Research into the history of Christianity today increasingly seeks to identify topics that have not yet received sufficient attention. Among these is the history of women’s ministry in Christianity. The collective monograph “Women on the Path of the Reformation” is an attempt to enrich the study of Latvian church history by including the history of women’s ministry as one such topic. Dace Balode, Dean of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Latvia (UL FT), emphasises that this collective monograph “for the first time leads us through the history of Protestantism in Latvia, paying particular attention to the role of women in theologically motivated processes that influenced people’s lives in the territory of Latvia, from politics to everyday life”.
In this monograph, Master of History and UL FT graduate student Anete Jenča examines women’s ministry in the Moravian Brethren congregations of Vidzeme (Herrnhuter congregations). The theme of the Brethren congregations is continued by Doctor of Germanic Studies Beata Paškevica, who analyses the activities of Magdalene Elisabeth von Hallart, a supporter of the Herrnhuter mission in Vidzeme. Doctor of History and church historian Kristīne Ante and Master of Theology, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia (ELCL) Mārcis Zeiferts have examined women’s ministry in the Lutheran congregations of Kurzeme and Vidzeme at the turn of the 19th–20th century, paying particular attention to the inner mission and the related social ministry of deaconesses, which was developed by adopting the operating principles of Western European deaconesses. UL FT professor and ELCL pastor Ralfs Kokins has analysed the booklets created by Lutheran pastors in the 1920s and 1930s about the history of the congregations they led and their churches. Meanwhile, UL FT Dean, professor, and board member of the Latvian Association of Lutheran Women Theologians Dace Balode and Doctor of Philosophy, UL FT professor, and Secretary General of the Latvian Bible Society Valdis Tēraudkalns have examined the history of the ordination of women in Latvian Lutheranism (both in Latvia and in emigration).
The collective monograph was published as part of a project supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany.
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UL Faculty of Theology
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Ilze Stikāne
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