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
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies
View all episodes
By New Books Network
4.6
1313 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
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies
More shows like New Books in Western European Studies
View all
In Our Time
5,405 Listeners
History Extra podcast
3,182 Listeners
New Books in History
204 Listeners
New Books in Psychoanalysis
192 Listeners
New Books in Military History
161 Listeners
New Books in African American Studies
161 Listeners
New Books in Anthropology
49 Listeners
New Books in Biography
77 Listeners
New Books in Philosophy
109 Listeners
New Books in Native American Studies
103 Listeners
In Our Time: History
1,869 Listeners
The LRB Podcast
290 Listeners
The Ancient World
1,834 Listeners
New Books in American Studies
29 Listeners
New Books in Intellectual History
61 Listeners
War on the Rocks
1,083 Listeners
London Review Bookshop Podcast
127 Listeners
Dan Snow's History Hit
4,638 Listeners
The Red Line
355 Listeners
In Moscow's Shadows
352 Listeners
The Ancients
3,093 Listeners
The Rest Is History
13,075 Listeners
UnHerd with Freddie Sayers
215 Listeners
Ones and Tooze
328 Listeners
Empire
2,135 Listeners