Pietism and Evangelicalism

WYH2003HS Spring 2003-- March 25

Links

Here's a lecture entitled "The Roots and Fruits of Pietism," given at Concordia Seminary in 1998.

A brief history of the Church of Norway (which is now Lutheran), including a description of the formative role which Pietism played in its development.

The entry on Pietism from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

If you are looking for a theological examination (and also some more historical context), try this article entitled "Early German Lutheran Pietism's Understanding of Justification."

For an entirely different viewpoint, you can read an article critical of Pietism as a theological movement, written from a Greek Orthodox perspective, entitled "Pietism as an Ecclesiological Heresy."

Probably anything you might want to know about John Wesley and his theological descendants can be found on the site of the Wesley Center for Applied Theology.

Here is a brief history of Methodism posted on the site of the Methodist Church of Great Britain.

I would be remiss if I were to neglect to mention that 2003 marks the tercentenary of the birth of John Wesley. Here's more information about the festivities surrounding that event.

Brian Cooper

What is Pietism?

In the larger sense, it is one manifestation of "what we might call an experiential tradition" which has existed within Christianity since the time of the apostles. In seventeenth-century Europe, Pietism arose as a sort of second Reformation, particularly in Lutheran and Calvinist circles, focussed on making Christianity more heartfelt and personal rather than something cognitive and dry (as Pietists believed it had become). They did this by forming groups, such as Spener's collegia pietatis, which met for mutual exhortation to pious living, and by rejecting practices which were seen as incompatible which holy living. Pictured left: Zinzendorf.

The long-term impact of the main current of Pietist thought and example was to reorient the Christian life in terms of personal experience without rejecting pre-existing theological content (although there were some Pietists of a more radical and mystical bent who tended to minimize doctrine and overemphasize the subjective element of faith). Pietists also inaugurated a new era of Christian social activism and missionary activity, and were the spiritual and intellectual forbears of those we now know as Evangelicals. Pictured right: Spener.

Who are important figures in Pietism?

Johann Arndt (1555-1621), pictured left, author of True Christianity. He helped pioneer (in his day) the conviction that orthodox doctrine was not enough to produce Christian life.

Johann Gerhardt (1582-1637), the renowned Lutheran systematic theologian who also deplored the lack of piety and need for reform; he wrote Sacred Meditations.

Jakob Philipp Spener (1635-1705), author of Pia Desideria and founder of collegia pietatis (schools of piety); Spener is widely known as the father of German Pietism (though I think it should be Arndt).

August Hermann Francke (1663-1727), pictured right, who, while at the University of Leipzig, formed a bible study group known as the collegium philobiblicum, which became a devotional group. Francke later went to the new university at Halle, and in addition to theology did work with orphans and the needy; the Francke Foundation exists in Germany for this purpose to the present day.

Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760), Spener's godson, who studied at Halle and soon after encountered and sheltered Moravian refugees. Von Zinzendorf went on to found the renewed Moravian Church, which became known for its unrivalled missionary activity.

John Wesley (1703-1791), the Anglican minister who was raised in a home influenced by Pietist thinking and who, after an encounter with Moravian missionaries, experienced a formative religious conversion which compelled him to embark on a preaching career of over fifty years and twenty thousand sermons. His legacy is the Methodist church and a large portion of Evangelical Christianity.

If you really want to understand Pietism, you should read:

• One of the many works written on the subject in German. If learning German is a little too much to tackle, here are a couple of good books in English:
• F. Ernest Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965, 1971).
  This is still the definitive work on Pietism. Stoeffler looks at German Pietism as part of a broader current that takes in Puritanism in England as well as reforming movements within mainline Protestantism on the Continent.
• Peter C. Erb, ed., Pietists: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1983).
  This work shows the wide range of approaches to the perceived need to rejuvenate the Church, from individuals like Spener and Francke, who sought to bring new life to existing church structures, to the more radical separatism of Gottfried Arnold to the mysticism of Johann Bengel.