Theodor Kliefoth

With the abolishment of the old constitution of the estates in 1848 and the organization of a parliamentary government, the rule of the Church by the State had become an impossibility.

To this end the faculty of Rostock was reorganized with teachers of strictly Lutheran tendency, the institution of church inspections by superintendents was again called into life, abuses in the church service and in the administration of ecclesiastical acts were abolished, and the rationalistic spirit was removed from the pulpit.

Kliefoth's peculiar conception was due chiefly to his occupation with the old Lutheran church orders.

The Church is for him the empirical congregation of the called, and not merely the congregation of true believers; and for him Lutheranism is not merely a doctrine or dogmatical tendency, but a distinctive church body whose peculiar historical development is to be perpetuated.

In this sense he represented the government of the Mecklenburg church at the Eisenach Conference after 1852; and in 1868 he founded with others the Allgemeine evangelisch-lutherische Konferenz.

Kliefoth was one of the strongest men among the churchmen and theologians of his day, and one of the most effective preachers of the nineteenth century.

The political and ecclesiastical liberals decried him as a dangerous reactionist, the unionists hated his strict Lutheranism, the representatives of pietistic subjectivism were offended by his ecclesiasticism, and popular sentiment disliked his hierarchical tendencies.

English Conser, Jr., Walter H. Church and Confession: Conservative Theologians in England, Germany, and America, 1815–1866.

“The Liturgical Heritage of Theodor Kliefoth.” In Lord Jesus Christ, Will You Not Stay: Essays in Honor of Ronald Feuerhahn on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday.