From Bibliotheca Sacra, lxxvi. 1919, pp. 1–40.
A great religious movement has been going on in Germany during the last half-century, to which the attention of the outside world has been far too little directed.1 It is commonly spoken of as “The Fellowship Movement”; and the complex of phenomena which have resulted from its activities is summed up briefly as “Fellowship Christianity.”2 Paul Drews, in a few words of detailed description, written a decade ago, brings it rather clearly before us in its external manifestations. He says:—3
“The so-called ‘Fellowship Movement,’ which has existed now about a generation, is a religious lay-movement, and that of a power and extension such as the Evangelical Church has not seen since the Reformation. There is no German-Evangelical National church into which it has not penetrated. It has thrust its plow-share even into the hard soil of the Mecklenburg Church, which is not so easy to break up.… Its adherents are gathered by the Fellowship from the circles of the so-called ‘humble people’:4 artisans, craftsmen, tradesmen, railway and postal employees, waiters, servant-girls, here and there (as for example in Hesse) even peasants, and also teachers. Added to these there are—as will not surprise those who are acquainted with Church History—the nobility and that the high nobility. The academically educated and the industrial workers alone are wanting. Of course not altogether; but they form exceptions in these ranks, and do not affect the character of the whole.… The Fellowship is extraordinarily thoroughly and compactly organized. The particular local Fellowships are united in Provincial associations, at the head of which stand ‘Councils of Brothers’ (Brüderräte). Over these associations there stands the ‘German Association for Evangelical Fellowship-work and Evangelization.’5 There exist, however, Fellowship-circles which have not connected themselves with this central Association. The individual associations not seldom possess their own assembly-houses which are sometimes so constructed that strangers attending the meetings can find lodging or entertainment in them. The associations employ also their own professional-workers,6 Bible-missionaries, colporteurs, … and pay them.… The professional-workers who lead the meetings have either received no special training or have attended one of the educational institutions which are supported by the ‘Fellowship’ and in its spirit. Older instances are the Chrischona (near Basel) and Johanneum (first at Bonn, now at Barmen) institutions; latterly there have been founded the Alliance Bible-School in Berlin (founded in 1905) and Pastor Jellinghaus’ Bible-school Seminary at Lichtenrade, near Berlin. The Institutional foundations are in general extraordinarily developed. The Institutions serve the ends partly of foreign, partly of domestic missions. We find hospitals, inebriate-cures, orphan-asylums, rescue-homes, sister- (that is, deaconess-) houses and the like. They have pensions and hotels of their own, carried on in the spirit of Fellowship Christianity, and, as it seems, with good results. Regular annual conferences (at Gnadau, Blankenburg in Thuringia, Frankfurt on the Main, and elsewhere) draw thousands of visitors. There is added a well-supported press serving, in part general, in part local needs (e.g. the Allianzblatt, Auf der Warte, Sabbathklänge, Philadelphia, Die Wacht, Das Reich Christi and others). Bookstores of their own distribute literature which is read in their circles, among which there are many translations from the English, of course exclusively of an edifying character. The net proceeds are devoted to ‘the Kingdom of God,’ that is to say to the labors and pursuits of the Fellowship Movement. Surveying all this—this strong organization, this reaching out on all sides—we receive an impression of the power and extension of this movement. It is of special importance that property, land, buildings, are held. Fixed possessions always give strength, guaranty of permanence; are the back-bone of existence. If our National Churches should suddenly disappear from the map, the world, to its astonishment, would become all at once aware that behind the protecting walls and beneath the protecting roof of our National Churches, a new lay-church of a kind of its own has grown up which is well able to depend on its own walls and to defy the storms of the times.”7