This chapter provides an overview of the book’s argument. It first shows how the association of Protestantism with modern freedom and German philosophy was an artifact of political and social debates in the eighteenth century, a German version of Butterfield’s famous concept of the “Whig” idea of history. It next explores the evolution of the term “Protestant” from the early days of the Reformation to the eighteenth century, concluding with the diversity of German Protestantism on the eve of the 1717 Reformation anniversary. Third, the Introduction discusses the intellectual contexts in which Protestantism and the Reformation were redefined, providing working definitions for such terms as "religion," "philosophy," "theology," and the "Protestant public sphere." Particular attention is paid to disputes over the boundaries of philosophy and religion in the context of Pietism, Wolffian philosophy, and eclecticism. Finally, the Introduction situates the book in the scholarly contexts of Enlightenment historiography, early modern European history and Church history, and the history of modern philosophy.

The chapter presents the two late religio-political works of Pufendorf in his role as lay theologian Pufendorf, Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion in Reference to Civil Society (1687), and The Divine Feudal Law; or, Covenants with Mankind (1695). Both tracts consider the changes in religion and politics since the revocation of the tolerance edict of Nantes in 1685 and the acceptance of Huguenots in Protestant Brandenburg-Prussia. Pufendorf’s defence of Protestant positions and severe criticism of French expansionism and Papal supremacy are explained with reference to the respective political and ecclesial theological contexts that had developed since around 1600 (1). Pufendorf’s first tract argues for political toleration of more than one Christian confession and public worship in the state. This is possible because political sovereignty, based on natural law, and religious autonomy, based on the purely religious ends of churches, can and should coexist (2). The biblical reasoning behind this is intensified in the second tract, which argues for mutual appreciation and reconciliation of the Lutheran and Reformed (Calvinist) confessions. Here Pufendorf integrates his concept of natural law into a new, strictly biblical covenantal theology correlating God’s promises and men’s free obedience (3).

In the seventeenth century, every state in Europe had an official Church, whose clergy worked with secular authorities to enforce morality and confessional unity. Authorities imprisoned and banished religious dissidents, and tried and executed witches, who were increasingly understood as enemies of God. Many people came to feel that state Churches were hollow or overly formal, however, and instead turned to groups that encouraged more personal forms of devotion and individual piety. This interiorization of religion occurred among Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians, and also among Jews and Muslims. In the eighteenth century, educated elites became increasingly secular, but, for most Europeans, religious devotion, expressed through individual actions such as prayer or communal activities such as worship services, remained strong. Movements such as Methodism, Jansenism, pietism, and Hasidism made religion more rather than less important in many people’s lives. The religious landscape of Europe was more diverse by the end of the eighteenth century than it had been two hundred years earlier, however. Within many denominations there was a wide spectrum of belief and practice, from those who attended services only for holidays and family events to those for whom faith shaped every activity.

One of the largest branches of Protestantism, Lutherans have been in North America for more than 400 years. Lutheranism was established on this continent initially by immigrants from the historically Lutheran areas in Europe, notably Germany, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe. More recent Lutheran immigrants have come from younger Lutheran churches in Asia and Africa. In the United States, these immigrants formed congregations and denominations mainly based on language and ethnicity, although they were also divided by theological and religious differences. As these immigrant communities acculturated to the use of English and to the American religious culture, they began a long process of denominational consolidation, as well as moving into the mainstream of national life. American Lutherans still dominate a number of regions of the United States, maintain a quality system of educational institutions and social service agencies, and play a leadership role among Lutherans around the world.

Brethren and Mennonites are diverse and complex bodies with long interconnected histories. Some historians have argued that religious radicals, such as Mennonites and Brethren, were the essential shapers of the distinctive contours of American Christianity. The Brethren–Mennonite sibling rivalry has often been intense. But during times of stress, such as war, they have worked together, often along with Quakers. In America, they have both been creators and products of a culture that has occasionally persecuted them but has more often romanticized and idealized their attempts to serve Christ and their neighbors.

