Transkonfessionalisme, konstruktivisme en Karel Schoeman (1939–2017) oor die Kaapse piëtisme

Abstract

Transconfessionalism, constructivism and Karel Schoeman (1939–2017) on Cape pietism. The South African historiographer Karel Schoeman’s (1939–2017) research on 17th and 18thcentury ecclesiastical life and Protestant spirituality at the Cape is embedded in the context of transconfessional and transnational pietism research. As such, Schoeman’s transconfessional approach produces important correctives to traditional constructivist pietism approaches. Schoeman’s approach enables him to study Cape Protestant spirituality of the 17th and 18th centuries within the context of pietism being the most significant devotional movement (Frommigkeitsbewegung) of Protestantism after the Reformation, manifesting pietism primarily as a religious phenomenon with astonishing spatial, temporal, social, spiritual, churchconfessional and theological complexities that arose around the turn of the 16th to the 17th century from criticism of the existing ecclesiastical and spiritual relations at nearly the same time in England, the Netherlands and Germany. From there it spread to Switzerland, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and the United States. It contributed to a great extent to the worldwide Protestant mission and has remained an active movement into the present.