The movement followed the Old Lutheran movement and focused on a reassertion of the identity of Lutherans as a distinct group within the broader community of Christians, with a renewed focus on the Lutheran Confessions as a key source of Lutheran doctrine. Associated with these changes was an Evangelical-Catholic renewed focus on traditional doctrine and liturgy, which paralleled the growth of Anglo-Catholicism in England.[2] It was sometimes even called "German Puseyism".[3] In the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, neo-Lutheranism was paralleled by Johann Adam Möhler. The chief literary organ of the neo-Lutheranism was Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, edited by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg.
Repristination versus Erlangen school
Neo-Lutheranism developed as a reaction against the Prussian Union[4] in a similar manner to the development of Tractarianism against the British government's decision to reduce the number of Irish bishoprics. The term has been defined different ways to distinguish it from the Old Lutherans movement, which was a schism in areas where a church union was enforced.
Neo-Lutheranism is distinct from the term "neo-Protestantism", which is an exclusively liberal theology represented, for example, by Adolf von Harnack and his followers.
^Scherer, James A. (1993). "The Triumph of Confessionalism in Nineteenth-Century German Lutheran Missions"(PDF). Missio Apostolica. 2: 71–78. Archived from the original(PDF) on October 20, 2005. An extract from Scherer's 1968 Ph.D. thesis, "Mission and Unity in Lutheranism". Scherer was Professor of World Mission and Church History at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago until his retirement.
