Religion
The Pennsylvania Dutch are a people of various religious affiliations, most of them Lutheran or Reformed, but many Anabaptists as well. Henry Muhlenberg (1711–1787) founded the Lutheran Church in America. He organized the Ministerium of Pennsylvania in 1748, set out the a standard organizational format for new churches, and helped shape Lutheran liturgy.
Muhlenberg had been sent by the Lutheran bishops in Germany and he always insisted on strict conformity to Lutheran dogma. Muhlenberg's view of church unity was in direct opposition to Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf's Moravian approach with its goal of uniting various Pennsylvania German religious groups under a less rigid "Congregation of God in the Spirit." The differences between the two approaches led to permanent impasse between Lutherans and Moravians, especially after a December 1742 meeting in Philadelphia.
Read more about this topic: Pennsylvania Dutch
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“The religion of England is part of good-breeding. When you see on the continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassadors chapel and put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed hat, you cannot help feeling how much national pride prays with him, and the religion of a gentleman.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Those to whom God has imparted religion by feeling of the heart are very fortunate and are rightly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give it by feeling of the heartwithout which faith is only human and useless for salvation.”
—Blaise Pascal (16231662)
“What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what
Is a theatre? are they two and not one? can they exist separate?
Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion,
O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!”
—William Blake (17571827)