Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Udi Greenberg, "The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s-1970s" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Udi Greenberg, "The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s-1970s" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Reconciliation between Europe's Protestants and Catholics led to a new era of Christian collaboration.
Why did these erstwhile foes end their schism and begin to make peace?
In this riveting study, Udi Greenberg shows that ecumenism grew out of a shared desire to protect against perceived threats to Christian life.
The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s-1970s (Harvard UP, 2025) overturns conventional wisdom about this revolutionary change by showing that the cause was not growing mutual tolerance but solidarity against the threats of socialism, feminism, and liberation movements.
By working together Christians could defend their dominance in European life by maintaining and reinforcing the inequality inherent in Christian hierarchical order.
Peacemaking between the confessions was accelerated by the rise of the Nazis, when Christian denominations debated their relations to each other and to nationalism, and was further pressed by the Cold War and decolonization, when Catholic and Protestant authorities formally declared each other "brethren in faith".
Working together, Catholics and Protestants designed Europe's economic policies, regulated its sexual practices, and shaped postwar relationships with the Global South. This coalition of Christians has grown more cohesive over time as they leveraged their alliance to maintain influence across a politically fractured Europe.
Related:
Listen to the New Books Network interview with Udi Greenberg about The Weimar Century: German Emigres and the Ideological Foundation of the Cold War
Author recommended reading: The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany's Twentieth Century by Dagmar Herzog
Hosted by Meghan Cochran
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
View all episodes
By New Books Network
5
33 ratings
Reconciliation between Europe's Protestants and Catholics led to a new era of Christian collaboration.
Why did these erstwhile foes end their schism and begin to make peace?
In this riveting study, Udi Greenberg shows that ecumenism grew out of a shared desire to protect against perceived threats to Christian life.
The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s-1970s (Harvard UP, 2025) overturns conventional wisdom about this revolutionary change by showing that the cause was not growing mutual tolerance but solidarity against the threats of socialism, feminism, and liberation movements.
By working together Christians could defend their dominance in European life by maintaining and reinforcing the inequality inherent in Christian hierarchical order.
Peacemaking between the confessions was accelerated by the rise of the Nazis, when Christian denominations debated their relations to each other and to nationalism, and was further pressed by the Cold War and decolonization, when Catholic and Protestant authorities formally declared each other "brethren in faith".
Working together, Catholics and Protestants designed Europe's economic policies, regulated its sexual practices, and shaped postwar relationships with the Global South. This coalition of Christians has grown more cohesive over time as they leveraged their alliance to maintain influence across a politically fractured Europe.
Related:
Listen to the New Books Network interview with Udi Greenberg about The Weimar Century: German Emigres and the Ideological Foundation of the Cold War
Author recommended reading: The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany's Twentieth Century by Dagmar Herzog
Hosted by Meghan Cochran
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More shows like New Books in Catholic Studies
View all
The NPR Politics Podcast
25,874 Listeners
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
5,744 Listeners
Soul Search
28 Listeners
Pints With Aquinas
6,747 Listeners
New Testament Review
258 Listeners
The Counsel of Trent
2,579 Listeners
Lectures with Sarah Coakley
18 Listeners
The Rest Is History
14,679 Listeners
Catholic History Trek
58 Listeners
Vatican II In A Year
26 Listeners
What Matters Most
0 Listeners