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Bettina Hitzer, Monique Scheer, Unholy Feelings: Questioning Evangelical Emotions in Wilhelmine Germany , German History, Volume 32, Issue 3, September 2014, Pages 371–392, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghu061
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Abstract
To say that Protestantism has ‘influenced’ a restrained middle-class emotional culture in Germany, as is frequently claimed, glosses over the complexity of debates about appropriate emotionality. Even at the close of the nineteenth century, the question of religious feelings in particular had not been definitively settled within Protestant circles. In fact, the controversy over the appropriate emotionality of mainline Protestantism had reached a highpoint around this time, as processes of secularization led many Protestants to believe that their church was in the midst of an existential crisis. In the dispute over the so-called Fellowship Movement ( Gemeinschaftsbewegung ), which saw itself as the spearhead of a reform movement within the church, various internal factions wrestled over the self-conception of Protestantism in the light of these challenges. One fundamental—but often overlooked—point of contention was the role of emotions in religious practice. The article investigates this debate, which took place predominantly in the years between 1880 and 1910 in various reactions to travelling evangelical preachers, the activities of the Salvation Army and the rise of Pentecostalism, seeking to understand what place was allocated to religious feelings in German Protestantism during this discussion and why. What norms were negotiated, and what conception of emotion, body and soul (or spirit) formed the background to that process of negotiation?
