"Biblical Hermeneutics in German-Speaking Evangelicalism Since 1990"

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Klaus Tanner
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 418888388

Evangelicalism has become one of the most influential movements of Protestantism. With 1.3 million members the German Evangelical Alliance is the biggest evangelical umbrella organisation in Germany. As for academic research there has not been much interest neither in the phenomenon nor in specific bible hermeneutics of this group. Hence the usual habit of polemic demarcation does not meet the complexity of ecclesiastical reality and the diversified forms of evangelical theologies and hermeneutics today.This DFG-funded project is devoted to the contemporary German-speaking discourse of evangelical understanding of the bible. Since October 2019 it works on a classification system for different approaches in evangelical doctrine to better understand the relations between doctrine, believers and institutions. Furthermore, this framework can help to contextualise ethical or political statements from these groups. By this, the project helps to analyse contemporary evangelical Protestantism, to take its demands seriously and to examine it on the basis of its foundations.Within contemporary research there has not been much interest in evangelical bible hermeneutics. Even Gisa Bauers “Evangelikale Bewegung und evangelische Kirche in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland” does not directly engage with concrete concepts of evangelical bible hermeneutics. Given the fact that there are at least three important works – “Das Ende der historisch-kritischen Methode“ and “Biblische Hermeneutik“ by Gerhard Maier as well as “Die Bibel im Griff“ by Armin Sierszyn – this project aims to profoundly analyse these and other influential contributions of evangelical bible hermeneutics to explore the variety of this unexplored field of research.The given controversy can also be seen as an argument about the “sola scriptura” principle. Both the emancipation of exegesis from its former dogmatic frame and the development of historical critical methods have undermined its plausibility in modern thought. As a result, modern historical thinking has produced a gap between the authors’ past and the readers’ present.The original work schedule needed to be expanded in two ways to meet the projects’ main goal of better understanding and recognising the examined field: On the one hand, more theologians have been interviewed and more material, also digital media, has been analysed. This meets the pluralisation of this area, e.g., the growing number of evangelical publicly licensed colleges. Furthermore, the repulsion of certain features of modernity by German evangelicals has been critically reviewed and historically contextualised. The present application seeks for the extension of the funding by one year.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants