Liturgy, Confessional Identity, and Institutional Change: Lutheran and Reformed Liturgical Projects in the Reformation Era

This study offers a meticulous examination of liturgy as a quintessential institutional mechanism underpinning confessional identification, with particular emphasis on the liturgical reforms that accompanied the emergence of the Lutheran and Reformed traditions in the sixteenth century. It undertakes a critical examination of the intricate processes through which religious identity was forged via ritual practice, elucidating the manner in which worship served as a salient instrument of confessional differentiation. Employing an interdisciplinary methodological framework that synthesises comparative liturgical scholarship with institutional analysis, this inquiry illuminates the dynamics by which liturgical reforms facilitated the consolidation of discrete confessional identities. The discussion unfolds across three principal themes. Initially, the study establishes a robust theoretical framework by engaging critically with historical sociology – most notably the seminal insights of Émile Durkheim – and the principles of new institutionalism as articulated by Douglass North, thereby elucidating the pivotal role of ritual in the construction and perpetuation of collective identity. Subsequently, it explores the paradigm of organic liturgical development as a normative ideal within the pre-Reformation ecclesiastical milieu. The final section undertakes a discerning comparative analysis of the liturgical reforms pursued by Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, alongside their respective successors, with particular focus upon divergences in liturgical structure, ritual innovation, and the theological rationales that undergirded these transformations. The study advances the concept of “liturgical confessionalisation” to encapsulate the dual function of ritual modifications: both as reflections of doctrinal distinctions and as instrumental processes in the institutionalisation of collective ecclesiastical identities during the early modern period. The findings attest that, in the crucible of the sixteenth century, liturgy constituted a principal vector of confessional differentiation. These liturgical reforms were pivotal in the articulation and solidification of emergent religious identities, thereby contributing fundamentally to the diversification and pluralisation of the Reformation movements.

liturgy, confessional identity, orthodoxy, orthopraxy, ritual, Émile Durkheim, Douglass North, liturgical reform, Reformation, sixteenth century, Johann Ulrich Surgant, Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, Lutheranism, Reformed tradition, organic development, institutional analysis, historical institutionalism, comparative liturgy, liturgical confessionalisation