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PIETISM

PIETISM. Historians have had difficulty agreeing about a definition for Pietism. A major reason is that the term has been controversial since its first use in German Lutheran territories in the 1670s. Today historians debate how narrowly or broadly to define the subject. However, there is general agreement that, although in a narrow sense a Lutheran (and in part also a Reformed Protestant) phenomenon of the later seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, Pietism had roots in the concerns of those sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Christians who wanted to realize the ideals of discipline and godliness in their personal and collective lives.

This impulse developed in part out of a dissatisfaction with institutional, hierarchical Protestantism and its emphasis on salvation by faith alone. While pious theologians and laypeople usually agreed that faith was necessary for salvation, they insisted that sanctification was also essential. In other words, merely dogmatic religion was not enough, for on its own it could lead to moral decline and institutional complacency. True faith had to transform believers.

A wide range of Christians shared this kind of conviction before the rise of Pietism in the narrow sense. Among those who held a lasting influence for later Pietists were Catholic mystics, British Puritans, Protestant Nonconformists and spiritualists, and Dutch Reformed and German Lutheran clergymen concerned about moral reform.

THE "PIETISM" CONTROVERSIES

By the early 1690s the definition of "Pietism" had become a subject of heated public debate across Lutheran Germany. The Pietism controversies were important because with them godliness was transformed from a subject for a minority of Protestants to an issue that divided believers and resulted in deep and lasting changes in the character of Lutheranism and even Protestantism as a whole.

The roots of the controversy grew from the 1670s, and at their center was the Lutheran pastor Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705). In 1675, while based in Frankfurt am Main, Spener published Pia Desideria (Pious desires). In Pia Desideria Spener outlined a program to improve the quality of the clergy and the moral lives of believers according to a biblical model in the hopes of a better future for Christians. He did not intend his proposals to undermine the established orthodox Lutheran hierarchy; reforms, he felt, should take place within existing institutional structures and be led by ordained clergymen.

A key part of Spener's reform plan involved the collegia pietatis, small devotional sessions held in addition to regular church services, during which participants prayed and read the Bible together to encourage one another to live upright lives. Spener had helped organize such meetings in Frankfurt as early as 1670. With the publication of Pia Desideria and clerical networking, the movement to renew Christendom through moral reform spread throughout Lutheran Germany. Moderates like Spener tried to avoid unwanted conflicts with authorities by limiting and controlling lay participation in the Bible reading sessions.

Nonetheless, the spread of conventicles was ecclesiastically, politically, and socially contentious. Within a few decades conventicles had risen from a phenomenon of limited, localized popularity to the main form of pious sociability. As the conventicles spread, so too did the involvement of laymen and laywomen, as well as ecclesiastical and theological experimentation. Many orthodox clergymen and some secular rulers felt the devotional meetings were an unregulated breeding ground for sectarianism and political subversion. Therefore, numerous territorial rulers published edicts forbidding the private meetings, often to no avail.

The movement entered a new phase with the sudden upsurge in revivalist excitement between 1689 and 1693. Developments in Leipzig were especially important. During a controversy there about conventicles the name "Pietist," which until then had been used only occasionally in Germany, became a widely recognized name for the supporters of reform. Enthusiastic theology students like August Hermann Francke (1663–1727) were among those forced to leave Leipzig when authorities banned the growing movement in 1690. These activists formed the core of the spreading popular movement. The reform message that had been championed since the 1670s predominantly by moderate clergymen was transformed into the message of a younger, more exuberant generation of Lutherans fired by missionary zeal.

In this new phase, intense conversion experiences, anticlerical tendencies, and apocalyptic expectations also became common among those who participated in conventicles. Particularly noteworthy were waves of lay prophecy that occurred in numerous German towns in the early 1690s; the most publicized cases involved women and caused public scandals. Thereafter, the moderates, including Spener and Francke, distanced themselves from the popular movement and eventually broke their connections with the pious conventicles. Another important post-1689 development was a pamphlet war fought between reformers and their orthodox Lutheran opponents. Between about 1690 and 1720 hundreds of polemical pamphlets were exchanged on a range of issues, among them the definition of "Pietism."

PIETISM AFTER THE 1690S

Despite opposition, Pietism flourished throughout the eighteenth century and was influential in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Scandinavia, as well as in England and the North American colonies. There were Calvinist Pietists in the eighteenth century. Perhaps the most significant was Gerrit Tersteegen (1697–1769). However, when investigating eighteenth-century Pietism, historians commonly focus on several German Lutheran groupings.

