Two conferences, one in Halle (Saale) and the other in Atlanta (Georgia), aim to bring together researchers interested in the Francke Foundations in Halle, the English missionary societies, and the founding of the colony of Georgia. While the conference in Halle will focus on a systematic comparison between these institutions, the conference in Atlanta will address the social consequences. The main question is what types of social order the Protestant reform movements in Prussia, England, and Georgia promoted.

 Renewing Faith, Improving Society. A Comparison of Protestant Reform Movements in Prussia, England, and Georgia (first half of the 18th century)

It is well known how strongly the Protestant religious revival of the late 17th and early 18th century was aimed at social reform. August Hermann Francke’s orphanage in Halle with its associated institutions, the prison reform initiated by Thomas Bray in England, and its connection with James Oglethorpe’s conception of the colony of Georgia have long been the subject of research. Above all, the close interconnection between the actors has been well researched—think of the exchange between the German Pietists and the English missionary societies, the Pietist-led settlement of the Salzburg exiles in Georgia, John Wesley’s experiences in Savannah that led to the founding of the Methodist movement, and the exploration of the new colony by the Moravian Church.

What has been missing until now, however, is a systematic comparison between the social reforms of the Protestant renewal movements on the continent, in England, and in North America. Such a comparison could place the events in the various countries in a systematic context that would shed new light on them. The planned conferences will be devoted to such a comparison. This means that they must be international and interdisciplinary in nature, involving researchers from the US, England, and Germany, from the fields of history, theology, sociology, education, and English literature.

The shared impulse
Only things that have similarities can be compared. In this case, these similarities are the Protestant efforts to renew faith around 1700. The conference is based on the assumption that German Pietism, Anglican revival, and the founding of the colony of Georgia with the settler communities in Ebenezer, Savannah and Fort Frederica were based on closely related impulses. Even though theological differences and church divisions arose in the course of the 18th century, such as between the Moravians and the Pietists, the Methodists and the Anglican Revival, they originally shared the same characteristics. First, they all insisted that the faith conveyed in the Bible should become a personal experience, an immediate encounter that was often described as a revival and a turning point in life. Second, this encounter with God was understood as a calling: a mission to save souls and improve the world. This mission was to begin with catechesis and charity within their own communities and societies, but it was also to be directed outward, to the New World, addressed to the indigenous and enslaved peoples there. Thirdly, theologically, this was linked to a change in expectations for the future. Millenarian-chiliastic models of eschatology led people to hope for salvation, which had previously been located mostly in the hereafter, now within the world—in the future. This gave rise to a strong confidence in the success of missionary efforts. Fourthly, all of these Protestant reform movements shared the conviction that mission required a high degree of professionalization in terms of communication, organization, and institution building. On the Pietist side, the Francke Institutions in Halle are particularly noteworthy, based on Francke’s concept of general reform, which he first outlined in 1695, continued in 1701 in his “Project for a Universal Seminary,” and then in 1704 in his so-called “Great Essay.” In 1695, he established the first classes for the poor and an orphanage. In 1698 these institutions were granted an electoral privilege. The English equivalents were the missionary societies of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), founded in 1698, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), founded in 1701. Last but not least, the colony of Georgia, founded in 1732, was also conceived as an institution for the rehabilitation of prisoners and the poor, with the aim of saving their souls, even though thirty years after the initiators at the height of the European Enlightenment, this was concealed behind the secular concept of “philanthropy.” What all these institutions had in common was that their founders characterized them as “projects” and sought to optimize them relentlessly. Instead of considering them complete after their founding, their development was made into a process. The formation of institutions seemed just as unfinished as the salvation of souls and the improvement of the world. The work on the institutions tended to become an end in itself, their optimization a proof of the salvation of souls that had been achieved.
These four characteristics can be linked together if they are understood as expressions of a polar tension. This tension manifests itself between, on the one hand, the “self-charismatization” (Max Weber) derived from personal encounters with God, including the associated personalization, subjectification, and self-empowerment, and, on the other hand, strict institutionalization, which was accompanied by an attitude of asceticism, outward humility, and duty fulfillment, with obedience and discipline. Within the institutions, this tension took shape in the form of a pragmatic-instrumental attitude on the one hand, which took into account the dynamics, changeability, and situational nature of institutional development, and on the other hand, the tendency to want to regulate all details of activity and lifestyle, thus becoming “total institutions” (Erving Goffman). Last but not least, it manifests itself as a tension between chiliastic expectations of imminent change and undaunted perseverance. This was based on a piety that interpreted missionary tasks as end-time trials and historical experiences as divine signs, thus methodically renewing the extraordinary nature of the situation for several generations of participants.
Personalizing faith meant working on oneself. Building institutions meant influencing society. Both went hand in hand in all three places mentioned, forming the flip sides of the same new beginning. The extent to which these commonalities apply and whether they need to be supplemented by others will be discussed at the conferences.

