Piety and Politics

Piety and Politics Piety and Politics Religion and the Rise of Absolutism in England, Wiirttemberg and Prussia MARY FULBROOK Lecturer in German History, University College, London CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge London New York New Rochelle Melbourne Sydney Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP 32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, USA 296 Beaconsfield Parade, Middle Park, Melbourne 3206, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1983 First published 1983 Library of Congress catalogue card number: 83-5316 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Fulbrook, Mary Piety and politics. 1. Protestantism 2. Great Britain - Politics and government - 1603-1714 3. Great Britain - Politics and government - 1714-1760 4. Germany - Politics and government - 1517-1648 5. Germany - Politics and government - 1648-1789 I. Title 280'.4'0942 BX4838 ISBN 0 521 25612 7 hard covers ISBN 0 521 27633 0 paperback Transferred to digital printing 2003 CE Contents Preface vii 1 Introduction: cases and controversies 1 2 In pursuit of further reformation 19 3 State and society: the attempts at absolutism 45 4 The established church and toleration 76 5 From reform to revolution: Puritanism in England 102 6 From reform to retreat: Pietism in Wurttemberg 130 7 From reform to state religion: Pietism in Prussia 153 8 Conclusions and implications 174 Bibliography 190 Index 111 Preface The relationship of Protestant religious movements to social and political changes in early modern Europe has long intrigued historians and socio- logists. Did religious ideas have an independent influence on the course of social and political development, or were they rather dependent on deeper, underlying socioeconomic changes? Marx, Weber, Tawney, and many others have sought to interpret the complex interrelationships among elements of cultural, political and socioeconomic changes in a formative period for the modern world. In the context of continuing historical and theoretical controversies, this book undertakes a systematic comparative-historical analysis of religion and politics in three carefully selected cases. In England, Wiirt- temberg, and Prussia, at the times when the rulers were attempting to introduce the apparatus of absolutist rule, there were very similar religious movements for the further reform of the Protestant state churches: the Puritan and Pietist movements. Yet, while sharing similar religious aims and ethos, Puritans and Pietists developed very different attitudes and activities in relation to would-be absolutist rule in each case. These ranged from the activism and anti-absolutism of English Puritans, through the passive anti-absolutism of Pietists in Wurttemberg, to the activism and support of absolutism of the Prussian Pietists. Such surpris- ingly different patterns of political contribution to the success or failure of absolutism - with its fundamental historical consequences - represent promising terrain for the generation and testing of a coherent explana- tion. In the course of examining these three cases, it became clear that approaches focussing on inherent characteristics of a religious movement, whether idealist or materialist in emphasis, were essentially inade- quate. Neither religious ideas, nor social class bases, appeared to account for the different political stances developed by the Puritan and Pietist movements. Instead, it was only by examining the different sociopolitical environments in which Puritans and Pietists sought to establish the Kingdom of God upon earth that the different patterns of political attitude and alliance became comprehensible. There was a complex interplay of historically given aspirations and capacities, in the context of differing structural opportunities and constraints, which in combination explain the different paths of political development. vn viii Piety and politics This work is one of historical sociology. Combining a structural analysis with an account of agency, it seeks to cut across the boundaries of the institutionally separated disciplines of history and sociology, in the inter- ests of gaining a more adequate understanding of the patterns of the past as they appear to us today. As well as proposing a particular solution to a specific historical problem, the book is intended to contribute towards a more adequate theoretical approach to the study of ideas and sociopolitical change. In an earlier incarnation, the argument was presented as a doctoral dissertation at Harvard University. I would like to thank my thesis advisers for their stimulation and advice: Daniel Bell, Theda Skocpol, and Ann Swidler. Hartmut Lehmann also provided help on Pietists at a very early stage. During the lengthy process of revising and rewriting the thesis into its present form, a number of individuals have been particularly helpful. I am most grateful to John Morrill for his challenging scepticism about the entire enterprise, combined with some excellent historical advice; and to Christopher Hill for his generous support of the project. Geoffrey Hawthorn, John Morrill, and Valerie Pearl very kindly took the trouble to read through the entire draft of the book, and made comments which helped me to reduce the historical inaccuracies and to clarify the presentation of the argument. Theda Skocpol assuaged my doubts about the concluding chapter, and was a constant source of stimulus and encouragement for the writing of both thesis and book. None of these, of course, bears any responsibility for the inadequacies which remain. The Fellowship of New Hall, Cambridge, where my rewriting was carried out, provided a congenial and lively atmosphere in which to work. My husband, Julian, sustained my endeavours through- out. The work was supported by Harvard graduate scholarships; by a Harvard Center for European Studies Krupp Fellowship, held at the London School of Economics; and by a Lady Margaret Research Fellow- ship at New Hall, Cambridge. A small grant from the LSE staff research fund enabled me to spend some time working at Tubingen University Library. I am grateful not only for the financial support of these institu- tions, but also for the academic communities and environments which make work such as this both possible and pleasurable. London MARY FULBROOK September 1982 1 Introduction: cases and controversies In seeking to understand the patterns of the past, we are frequently confronted with questions of religion. Men and women assess the inequities of this world in the light of transcendent standards, and strive to bring about a better society. Sometimes religious movements have seemed merely expressive of intolerable conditions: momentary outbursts of inefficacious revolt. Sometimes they have appeared to render the intolerable more bearable: to interpret present sufferings in ways which make it possible to continue living with them. And sometimes religious movements have appeared to act as autonomous creative forces, with a capacity to transform the nature of the societies in which they arose. One such movement, which has been credited with a powerful role in the making of the 'modern world', is English Puritanism. In the century prior to the 'Puritan Revolution', a set of religious ideas and orientations arose which has been linked, in a variety of ways, with aspects of innovation in early modern Europe: with the beginnings of modern rational capitalism, science, democratic liberalism, individualism.1 This movement has been seen, in particular, as playing a crucial part in the overthrow of attempts at absolutist rule in England, thus laying the foundations of the parliamentary state in which capitalist and industrial development could flourish. Interpretations of the part played by Puritan- ism vary, from those allowing it an independent causal role, to those representing it as a dependent factor, reflecting more basic underlying socioeconomic conditions. A movement inherently similar to Puritanism, considered in terms of its religious ethos and aspirations, arose also under conditions of attempted 1 There is a vast literature on Puritanism and its supposed historical consequences. The classics include: Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1930, transl. T. Parsons); R.K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England (New York: Howard Fertig, 1970; orig. 1938); R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1938); and the controversies ensuing. In relation to the topic of this study, the various works of Christopher Hill are particularly relevant, as are: Michael Walzer, The Revolu- tion of the Saints (New York: Atheneum, 1974) and Walzer, 'Puritanism as a Revolution- ary Ideology' in S.N. Eisenstadt (ed.), The Protestant Ethic and Modernization (New York: Basic Books, 1968); and for a guide to approaches to the 'Puritan Revolution' from the seventeenth century onwards, see generally R.C. Richardson, The Debate on the English Revolution (London: Methuen, 1977). 1 2 Piety and politics absolutist rule in certain continental European states. This was Pietism: a variant, like Puritanism, of what may be termed a 'precisionist' religious orientation. Pietism too has been credited with the paternity of various aspects of the 'modern world'.2 Yet it played a very different part in the development of the absolutist states in which it arose. In one state, Wurttemberg, Pietists generally shared the parliamentary

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