Pietism gave modern Christianity some of its defining characteristics, such as calling one’s devotional life a “personal relationship with Jesus.”
So how did something that started in the fifteenth century go on to impact most of the western church today?
What Are the Defining Features of Pietism?
Pietism developed in Germany in the 1600s through Philipp Jakob Spener. While some scholars debate whether he would have called himself a pietist, Spener’s book Pia Desideria (“Pious Desire”) gave the movement its name and laid out its defining characteristics.
Pietist scholar Ernest Stoeffler defined the movement as “trust in God as revealed in Christ, based upon the testimony of Scripture, authenticated in personal religious experience, and productive of an affective identification with Christ which is clearly felt.”
The “personal experience” element was revolutionary for its time. Spener wanted to help the church avoid what he saw as hair-splitting doctrinal differences over law and grace. Instead, he proposed a new paradigm for preachers, inventing something we find normal today.
We see the new paradigm in this quote from Pia Desideria:
“Our whole Christian faith consists in the inner man and the new man. Faith and good works are the fruits of this new life. Preaching should set forth the mercies of God so that faith and the inner man may be strengthened more and more. [The preacher] should work in such a way that he is not satisfied with the outward man and outward virtues. Rather, we must lay the foundation properly in people’s hearts.”
This emphasis on the inner life was a pendulum swing against the Lutheran mainstream, a major departure from Martin Luther’s view that the Law and Gospel should be the Christian life’s focus.
What Motivated the Pietists’ Teaching?
Pietism was one of Protestantism’s first movements that attempted to remove the distinction between the head and the heart. Pietism’s founders believed that this distinction was causing debates plaguing the Lutheran church. They desired unity among the Protestant scholars.
Another motivator was to see the world evangelized. Many conservative Lutherans thought the great commission had been fulfilled during the apostles’ time, so sending missionaries was unnecessary. Spener and others rejected this idea and advocated for evangelizing the entire world.
How Did Pietism Become Popular?
Pietism initially impacted Germany but went on to have a global impact through Nicholas Von Zinzendorf, who founded the modern missions movement 100 years before William Carey. Zinzendorf emphasized a personal relationship with God that overflowed into a passion to share him with others.
Zinzendorf’s passion started when he sheltered Moravian exiles at his estate in Herrnhut. While they were there, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and a revival occurred. Zinzendorf was ready to leave everything to share Jesus with those who had never heard of him. He traveled as far as the West Indies and met notable individuals like Benjamin Franklin during his travels in America.
Zinzendorf and the Moravians also influenced John Wesley, father of Methodism. Upon hearing a sermon by Moravians in London, Wesley decided to live his life emphasizing holiness. Pietist ideas flowed into Wesley’s followers, and the Methodists became one of early American Christianity’s dominant forces.
John’s brother, Charles Wesley, further spread Pietist ideas through his hymns and songs. His music was already revolutionary because it was new music—establishment churches preferred to sing songs written centuries earlier or the Psalms themselves. The Pietist ideas in his lyrics brought even more changes and continue influencing churches today.
What Made Pietism a Revolutionary Change?
The Pietists were one of the first Christian groups to focus on reading the Bible for themselves— traditional Lutherans focused more on devotional life as a corporate exercise. Pietism’s approach helped create the modern church practice we call personal Bible study.
Pietists also emphasized equipping laypeople for ministry, which gave rise to another modern church feature: the small group bible study. The realization that the Bible could and should be studied outside the Church and the family was revolutionary for that day. This became a defining feature of American Christianity, largely through the Methodists’ emphasis on raising people who could understand and apply the text to themselves.
Pietism’s emphasis on revival also helped shape our modern church. Zinzendort and the Moravian exiles praying together led to one of the greatest revivals in church history and over 100 years of continual prayer. This desire for revival affected the entire Pietist movement, and the modern church still feels its impulse today.
