to integrate certain divines from the European mainland at certain points, with Luther playing key roles. The reign of Elizabeth (1558–1603) was a highpoint for English translations of Luther, and these coincided with other efforts by some in England as well as Germany to emphasize unity among Protestants while downplaying divisions. A flexible and contingent deployment of Luther in English continued into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when developments such as the Civil Wars, the Restoration, and German immigration provided moments of relevance for Luther. The article draws on and points to the considerable scholarship that has reshaped English Reformation studies over the past few decades, and it offers reflections on how the particularity of early modern England can be seen in relation to the heterogeneity of Reformation Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes up Robert Jenson's theology of culture. According to Jenson, the church is a heavenly culture of its own alongside various worldly cultures. The church, therefore, presents a rival agenda for human social life conformed to a distinct Christian ethics and polity. Jenson's brand of ecumenical ecclesiology has also been leveraged against the challenge of modern secularity. However, this article contends that Jenson's ecumenical vision overinflates the doctrine of the church by assigning culture to it. Jenson's ecclesiology risks the particularity of the various cultures, languages, and contexts in which the gospel is proclaimed. To redistribute the contents of ecumenical ecclesiology—and its theology of culture—into the doctrine of creation, this article culminates with an examination of Martin Luther's theology and that of the Lutheran Confessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early eighteenth century, the term "Lutheran Orthodoxy" has been used to discredit inaccurately the theological practice of Lutheran theologians in the seventeenth century as a sterile, rigid theological phenomenon. This term has largely been replaced by scholars in the last seventy-five years. However, a single term has not emerged that not only embraces the rich and lively theological developments of the Wittenberg heritage but also explores its setting in the piety, devotional literature, social and political settings that defined what "Lutheran" meant from 1580 into the mid-eighteenth century. This article supports the increasingly frequent general term "early modern" to embrace the larger picture of those who claimed to be Lutheran. The article calls for focused research into the various aspects of the theological developments: flourishing devotional writing of hymns, prayerbooks, and other genre; geographical spread, practices of the faith in daily life; ecclesiastical polity; and relationships to political and social trends in this period. Such micro-studies will provide material for drawing a more accurate picture of the Wittenberg heritage between Reformation and Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the nonprofit project "The 1838 Black Metropolis," which aims to educate the public about Philadelphia's Black history before the Civil War. Topics include the historical context of Black Philadelphians in 1838, the contributions of Rev. Jehu Jones and St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the efforts of historians Morgan Lloyd and Michiko Quinones in preserving and sharing this history.

The topic of this article is religious materiality in a Finnish, Lutheran setting. Reflecting on the altar cross of the Luther Church Helsinki - and more specifically the elevated role the cross played in the re-opening of the church in 2016 - the article supports the argument of recent scholars that Protestant engagement with materiality is not unambiguously negative but rather ambivalent. Using James Bielo's concept of "legitimizing frames" - i.e. boundaries or landmarks within which Protestants feel safe enough to deal with things and objects - the article suggests a so-called heritagization frame. Objects or things used within such a frame induce in people a sense of past events and experiences - preferably events in which God has made himself known in this world. This, in turn, enables people'sengagement with the objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines what it meant to be Lutheran in the early modern Middle East. Its point of departure is a letter in which Stephan Gerlach, a sixteenth-century Lutheran chaplain to the imperial ambassador in Istanbul, asked his superiors about the type of behaviour that befitted him as a Lutheran. Was he allowed to wear a Turkish turban to see mosques and learn about Islam? Was it permissible for him in exceptional circumstances to accept communion under both kinds from a Roman Catholic monk? Was he allowed to postpone the Sunday sermon to attend Greek Orthodox ceremonies? Reconstructing how sixteenth-century Lutherans who had business in the early modern Middle East tried to resolve such issues not only affords new insights into the Lutheran experience in the Ottoman Empire; it also raises a set of fundamental questions about late sixteenth-century Lutheranism itself. Did Lutherans in this period develop forms of religious accommodation similar to those of early modern Catholics? Did travel in the Eastern Mediterranean demand a more flexible and more fluid form of Lutheranism? Could one even adhere to Lutheranism's core principles so far away from the place where the movement had first taken root? Through an examination of various Lutheran treatises and travelogues, I show that sixteenth-century Lutheranism did not develop an official policy of accommodation. Instead, Lutheran responses to questions about accommodation, (dis)simulation and conformity were often makeshift and idiosyncratic, because Lutheranism formulated little to no official guidance on the movement as a lived religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Young, Restless, Reformed" movement has sought to establish itself upon reformational foundations rooted within the sixteenth century. The new movement's undertaking, however, has virtually ignored the differences between its own adherence to "limited atonement" and the developed theology of Martin Luther. Even on an academic level, the legacy of gratia universalis ensconced within confessional Lutheranism has been largely lost to the Reformed imagination. This article focuses upon relevant materials in Luther's Lectures on Galatians (1531/1535) and his Sermon on John 1:29 (1537), as well as the pertinent statements found within early Lutheran confessions. What emerges is a Lutheran tradition that espoused both "unconditional election" and a robust form of "unlimited atonement," a divine provision of redemption and satisfaction for all. In Lutheran theology, this provision in Christ extra nos serves as an objective foundation