One of the most significant institutional forms of Pietism was centered in Halle. Under the influence of Spener, the Prussian government established a new university there in the early 1690s. Several of the theology students who had been expelled from Leipzig in 1690 were on the faculty in Halle. Among them was Francke. In addition to professorial duties, he was instrumental in the foundation of a set of influential institutions. These included an orphanage and orphan schools (established 1695), and several domestic and international missionary organizations. One of the unique characteristics of Pietism based in Halle was the importance placed on repentance for sins and a personal experience of conversion to a godly life. While encouraging education in religion and practical sciences, Francke and other leaders also emphasized discipline among orphans and students. This became the model for educational reform in the Prussian state in the eighteenth century.

The other major officially sanctioned form of eighteenth-century Pietism was based in Württemberg. The church leader Johann Valentin Andreä (1586–1654) had promoted piety and discipline there. His lasting influence among members of the Lutheran church hierarchy made it easier for secular authorities after the 1690s to accept Pietist reforms. Although conversion experiences were not as central as in Halle, strict godly living became a widely accepted norm in Württemberg's universities, churches, and households. Thus, unlike Pietists in Halle and Prussia, who established close connections with the nobility, Pietism in Württemberg had a much broader social base. Also in contrast to Halle, Württemberg's university elite encouraged not only useful skills and piety, but also academic theology and biblical scholarship.

While leaders in Halle, Prussia, and Württemberg discouraged conventicles as a main form of fellowship, the meetings of the pious were a central feature of Pietism based in Herrnhut. There in the 1720s the Unity of Brethren (also called Moravians), a groupoflayChristianswithpre-Reformation roots, came under the charismatic leadership of Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760), a former student at Halle. While he rejected the strict regimentation of life in Halle, Zinzendorf shared an emphasis on conversion. His willingness to ally himself with a nonconformist community is an example of the ecumenical attitude typical of this branch of Pietism. Its missionary communities established themselves throughout central Europe, as well as in North America in Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Zinzendorf was influenced not only by Pietism in Halle, but also by a range of nonconformists whose experiences had been shaped by the extraordinary events of the 1690s. Historians sometimes use the label "radical Pietism" to identify this diverse range of individuals and small groups. Radicals distanced themselves from institutionalized Protestantism, often going so far as to separate themselves from the official territorial church. Among the characteristics shared by many (but not all) in these circles were the centrality of conventicles and personal conversion experiences; lay as opposed to clerical leadership, with women often playing key roles; mysticism, apocalyptic expectations, and prophetic tendencies; innovations in sacramental practice; and unconventional attitudes toward sexual norms. Radical Pietism had no single representative, institution, or geographical center.

IMPACT AND COMPARISONS

Pietism's impact on early modern European society is difficult to evaluate because it was so varied. Its adherents came from a wide range of social stations, and their actions and beliefs both supported and undermined established social and political norms. Philosophically Pietists participated in both the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement. Although often vehemently antipapal, they contributed to the weakening of confessional boundaries, especially among Protestant churches. Protestant revivalism and evangelicalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries owe much to Pietist traditions.

The godly impulse so characteristic of Pietism was also shared by other religious groups in the eighteenth century. In Christian Europe these included Catholic Jansenists and Protestant Camisards in France, as well as English Methodists. Scholars could also find similarities (although not direct historical connections) with Jewish Hasidism in eastern Europe.

See also Apocalypticism; Calvinism; Leipzig; Lutheranism; Moravian Brethren; Prussia; Puritanism; Zinzendorf, Nicolaus Ludwig von.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Erb, Peter C., ed. Pietists: Selected Writings. New York, 1983. Excerpts from the works of Spener, Francke, Tersteegen, Zinzendorf, and others.

Spener, Philipp Jakob. Pia Desideria. Translated and edited by Theodore G. Tappert. Philadelphia, 1964.

Secondary Sources

Fulbrook, Mary. Piety and Politics: Religion and the Rise of Absolutism in England, Württemberg, and Prussia. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1983.

Gawthrop, Richard L. Pietism and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Prussia. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1993.

Geschichte des Pietismus. Vol. 1: Der Pietismus vom siebzehnten bis zum frühen achtzehnten Jahrhundert. Edited by Martin Brecht. Vol. 2: Der Pietismus im achtzehnten Jahrhundert. Edited by Martin Brecht and Klaus Deppermann. Vol. 3: Der Pietismus im neunzehnten und zwanzigsten Jahrhundert. Edited by Ulrich Gäbler. Göttingen, 1993–.

Pietismus und Neuzeit: Ein Jahrbuch zur Geschichte des neueren Protestantismus. Göttingen, 1974–. The major journal on the subject. Includes some articles in English.

Stoeffler, F. Ernest. German Pietism during the Eighteenth Century. Leiden, 1973.

Wallmann, Johannes. Der Pietismus. Göttingen, 1990.

MICHAEL D. DRIEDGER