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As much as the ongoing Confessionalization forum has resonated within the internal discussions of the H-German editorial team, we wonder about the connections that it has made within the H-German community writ large. How useful is the confessionalization paradigm, and for whom, and in what contexts? Does it tell us something relevant about the belief systems that may accompany or determine "the modern"? Should confessionalization be regarded as an important tool in re-partitioning or erasing the usual divide between modern and early modern? Or is there an insoluble dilemma in treating religion as a modernizing process that has, at its core, the undermining of religion? Could one perhaps even establish a link between confessionalization and secularization, as contradictory as that may sound? The initial contributions suggested to us questions about sub-disciplinary locations (church history, peasant history, etc.) where confessionalization may or may not have registered. Is the confessionalization paradigm indifferent to theological distinctions among Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist? Or does a functional emphasis on the "modernization" of religious practice -- growing professionalization, the attack on "superstition" -- necessarily tend to narrow the differences among the confessions? If the theological content was indeed secondary, how could these confessions have carried authoritative content in the eyes of town councils and paternalistic _Landesherren_? If historians accept these larger functional processes at work, can they still do justice to the daily piety and beliefs of individuals? Or, alternatively, is it only by means of _alltagsgeschichtliche_ approaches that one can even begin to approach the operation of processes, experiences, and understandings that have been here coalescing under the general description "confessionalization"? Returning to the "macro" level, what are the pan-European implications of "confessionalization"? While granting that this is a list for specialists in Germany, what are some obvious differences between such processes in the German lands and in the Anglican realm, or in 17th-Century France? Does the "confessionalization" paradigm tell us anything about the weakness of state formation in Eastern Europe? We invite your responses and look forward to your insights. Please note that the initial contributions to the forum can be found at <http://www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/Confessionalization/ Confess_index.htm > . The H-German Editorial Team Susan Boettcher Eve Duffy Christopher Fischer Will Gray David Imhoof Paul Steege
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