for confident faith. As contemporary Reformed scholars increasingly delve into the diversity of the Reformed tradition within early modernity, the distinctive Lutheran voice is another legacy worth remembering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philip Sidney's third visit to the Continent was prompted by a new geopolitical situation: renewed revolt in the Netherlands against Spain, and constant religious civil wars in France, where in 1576 the Guise clan organised a national Catholic League which attempted to recruit also the governments of neighboring nations. This led Queen Elizabeth and her advisers to resurrect an old plan for a countervailing Protestant League; and it was to sound out princes of the Empire about this that Philip, son of a Vice-Roy and thus officially a prince, was sent over, ostensibly to congratulate the new Emperor Rudolf II. The plan fell foul of the increasing hostility between Lutheran and Reformed churches and princes, mostly concerning the doctrine of the Eucharist; and Sidney returned empty-handed though much-praised for his diplomatic handling of a difficult assignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the common priesthood or priesthood of all believers emerged from a narrow German Lutheran context and became "Americanized" in the nineteenth century. References to the common priesthood in any of its variations were seldom in early America, and the article traces how Americans in the mid-nineteenth century, especially the church historian Philip Schaff, drew on new understandings of the common priesthood in nineteenth-century Germany propagated by August Neander, among others, and applied it to the American republican context. By the end of the nineteenth century, it had gained wide currency among Protestants in America and would become a key element of American Protestant self-understanding. Lutherans drew on it as well, but many remained ambivalent about broader claims, especially as it might impinge on the authority of the ordained office. In the formulation "the priesthood of all believers," the common priesthood continues to resonate in the twentieth century among a diverse range of American denominations from peace church Quakers to conservative Evangelicals, although interpretations of it continue to vary widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2024 marks the five hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Lutheran hymnal. During the winter of 1523/24 Luther and his colleagues in Wittenberg began expressing their theology in poetry and music. Like contemporary news ballads the early Lutheran hymns were first circulated from Wittenberg on single printed sheets, which were reprinted by printers in other towns and cities. One of them, Jobst Gutknecht of Nuremberg, reprinted a collection of eight of the early Wittenberg hymns, thus creating the first Lutheran hymnal, the Achtliederbuch (Eight Song Book). Later the same year, 1524, two different hymnals with similar contents were published in Erfurt. Like Gutknecht's Achtliederbuch the twenty-five hymns they contain were reprinted from single sheet Wittenberg broadsides. Towards the end of 1524 a set of part-books were published in Wittenberg with Walter's polyphonic settings of hymns mostly by Luther, who also provided a preface. Luther's close connection to the project has accorded the collection a kind of foundational status as the primary Wittenberg hymnal of 1524. However, there is evidence–explored in this article–that there must have a been a basic Wittenberg collection of thirty-two primary hymns that pre-date both Walter's part-books for choirs, and the 1524 hymnal specifically issued for the Wittenberg congregations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broadly defined as adherence to teachings of Christian Wolff (1679–1754), Wolffianism characterized much of the mainstream of German academic philosophy for at least half the eighteenth century. German Pietism, by contrast, defined in its narrowest sense as a late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century movement for the renewal of the Lutheran Churches of the Holy Roman Empire, has long figured in the history of German "Enlightenment" philosophy as Wolffianism's anti-philosophical, religious foil. The conventional portrait of Wolffianism and Pietism as antithetical to one another, which has long structured the historiography of eighteenth-century German philosophy, is by no means implausible, but it has been undermined over the past several decades by a significant and growing body of new research. This essay offers a panoramic survey and critical assessment of the state of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that the image of Luther cutting his mystical roots when he became a reformer draws more from a concept of orthodox or even liberal Lutheranism than from Luther himself. It shows that Luther and Karlstadt did not divide about the question of following mysticism or not, but about the way mysticism was shaped theologically. For Luther, after his debate with Karlstadt, mysticism was always based on the Word. He also developed a sacramental mysticism, with the Eucharist at its core. One might say, thus, that Luther's mysticism shaped the central aspects of Lutheran ecclesiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the leading institution in charge of built heritage protection in Romania after 1952, the Directorate of Historical Monuments (DHM) took essential steps in funding, designing, and conducting various conservation works on sites endangered by earthquakes, looting, improper use, or defective historic restorations. Partially demolished by the local community in the previous centuries and seriously affected by neglect, the Romanesque Lutheran church in Gârbova, Alba County, was in the 1960s on the verge of collapse. After a thorough cause analysis, the DHM managed to prevent disaster by undertaking a rescue intervention in line with the international trends of the time. Thus, the site became one of the first DHM projects to design the preservation of a church in a state of ruin rather than its complete reconstruction. Part of our more extensive research on Transylvanian heritage conservation during the Communist regime of the 20th century and based on previously unpublished information found in the archives of the National Heritage Institute, our study aims at showing that despite DHM’s best intentions, the church lost the chance to be more than a romantic ruin to these days. By rigidly applying the international restoration principles, the Directorate disregarded the parishioners’ will, even though this was one of the very few examples where the owner was still interested in the monument and even suggested its adaptive reuse as a funerary chapel due to its location in the village graveyard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]