Pietism’s emphasis on small group Bible study, revival, and personal devotion still ripples into American Christianity today. This small group of Lutherans in the 1600s impacted us in positive and negative ways, giving rise to the church as we know it today.
But if it has positively and negatively affected us, what are some negative influences we should know about?
What Are Some Criticisms of Pietism?
Pietism faced many criticisms, particularly from the Lutheran church it emerged from.
Pietism’s emphasis on the inner life differed from Luther’s discussion of law and grace. Luther fought tooth and nail to regain the emphasis upon justification and would have recoiled at this emphasis.
Because Pietism emphasized emotions, Lutherans accused the first Pietists of swinging the pendulum too far, putting all the emphasis on emotions and none on doctrine.
Some worried that Pietism’s experientialism and individualism led to not caring about the larger church or church history. There were a few occasions when radical Pietists left society to found their own communities.
Seventeenth-century Lutherans worried that Pietists (to use Luther’s terminology) were “theologians of glory” who thought they could perfect themselves. That is, believing their spiritual growth rested in themselves rather than in God giving the growth. Luther emphasized being a theologian of the cross who sees God’s self-revelation and weakness and seeks to make peace with their weakness in light of who God is. In the process, they trust that God will give them growth.
Because Pietism emphasized personal Bible study over corporate teaching, some worried that Pietist hermeneutic leads to narcigesis, not exegesis. Exegesis asks what the text is trying to teach people. Narcigesis only asks how the text makes the reader feel.
Others worried that Pietism’s emphasis on personal faith affects society in other messy ways. For example, if devotion time replaces family worship, it may devalue the family. Taken too far, individualist Christianity could lead to societal breakdown.
Another criticism of Pietism is that spitting the head and heart caused the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement. Both movements separated the intellect and faith, with various consequences for Christianity—such as making theology more about history (what has come) than science (how things work).
Some of these criticisms don’t stand up well.
The criticism about individualism and experientialism is more a critique of quietism, a movement that Madame Guyon founded in France during the seventeenth century. This movement emphasized internal faith at the expense of practicing faith daily. For the most part, Pietists did not become so individualistic they cut themselves off from the rest of the church—after all, they kickstarted the Protestant missions movement.
While the inner life matters a lot in Pietism, and some went so far that they created their own little groups, most Pietists balanced heartfelt emotion with the creeds and councils. Only a few put so much emphasis on personal experience that they neglected anything else.
Others raise issues that Christians should be aware of today.
What Can We Learn from When Pietism Went Wrong?
While many things in Pietism were helpful, some of its excesses leave us with important lessons about what to avoid.
The law vs. grace debate is complicated but should not be completely avoided. Justification and sanctification need to be held simultaneously.
Christians should watch out for narcigesis. Sometimes, we put so much emphasis on reading the Bible to make us feel a certain way that we forget to consider what it says.
Christians should also remember what came before their time (the creeds and councils). Some Pietists did emphasize personal experience so much that they neglected everything else. It’s important to remember Christianity has a history.
The same point applies to family worship—some Christians focus on only their personal relationship with Jesus and avoid engaging with their families or a local church. Being part of a larger faith community matters.
What Can Christians Apply From Pietism?
Like any spiritual movement, Pietism left us with things we can practice today—as long as we consider the context.
Pietism desired holiness and personal devotion—-both good things in a healthy context. We should seek consistent spiritual practices that value the head and the heart. When we do that, we find true piety.
When Pietism took unhealthy directions, it separated the head from the heart too much. Faith has emotions, but it is not all about emotions. Reason has its place, too. Our human efforts will always learn to one side of the pendulum or the other. We need God’s help to find the balance—which we find when we depend on and ask the Holy Spirit for help.
Photo Credit: © Getty Images/gorodenkoff
Ben Reichert works with college students in New Zealand. He graduated from Iowa State in 2019 with degrees in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and agronomy. He is passionate about church history, theology, and having people walk with Jesus. When not working or writing you can find him running or hiking in the beautiful New Zealand Bush.
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