(C2-31) On the dynamics between the de-institutionalization and the re-institutionalization of religious practice. The “(new) charismatic communities” in the field of tension between communitarian longing, individual piety, and church commitment

It has been proven empirically many times and is undisputed in sociological studies of religion that ecclesial bonds have been strongly and increasingly regressive in Western Europe since the 1960s. The shift of attention of religious research that is relevant to present times to the processes of individualisation and pluralisation of religion outside the churches, which goes hand in hand with a de-ecclesiasticalisation, is a result of this development since the 1970s. Since then the focus of the controversial debate on the religious situation is on the question whether the losses of religion from the side of the church would be balanced by an increasingly individualised spirituality outside the church and by the growing plurality in religion, thus whether the transformation of religion was the dominating trend or secularisation as such. In light of this debate, many important changes that have taken place within the (indisputably eroding) churches in Europe since the 1970s have almost fallen from view. The change, which the Catholic church in particular has undergone in the course of the Second Vatican Council with regard to its attitude towards human rights and modern democracy, was recognised from a sociological perspective of religion; and also the role of political protest movements motivated by Christian reasoning (peace and Third World Movement, ecological movement) attracted interest. It was not the directly politically motivated collectivisation within the churches that was perceived insufficient, but rather the primarily spiritually motivated collectivisation. With its theological upgrading of laity, the Second Vatican Council had provided impulses in the Catholic church to found such “spiritual communities” (attributed to the charismatic movement in the broader sense); their roots, however, reach in part back the early 20th century. On the Catholic side, among the most known movements are “Comunione e Liberazione”, the “Fokolar movement” or the “Charismatic Movement” (which is divided into various “works” and “communities”); for the Protestant church the Berneuchen Movement (Michaelsbruderschaft), the Koinonia Community or the Casteller Ring Community are to be named; among the (today) ecumenical communities, the most famous one is probably “Taizé”.

These groups are interesting for sociological studies of religion particularly because they show that processes of deinstitutionalisation (de-ecclesiasticalisation) were (and are) interwoven with processes of reinstitutionalisation or rather with the establishment of new social forms of the Christian element within the churches, but in addition to the established ecclesial organisational units (parishes, diocese/national churches, orders, monasteries). It is important to note – and a distinguishing feature to the free church pentecostal-evangelical movement to which often the borders are blurred when it comes to forms of piety – that the “spiritual communities” do not leave the “eroding institution of grace” (M. Ebertz), but on the contrary resolutely consider themselves as elements of their respective main churches within which they are collective places of spiritual assurance in view of an individual daily way of life that is embedded in belief.

This project aims at recording the active “spiritual communities” within the Catholic and Protestant church in Germany. More detailed research is to be done on a selection that covers the broad spectrum of the groups (in light of the national and international sphere of action, the spiritual, social and political orientation etc.). The selected communities will be examined according to the following factors:

• their internal organisational structure (including questions of gender and the relationship between laity and clergy/priests)
• their size and the development of the number of members (including their way of gaining new members as well as the question whether membership is formalised)
• their relationship towards the respective “mother church” (from an organisational view as well as with regard to the religious practice, such as the use and co-organisation of the respective sacramental “offer”)
• their respective self-conception as (new) Christian community in relation to the ecclesial tradition as well as to the individual spirituality and the demands on their members' religious way of live resulting from that
• their relationship towards other “spiritual communities” within their own and the respective other church as well as their connection with free church charismatic movements

The project topic promises insights in the emergence of communitarian social forms of Christianity resulting from the passionate conflict with the ecclesial tradition and its theological as well as organisational form. From an organisational perspective, they remain within the church and thus seem to break up the triad by Troeltsch of church/sect/mysticism or combine elements of all three.