The variables
The similarities are contrasted by at least four framework conditions that varied greatly from country to country. The first was the constitution of the church, especially with regard to the question of how much leeway the respective regional churches allowed the renewal movements. Secondly, this leeway depended on the attitude of the authorities, i.e., how strongly they promoted the renewal movements. Thirdly, it depended on the social status and support enjoyed by the protagonists, which was linked to the particularities of the respective social order, especially the extent to which the status and honor of individuals were absorbed into the movement’s goals and how independent or dependent the social order was on the government.
To outline this coordinate system in a few keywords: What most institutions of the renewal movements have in common is that they achieved legal recognition and protection from the authorities, at least at some political levels: the SPG and the trustees for the founding of the colony of Georgia by obtaining charters from the English crown, the Francke foundations by obtaining electoral privileges and later the protection of the king. Although the Moravians were expelled from the empire by several authorities, they found support elsewhere, including in England.
However, the motives of the governments varied greatly. In Prussia, the Calvinist Hohenzollerns promoted the Pietists in order to weaken the resistance of the Lutheran hierarchy against their efforts to establish a Protestant union. In England, it was the Anglican hierarchy that lobbied the government and parliament on behalf of the missionary societies, because they were supposed to consolidate the Anglican Church in the colonies. In Georgia, the trustees took over the tasks of the authorities and transferred some of these tasks to the pastors, but kept the official church out of it and turned the colony into a reserve for renewal.
Often characterized as a lay movement, the leading figures, except for the Moravians, were often pastors such as Hermann August Francke in Germany, Thomas Bray and John Wesley in England, and Johann Martin Boltzius in Ebenezer; however, lay people such as Nikolaus Ludwig von Zintzendorf (in his beginnings) and James Oglethorpe were able to attain central positions. There were enormous differences in terms of their social support. Francke needed the support of the Berlin government to gain authority over the church leadership and constantly courted nobles and wealthy citizens, whose children he educated at the Paedagogium Regium. Bray enjoyed the protection of bishops and aristocrats. The Georgia trustees had the broadest social base, as they included not only several lords and clergymen, but also representatives of the gentry and the City of London, who were represented in the House of Commons.

The Question
Brent Sirota recently placed Anglican renewal in a perspective that has also been discussed for German Pietism since Carl Hinrichs. According to this view, pious conventicles gained social formative power through institutionalization and political promotion at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. They became models, catalysts, and pioneers for the transformation from the order of estates to civil society. More or less explicitly, this is also cited as an explanation for why England and Prussia entered civil society in the 19th century without a social revolution.
This classic view is to be re-examined at the conferences. On the one hand, research has since shown that the term “civil society” has been used here in a supra-historical, normative sense, as a value concept, even though the social structures in the 18th century differed considerably from those in the 19th century, both in England and in Prussia. On the other hand, the picture changes significantly when one takes into account the social reconstruction in Georgia. Here, a space seemed to open in which social reformers could approach their ideas in a much more unencumbered and direct manner, possibly giving them a new quality. Reform could become utopia. At the same time, the practical necessities of survival required such a high degree of improvisation that actors who had been marginalized or objectified in the Old World—laypeople, women, Jews, indigenous peoples—gained significantly more influence here.
The open-ended question should therefore be: what types of (civil?) society did the Protestant reform movements in Prussia, England, and Georgia lead to? This can be seen, first, in their social practices, for example with regard to work, gender and generational relations, church discipline, including the interpretations associated with it through eschatology, work ethic, and behavioral teachings; second, from the institutions they created; and third, from the reactions their protagonists triggered and the dynamics that resulted from them. Particularly noteworthy is the first Great Awakening movement of the 1730s and 1740s. In other words, the conference will also discuss variations in the relationship between evangelical piety and modern society.

Possible section topics:
I. Interdependencies and shared characteristics
1. Transfer of persons and concepts
2. Personalization of faith
3. Mission statement
4. Millenarian-chiliastic models of eschatology
5. Institution building (missionary societies, orphanages, schools, forms of administration, libraries, prints, magazines…)

II. Differences
1. Framework conditions:
1.1. Governmental support
1.2. Relationship to the church hierarchy
2. Institution building (all-embracing or partial? fixed or variable? closed up or open?)
3. Social practices
3.1. Work, work ethic, work organization (tithing system, cooperative work)
3.2. Gender and generational relations (educational concepts)
3.3. Behavior and church discipline (denunciation)
3.4. Spatial design (urban development in Savannah and Ebenezer, church construction, school construction, furniture)
3.5. Separation and exclusion, mission (relationship with the godless, with people of other denominations, with indigenous peoples)

III. Reactions and consequences
Out-migration – Malcontents – Methodist movement – Great Awakening – Oglethorpe’s Fight for the Moravians in British Parliament …

The conference in Halle (October 12–13, 2026) will focus on discussing how viable the basic assumption of the four common characteristics mentioned above is and whether they need to be supplemented by further characteristics (I.). 
The conference in Atlanta (March 8–10, 2027) will explore why the shared impulse led to such different social structures and subsequent developments (II.+III.)

Your proposals for one or two presentations should not exceed 500 words each. Please indicate which conference and which program item they refer to!