Suchergebnisse

Consideringall that is known about the place of anti-Semitism in German society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there are relatively few studies of anti-Semitism within a religious context. This is surprising given that Germany was and is more evenly divided numerically between Catholics and Protestants than almost any other large European nation, (about 60 percent Protestant to 40 percent Catholic). Most studies of anti-Semitism in the last two centuries have focused on various secular motivations. When scholars do choose to investigate religious anti-Semitism, almost all concentrate on Evangelical Lutherans or on Catholics, but not on both. Likewise, many historians consider religious anti-Semitism to be anachronistic. Yet many study the incidence of secular or modern anti-Semitism within a religious context whether institutional or popular, seldom paying equal attention to that context. Additionally, studies of anti-Semitism emphasized Protestantism and the Protestant north of Germany in particular, because, after 1870, that was where anti-Semitic political parties, movements, and groups appeared to thrive.

The revolution that began in March 1848 continues to fascinate historains, becoming a two-way lens used to examine later as well as earlier German history. It has become central to the "emplotment" of the broader historical narrative of German history. Historians commonly describe the ultimate failure of the revolution as reflecting the unhealthy and anachronistic hold of premodern society over the state in nineteenth and twentieth-century Germany and, therefore, see it as a cornerstone of theSonderwegthesis. Because the revolution is used to explain later acts in the German historical drama, it is necessary to be as clear as possible about what actually happended in 1848 and 1849.

The study examined the Black church laity's expectations of the urban minister regarding his involvement in specific social and political issues that confront inhabitants of urban areas. A survey was administered to individuals in Black churches of different protestant denominations in a Southeastern Virginia City in order to determine the degree of the laity's expectations. Specifically, the survey sought answers to the questions: Do Black church laity expect the minister to deal with socio-economic and political problems in urban areas? and, What particular urban problems do the laity expect the minister to offer leadership in facing or solving? While this study used a portion of a survey used in a national study, it focused exclusively upon the Black laity's expectations of clergy in an urban area. It also dealt only with statements that had previously clustered under three areas--Aggressive Political Leadership, Active Concern for the Oppressed and Precedence of Evangelistic Goals. Statements that constituted "Active Concern for the Oppressed" received the highest percentage of "important" responses from the laity. An impressive 78 percent of the respondents to the statements in this cluster felt that they were important in terms of their expectations of the minister. This cluster was followed by "Aggressive Political Leadership" with a mean level of importance of of 68.5 percent and "Precedence of Evangelistic Goals" with a mean level of importance of 60.25 percent. The survey responses suggest that the Black urban minister has a constituency that expects his active involvement on behalf of the oppressed as well as his providing aggressive political leadership in the urban milieu. Black laity are quite homogeneous in the expectations of the minister such that denomination and socio-economic status do not significantly affect the overall expectations of those who are constitutive of the Black church.