Schwenkfelder Church

The pivot Fields Church is a Protestant church in the United States, which goes back to the Silesian reformer Kaspar Schwenckfeld. Its beginnings, the Church in the Radical Reformation of Schwenkfeldians in the 16th century in Central Europe.

History

Already in the 16th century were formed in Silesia and southern Germany first schwenkfeldianische districts and municipalities. However, the Thirty Years' War led to the end of the Schwenkfeldians in southern Germany. Alone in parts of Silesia and especially in Lower Silesia are still communities of Schwenkfeldians could hold. This consisted, among other contacts with the Anabaptists and later the Quakers. Letter contacts there were also with the Lutheran Pietists Philipp Jakob Spener. Nevertheless, the Silesian Schwenkfeldians were under increasing pressure from the Austrian authorities, who considered the pivot fields as heretics. Under Charles VI. and the Jesuits commissioned by him finally found the violent recatholicization its peak. Several petitions to the court of Vienna with a request for religious tolerance could not change this. Between 1725 and 1736 about 500 fled Silesian pivot fields property of the founder of the Moravian Church of Zinzendorf in Herrnhut and Berthelsdorf in the Saxon Upper Lusatia. About 180 of them went in April 1734 from here on Altona and Haarlem to Rotterdam to emigrate from there to the English ship St. Andrew on the southern English Plymouth to Pennsylvania. In Altona and Haarlem they found material and financial support in the Mennonite family van and van der Smissen Buyssant. The family van der Smissen took the refugees, for example, for a few days, and then took on the cost of the additional crossing from Altona to Haarlem. In September 1734 the group finally reached Pennsylvania. In gratitude for their liberation from religious oppression and the safe arrival of the group agreed on keeping 24 September in the future as a memorial in remembrance. Even today, September 24 is celebrated as part of the collective memory of Schwenkfeldians as Gedaechtnisz - day with a church service, speeches and songs. As with the arrival of the emigrants, participants will receive after the service still traditional apple butter. Focused Schwenkfeldians the first in the city of Philadelphia, they settled in the following years, especially northwest of Philadelphia.

After her immigration the Schwenkfeldians were occasionally in close contact with the Quakers, with whom they felt connected in the common emphasis on Christian spirituality. Also, there was a common commitment to the rights of indigenous Indians. Compounds gave it to continue to the Mennonites, but was, for example, the common refusal of military service at the Schwenkfeldianern not fundamentally justified biblizistisch, but rather a consequence of the experience of violent counter-reformation in Silesia. Efforts on the part of Zinzendorf to incorporate the Schwenkfeldians in the Moravian Church, failed since the Schwenkfeldians were not willing to give up their independent religious and ethnic identity. For the purposes of the spiritualist self-understanding but no fixed Kirchenstrukuren were set up initially. It was not until 1782, the Society of swivel Felder was founded. 1789, the first schwenkfeldianische meetinghouse was built. 1885 Schwenkfeld Library was founded. In 1909 the foundation of the actual pivot Fields Church.

Within the Protestant church landscape of North America, the congregational construction oriented Schwenkfeld Church plays only a marginal role today. In 2009, it included five communities with about 2,500 members in southeastern Pennsylvania. The General Conference of the pivot fields Church is a member of the Pennsylvania Council of Churches and ecumenical ( with the exception of Central swivel Fields Church) associate member of the United Church of Christ. The church also supports interdenominational mission -oriented companies.

The remaining in Silesia Schwenkfeldians were increasingly assimilated during the 18th century, not least after the occupation of Silesia by the Prussian King Friedrich II and the appropriation by the Protestant Lutheran church. 1826 to have died in Harper Village ( Lower Silesia ) the last still open to the Schwenkfeldianern professing Silesians.