Ministerium

Spiritual Ministry (also: Evangelical Ministry ) is an expression of German law and church history. It called no ministry in the modern sense, but the overall mission of the clergy in an urban and particularly rich urban Evangelical Lutheran Church beings, especially before 1918.

Origin and significance ( before 1918 )

The Spiritual Ministry was formed in the wake of the Reformation church orders as a self -regulatory body of the clergy and as a counterweight to the sovereign government of the Church Council.

The chosen Senior at the top of the clergy woke Ministry about the fact that the advice and participation rights of the clergy, something in the publication of agendas and hymnals and matters of public morality ( church discipline ), remained preserved. According to the Constitution of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hamburg state of 1870 represented the Ministry, ie the clergy, as a body, the Church's Magisterium and theological science.

It provided for regulating the education and employment of the clergy and for their training. There entertained in some cities, such as Greifswald and Erfurt, own libraries. To supply the widows and orphans of the clergy, it maintained its own pension funds.

Due to the advent of Synodalverfassungen and the end of sovereign church government, the clergy lost ministries in importance.

Today the total Covenant of pastors in the church district of Lübeck carries this historic name.

Ministry Tripolitanum

Of particular importance in the emergence of a confessionalisation had since 1535, the Ministry Tripolitanum, the merger of the ministries of clergy Lübeck, Hamburg and Lüneburg. It initially caused on the initiative of the Hamburg Superintendent John Aepinus 1548 for a common understanding of the three cities against the Augsburg Interim, had a decisive influence on the occurrence of the Formula of Concord and secured the religious unity of the three cities by the end of the 17th century.

Department of Pennsylvania

Main article: Ministry of Pennsylvania

Following the example of the German clergy Ministries was founded in 1748 under the direction of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg in Philadelphia pastors of the United municipalities, the Ministry of Pennsylvania as the first Lutheran church body on North American soil.

The Spiritual Ministry in the imperial church constitution in 1933

The Constitution of the German Evangelical Church on 11 July 1933, the name for a completely different body: This Spiritual Ministry to prepare the new Reich Bishop stand to the side and forward in communion with him the imperial church.

Article 7 provides that: The Spiritual Ministry is called to lead under the leadership of the German Reich Bishop Evangelical Church and to legislate. The panel should consist of three theologians and jurists. The Reich Bishop should be able to appoint the members free, for the theologians, however, take into account the living in the German Evangelical Church Bekenntnisgepräge. On the edge of the National Synod in Wittenberg, Ludwig Müller appointed on 27 September 1933, the theologian Simon Schoeffel, Joachim Hossenfelder, Otto Weber and the lawyers Friedrich Werner as members of the clergy ministry.

The events of the church struggle the spiritual ministry was never really effective; in March 1934, lost his by Regulation church leadership functions.