Hochkirchliche Vereinigung Augsburgischen Bekenntnisses (High Church Union of the Augsburg Confession) is a Lutheran High Church organisation in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It was founded in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, October 1918, inspired by High Church theses Stimuli et Clavi

Stimuli et Clavi

Stimuli et clavi i. e. theses adversus huius temporis errores et abusus: Spieße und Nägel d.i. Streitsätze wider die Irrnisse und Wirrnisse unserer Zeit ....

 1917 by Heinrich Hansen

Heinrich Hansen

Heinrich Hansen was a German Lutheran theologian and the father of the Lutheran High Church movement in Germany....

. Later it has been greatly influenced by Evangelical Catholic theology of professor Friedrich Heiler

Friedrich Heiler

Friedrich Heiler was a German theologian and historian of religion.Heiler came from a Roman Catholic family...

.

Hochkirchliche Vereinigung seeks not only to restore, but also carry through the full catholicity of Augsburg Confession

Augsburg Confession

The Augsburg Confession, also known as the "Augustana" from its Latin name, Confessio Augustana, is the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church and one of the most important documents of the Lutheran reformation...

, which has coherently never happened in the history of Lutheran Church. It has also been able to make many High Church practises legitimate in Evangelical Church in Germany

Evangelical Church in Germany

The Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of 22 Lutheran, Unified and Reformed Protestant regional church bodies in Germany. The EKD is not a church in a theological understanding because of the denominational differences. However, the member churches share full pulpit and altar...

 and has been involved in Liturgical Movement

Liturgical Movement

The Liturgical Movement began as a movement of scholarship for the reform of worship within the Roman Catholic Church. It has grown over the last century and a half and has affected many other Christian Churches, including the Church of England and other Churches of the Anglican Communion, and some...

.

Hochkirchliche Vereinigung considers episcopal polity

Episcopal polity

Episcopal polity is a form of church governance that is hierarchical in structure with the chief authority over a local Christian church resting in a bishop...

 essential to Church and seeks to restore Apostolic Succession

Apostolic Succession

Apostolic succession is a doctrine, held by some Christian denominations, which asserts that the chosen successors of the Twelve Apostles, from the first century to the present day, have inherited the spiritual, ecclesiastical and sacramental authority, power, and responsibility that were...

 through Hochkirchliche St. Johannes-Bruderschaft. Within Hochkirchliche Vereinigung exists also Lutheran Franciscan third order

Third order

The term Third Order designates persons who live according to the Third Rule of a Roman Catholic religious order, an Anglican religious order, or a Lutheran religious order. Their members, known as Tertiaries, are generally lay members of religious orders, i.e...

 (Evangelische Franziskaner-Tertiaren).

External links

• Hochkirchliche Vereinigung Augsburgischen Bekenntnisses e.V.
• The Modern Liturgical Movement in Germany by Bernard E. Meland (JSTOR
  JSTOR
  JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...
  
  )
• The Ecumenical Vanguard - The History of the Una Sancta Movement by Leonard J. Swidler