Includes bibliographical references (pages 143-176) and index
I. Church and state in context. The limits of dialogue : East German Marxist-Leninist thinkers and the future of religion -- The language of liberation : the church as a free space -- II. The church and the peaceful revolution. The church as a religious and political force -- Preparing for the fall : the church and its groups -- The shape and limits of the church's contributions to democratization -- III. The church and the new democratic order. Theologians and the renewal of democratic political institutions -- Coming to terms with the past : the church, the state, and the Stasi -- Church and politics in a secular world : the theology of Wolf Krötke -- Epilogue: After the wall
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This book addresses the role of religion in the massive political changes that took place in Eastern Europe in 1989. In particular, it examines the role played by the East German church in that country's bloodless revolution. Drawing on his own research in East Germany and relying primarily on sources published in East Germany itself, author John Burgess demonstrates the roots of the church's theology in Barth, Bonhoeffer, and in the Barmen declaration, which in 1934 pronounced Christianity and Nazi ideology to be incompatible. He explores how the dissident groups drew on church symbols and language to develop a popular alternative theology, and finally shows how the theological tension between the church and the dissidents provided impulses for political democratization. It should be of great interest to scholars of theology, church history, political science, and twentieth-century European history