Carl Joachim Brandt (1817-1889)
Grundtvigian clergyman, MA theology 1841, editor of Dansk Kirketidende [Danish Church News] 1845-61 and 1873-89.
C.J. Brandt was part of the inner circle of theologians assembling around N.F.S. Grundtvig’s pulpit in Copenhagen from the 1840s. Brandt launched the orthodox Grundvigian weekly Dansk Kirketidende in 1845 and he was appointed headmaster of Grundtvig’s folk high school in Marielyst in 1856. When Grundtvig died in 1872, Brandt became his successor as pastor of the Vartov Church. Brandt was among the most active theological debaters of evolution. During the 1870s he published several articles and notes on Darwinism in Dansk Kirketidende. The contributions were often based on German material. Brandt regarded Darwinism as part of an anti-Christian materialist agenda and he was eager to dismiss the atheist views of naturalistic anthropologists such as Ernst Haeckel and Carl Vogt, especially their claim that man descended from ape-like creatures.
Hans Henrik Hjermitslev
