Roger Olson and Christian Winn: Reclaiming Pietism
Reclaiming Pietism has eight chapters dealing with precursors of Pietism, origins, the hallmarks of Continental Pietism, its spread to Britain and North America, Pietism in the 19th century and then closes with a look at how Pietism lives on in the work of four recent theologians.
As one would expect from Olson and Winn, all the bases are covered. Key figures and movements are all there, and the reader gets the information they need, covering the span of seven centuries. To understand Pietism one has to understand the forerunners of the Reformation. In many ways researching Pietism is the same as studying the history of Protestantism. Stoeffler liked to use a quote from Michel Godfroid, “To write the history of Pietism is to write the history of modern Protestantism.”
I once had Timotheus Verinus recommended to me as a resource. My interlocutor said it would straighten me out, i.e. show me the evils of Pietism. It was enlightening, but not in the way he intended. I came away with an ever greater knowledge of how distasteful doctrinal arguments are. Valentin Loescher (Löscher) attacked Pietism, Calvinism, Catholicism, anything that did not agree with his doctrine. I had studied his journal Unschuldigen Nachrichten for my Kinderbeten research. He had a dim view of the praying children’s revival, as did all of Lutheran Orthodoxy because they were praying in public. Yet Loescher told his readers they “should not throw out the baby with the bathwater,” something Lutheran Orthodoxy does, then and now. That is, except for when they are being pietists.
At the close of the preface of the English translation of Timotheus Verinus, the translators inform us that the battle between Loescher and the Pietists ended once they came to see they had a mutual enemy which was much more of a danger, that is, The Enlightenment. One has to wonder if the differences between the two were so great if they could join forces like that. Of course, the philosophers of the Enlightenment did capture the mindset of academics and nobility alike and eventually, by the 19th-20th century, led to a mainly secular Germany. As we in the United States see secularism taking hold of the public square, pastors and other concerned Christians might come to understand that the practical, devotional route taken by the pietists has much to commend it. Some of what pietists were guilty of is exactly what is necessary in our churches today. In a narcissistic age, a focus on Jesus, daily prayer and Bible study, and the ministry of all believers is a simple, yet effective, corrective course to sail.
In closing, the key to what sets apart those labeled “Pietist” from those labeled “Orthodoxy” is the former urged personal and societal transformation. One either believes it is possible, or they don’t. Spener wrote relentlessly about the New Man. Francke had an actual stated goal of global transformation. Loescher’s account of the Pietist awakenings show that while his main stated concern is maintaining good Lutheran doctrine, in the same breath his other concern is that these “false teachers” have caused people to vacate the congregations of Orthodoxy for Pietist ones. Therefore, the objections were not just doctrinal, the concern was for maintaining the status quo. Another unstated concern was who was to be appointed to church pulpits and university chairs, pietist or orthodox, another matter of profession and party politics. Individual pietists were not immune to those temptations; however, the emphasis on the continual renewal of church and society through transformed believers superseded personal and institutional concerns.
Finally, I would like to say is natural for the human mind to label things to quickly process information, and there is a need to organize information for learning, but using labels primarily or only in the pejorative sense and not even properly understanding the label, this behavior is wrong and should stop. Perhaps this book will help.
Reviewed by Eric Jonas Swensson
Publisher’s page: http://www.eerdmans.com/Products/6909/reclaiming-pietism.aspx
Watch a 2015 interview with authors: https://youtu.be/nNf2xoSmigs
Category: Church History, Fall 2015
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