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Church Diet

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(Kirchentag), a name given to free gatherings of clergymen and laymen of the German Protestant state churches, held since 1848 for the discussion of religious and ecclesiastical questions. The Church Diets were called into existence in consequence of the revolutionary movements of the year 1848, which appeared to tend to a separation between' Church and State, and to endanger the influence of the evangelical Church upon society. Members of the Lutheran, the Reformed, and the United Evangelical churches took part, and the High Church "Confessionalists," under Stahl and Hengstenberg, worked hand in hand with the Evangelical party, under men like Nitzsch, Bethmani-Hollweg, and others, at the first annual meetings of the Diet of Wittenberg (1848 and 1849), Stuttgardt (1850), Elberfeld (1851), Bremen (1852), Berlin (1853), Frankfurt (1854), Libeck (1856), Stuttgardt (1857), Hamburg (1858). But in 1860 the former party did not appear, because the executive committee had refused to put the Dissenter and the Civil Marriage questions on the programme of the meeting. Consequently, at the assembly of Barmen (1860), and the following ones at Brandenburg (1862) and Altenburg (1864), the Evangelical party (the "Consensus" party) was alone represented. Simultaneously with every meeting of the Church Diet has been held an assembly of the Congress for Home Missions. (See HOME MISSIONS). The full proceedings of each meeting of the diet have been published in a special report. A briefer account is given in the annual Kirchliche Chronik by Matthes. See also Dorner, Reform d. evangel. Landeskirchen (1848); Entstehung und Gesch. des Kirchentages (1853).