Pietism and Community
From November 2 to 4, 2006 the Emory University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Candler School of Theology at the Emory University, Atlanta, GA organised an international inter-disciplinary conference on the Pietist movement within the Protestant churches of the 17th to 19th centuries. The conference was the third of a series of conferences on the topic and part of a larger initiative on "Cultural History of Pietism and Revivalism" sponsored by the Huizinga Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands. According to the title "Pietism and Community in Europe and North America 1650–1850" the contributions focussed very much on transatlantic aspects and came from a wide range of academic disciplines. Contributors were invited from the U.S., Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Germany. For details see: www.candler.emory.edu/events/pietism/
My paper dealt with "Israel in the Church and the Church in Israel: the Formation of Jewish Christian Communities as a Proselytising Strategy within and outside the German Pietist Mission to the Jews." This comparative study of such community-building projects of the Halle Institutum Judaicum, of the Brüdergemeine (Moravian Church) and of a Jewish crypto- Christian sect, all three of the 18th century, drew upon the results of my research on that crypto-Christian sect in 2004 and my transcription of a part of the manuscripts of the Halle missionaries’ itineraries from 1730/31 in 2005 and 2006. Also here the transatlantic perspective was of considerable importance: the German actors of the Jewish mission planned to found proselytes’ colonies in the New World and the above-mentioned crypto-Christian sect propagated an overseas settlement of the expelled Jews from West Prussia after the First Polish Division of 1772.
The papers will be published in a conference volume in 2007.