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Dr Arnold Georg Bittlinger was a German-Swiss Protestant theologian, psychologist, psychotherapist, author, speaker and, in the 1960s, co-founder of the charismatic renewal movement in Germany.
In 1945, he completed a viticulture internship at his grandparents' vineyard in Ebernburg an der Nahe; there, he led the church choir he had founded because the schools were closed in the post-war chaos. Starting in the fall of 1945, he rebuilt Protestant youth work in his hometown of Edenkoben, which had come to a standstill during the Third Reich.
After graduating from high school, he studied Protestant theology and psychology in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the USA; he also studied art history and viticulture.
In 1952, Bittlinger was ordained in his hometown of Edenkoben, appointed as a vicar in Kaiserslautern, and later as parish administrator in Speyer. He also became the head of the Student Mission in Germany, which he built on the model of the English Interschool Christian Fellowship. After his second theological examination, he became pastor in Ludwigshafen am Rhein in 1956, with an independent parish of approximately 7,000 members. There he founded a lively youth ministry and numerous house groups.
In 1959, Bittlinger was appointed head of the People's Missionary Office of the Palatinate Regional Church. In this capacity, he traveled through the USA in 1962 to study missionary church development. There, he encountered the beginnings of the charismatic renewal movement in Lutheran, Episcopal, and Reformed congregations. He reported on this in his book How It Began. He was also interested in American viticulture and earned a wine diploma from the San Francisco Wine Institute. After returning from the USA, he focused on charismatic church building and published numerous works on this topic. He invited the charismatic American Larry Christenson to Germany, and in 1963 he led a large conference in Enkenbach near Kaiserslautern on the topic: "The Work of the Holy Spirit Today," which can be considered the beginning of the charismatic movement in Germany
In 1966, he started an ecumenical academy in Craheim Castle in Lower Franconia. In 1968, together with the Franciscan priest Eugen Mederlet and the free-church pastor Wilhard Becker, he founded the “Life Center for Christian Unity” in Craheim Castle.
From 1969 to 1970, Bittlinger was an assistant to Greek Orthodox professor Nikos Nissiotis at the Ecumenical Institute of the University of Geneva. From 1971-72 he was a fellow of the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research in Collegeville, Minnesota and a faculty member of St John's University. He also studied Native American culture and was inducted into the Ojibwe Indian Tribe of the Algonkin Nation.
In 1976, together with a doctor and a nurse, he founded a “Healing Home” in Munich.
In 1977, he was appointed by the World Council of Churches to work in the “Renewal and Church Life” department in Geneva. In this function, he undertook numerous research trips to all parts of the world and organized a worldwide consultation on the topic of “Towards a Church Renewed and United in the Holy Spirit” in 1980. At the same time, he worked as pastor of the wine-growing community of Oberhallau in the canton of Schaffhausen. He was granted Swiss citizenship in 1991.
He was active in the training of doctors and teachers and as head of the Swiss editorial office of the journal Analytical Psychology.
