Epilogue - Enlightenment’s Reformation, 1830–1929

Summary

The Epilogue argues why it matters that we understand how the first formulation of a Reformation modernization theory emerged in Enlightenment public debate in order to understand the ways in which nineteenth-century thinkers actively confronted or recast an Enlightenment intellectual construct. The Epilogue shows how, by the end of the nineteenth century, the emphasis on the epochal turning point to modernity had slowly shifted from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. The Epilogue looks at four perspectives of German thinking about the Reformation and Protestantism: history, religion, philosophy, and culture (including the Kulturkampf and Kulturprotestantismus) and points to the ways forward for German thinking about both the Reformation and the Enlightenment after the Second World War.