Evangelical revivalism was the first purely American worship tradition and has been the single largest Protestant movement in America since the 1700s. Liturgical practices that developed during the early American evangelical revival period have affected the worship piety of nearly every American Protestant tradition and movement since, and the revivalist worship piety of evangelicalism has by and large remained consistent and prevalent in American Protestantism to the current day. The chapter provides a broad survey of the worship customs and mindsets that developed in America over the past 300 years through the agency of the evangelical revival movement, identifying significant factors that influenced American evangelical worship practice and piety.

The moral agent’s response to radical evil is a moral conversion or change of heart, inverting the order of incentives in the maxim of evil and giving priority to the moral incentive. Kant regards the moral incentive as distinctive, different from all others. Kant often refers to it as “duty,” but in the reception of Kant, this is often misunderstood as unemotional coldness of heart. Giving priority to the moral incentive for Kant is rather “goodness of heart,” involving caring for others and a proper balance between love and respect for them. Goodness of heart is also linked to virtuous nonmoral incentives. Also frequently misunderstood is how Kant understands acting from an incentive. Acting from an incentive, whether the moral one or a nonmoral one, is not a property of individual acts. Rather, it is a property of an agent’s disposition or character. Virtus noumenon is the character of a person who has undergone the change of heart. This manifests itself only as virtus phaenomenon, involving empirical incentives and habitual behavior, which may be a mere appearance of virtue but is also the only possible manifestation of true virtue. “Acting from duty” means something different in the Groundwork from what it means in later works, where it is related to the morality (not the mere legality) of actions and to the duty to act from duty. The change of heart is not a datable event in a person’s life but depends on the striving for moral progress, which can be known only by God who sees the entire course of a person’s life.

Kant’s concept of religion is recognizing all duties as divine commands. The concept of God employed in religion is an analogical or symbolic concept. Kant’s relation to Christianity was characterized by a tension between Pietism and Enlightenment rationalism. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason aims to test a hypothesis: that there is such a thing as a religion of pure reason and that its relation to revealed (Christian) religion need not be one of conflict but can and should be harmonious. The publication of Kant’s book involved conflict with the Prussian authorities, in which Kant adopted a position of principled obedience while resisting unjust repression and conforming to the rule of law.

Chapter 19 analyses the approaches to justification found within the movement known as ‘Pietism’, which is generally regarded as a reaction against the excessive cerebralism of the theology of Lutheran Orthodoxy. Pietism developed a focus on a ‘living faith’ and the ‘new birth’, which countered a more intellectual and institutionalised account of the Christian faith dominant in German Lutheranism in the late seventeenth century. Pietist theologians and pastors – such as Philipp Jakob Spener – were suspicious of the Lutheran notion of ‘imputed righteousness’, which they considered as being destructive of piety. These concerns were developed in the writings of both John Wesley and Charles Wesley, who urged the importance of moving beyond purely forensic approaches to justification. John Wesley argued that the notion of ‘the imputed righteousness of Christ’ was neither Scriptural nor necessary, and was damaging to personal holiness. For Wesley, the ‘plain scriptural notion of justification’ is pardon or the forgiveness of sins.

This chapter explores a crucial transition in the understanding of infinity during the eighteenth century. Originally a divine attribute, against which the finite is reduced to insignificance (e.g., in Baroque poetry), the infinite becomes a feature to be embraced within the finite world itself. Together with developments in science and mathematics (e.g., the invention of the calculus at the end of the seventeenth century), other cultural spheres played a crucial role in normalizing the ‘anomaly’ (T. S. Kuhn) of the infinite. Chief among them were ‘physico-theology’ and religiously inflected poetry (especially Heinrich Brockes), which celebrated the divine within the grandest and minutest aspects of creation, and Pietism, which explored feelings of the sublime in nature and the soul (especially Friedrich Klopstock).