Pietism and German inter-confessional nationalism

Beginning in the early nineteenth century, spokesmen for German nationalism invoked confessional reconciliation as a precondition for future unification. While the confessional divide between Catholics and Protestants seemed to hinder German unity, advocating ecumenical Christianity appeared to advance national consolidation. The article suggests that this endorsement of ecumenism was part of a tradition of confessional conciliation manifested in German Pietism since the seventeenth century. Early German Pietists sought ecumenical Christianity not merely in an eschatological sense, but also in a specific historical one. Nineteenth-century neo-Pietists nationalized and politicized these earlier ideas of interconfessional reconciliation.