Blackwell Reference Online

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German theologian, often called ‘the father of modern theology’. Schleiermacher gave German Protestant thought a distinctive impulse and direction for the nineteenth century, and either influenced or anticipated much in what later came to be called liberal Protestantism, both in Germany and beyond. In identifying the essence of religion as a distinctive ‘feeling’, and that of Christianity in particular as a special form and intensity of this emotion, he exemplified and considerably shaped the modern emphasis upon the inward, experiential and personalistic nature of faith. Debate and at times controversy still surround Schleiermacher, of such perennial significance are the issues he raised. The son of a Reformed chaplain in the Prussian army, Schleiermacher was educated by the Moravians and from their fervent piety and communal life received his earliest and most formative religious experience. While by his late teens he had intellectually outgrown their narrowness of outlook, he forever found their warm-hearted devotionalism congenial to his own understanding of the core of religion as the ‘pious emotions’. After study at Halle and several years of teaching and pastoral work, in 1796 Schleiermacher was appointed preacher at the Charité Hospital, Berlin. For educated society, the last decade of the century represented the climax of the Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason was being ... log in or subscribe to read full text