Pietism is the most important development in the history of Christianity most Christians have never heard of. It wasn’t high on my radar either until a few years back when I began to learn about its contribution to the rise of secularism in Western culture. Because of the Gnostic and dualistic nature of Pietism, the successful takeover of secularism in Western culture was inevitable. With the church, and Christians in general, focused on otherworldly concerns, culture and governing could be left to the godless. This was never the Pietists’ intention, but it was inevitable given their theological assumptions.

Both Pietism and secularism lead to the same thing: a secular society devoid of Christian influence. This might seem counter intuitive given the former is passionately religious while the latter is completely anti-religion. As we’ll see, Pietism has been a disaster for Christian cultural influence in the West, turning Christianity into a culturally irrelevant force. That was not at all the intention of its founders, or for most who subsequently embraced it, but it was the practical result of their understanding of Christianity, nonetheless.

Before we go back in time, let’s clarify terms since few people are familiar with Pietism. We are not talking about piety, the good and necessary personal reverence or devotion to God, but a German Lutheran movement that developed in the early seventeenth century. Because of the influence of Pietism, secularism triumphed as Christianity became primarily inward and personal, eschewing cultural engagement for personal devotion. It took time, but eventually Christianity completely lost the world transforming power that overthrew the Roman Empire, defeated paganism, and gave the world the blessings of modern society.

Pietism and the Reaction to Scholasticism
Scholasticism was a rigorously logical method of teaching in the schools of Western Europe in the Middle Ages, dominating universities from approximately 1100 to 1600, and into the seventeenth century. All of the early Reformers grew up and were influenced by an educational system steeped in scholasticism, and thus their approach tended to the intellectual. Both Luther and Calvin were educated in the Medieval Scholastic system, and their theological works reflect that. Lutheranism and Calvinism, soon labeled Reformed, would not stray far from their intellectual and scholarly roots, until, that is, the reaction of the first Pietists to Lutheran Scholasticism. The influence of Pietism would go well beyond Lutheranism in the centuries to come because of its focus on experience and not theology or doctrine, allowing it to easily cross denominational boundaries to eventually become the default expression of Christianity in the modern world.

 In his book, Pietism and the Foundations of the Modern World, Justin Davis defines Pietism as such:

Pietism is the generic Protestant expression of experiential Christianity. Notions of mysticism, revivalism, and antipathy towards the world and established religious culture become the standard modes in which this experiential religion is expressed. Individualism is often identified as a central tenet of both Protestantism and modernity, and as such it is also key to understanding Pietism. Pietism is therefore shorthand for the prioritization of experience over rationalism and scholasticism for Protestants. . . . the term is an expression of experiential Protestantism in general.

 I can vouch for this definition in my experience of the Christianity I was born-again into when I was in college. The focus on the “spiritual” meant things of the mind were not so much disparaged, as ignored, although they could be seen as semi-dangerous to our relationship with Jesus. It wasn’t until after I discovered Francis Schaeffer and eventually Reformed theology that I realized this version of Christianity was anti-intellectual, anti-theological, and ahistorical.

Experience and feeling, a feature of Pietism, can turn into a kind of idol like anything else; it was something that haunted John Wesley throughout his life, morbid introspection. Martin Luther taking his que from Augustine, helpfully defined sin as Incurvatus in se, Latin for being turned or curved inward on oneself, so much navel gazing. Thankfully, Christianity offers us the best of both worlds, the heart and the mind, but the mind would prove no match for the rise of Pietism as Western Christianity developed over the next several hundred years. Davis adds that by the nineteenth century, “nearly every influential Protestant theologian . . . was impacted or confronted Pietism or its systems.”

The Founding Fathers of Pietism
Pietism had antecedents in the mysticism of the Middle Ages as Christians were looking for more experiential religious expression. Those Christians seeking an experiential religion by removing themselves from society became monks and nuns. Various models of mystical piety resonated with early Protestants even though the tradition was Catholic. Borrowing their thoughts and practices while putting them in the Protestant context, Pietists would make a kind of mystical experience an essential aspect of Protestant Christianity. Unlike other forms of Reformational Christianity, it wasn’t creeds, confessions, or synods, but experiences that scratched their spiritual itch. This will become abundantly clear in the centuries to come.

The founding of Pietism was a long historical process, but it is generally agreed while not the founder,  Johann Arndt (1555-1621) was foundational to the movement. A pastor, Arndt published a series of books starting in 1605 called True Christianity, in which he developed an experiential Christianity differing from previous mysticism in that it seeks a kind of union or merging with God, but something available to all Christians. Justin Davis writes,

In none of these works does he simply abandon himself to the idea that his experiences are those of a mystic, rather they reflect a newness of life that is far more open and common to every Christian.

Arndt finds little value in theology or doctrine not specifically in service to the renewed life of faith. Thus, “the true Christian must find the kingdom of God within themselves” rather than in any focus on the outside world or the wider church. This effectively transferred a person’s “salvation to the realm of moral endeavor” rather than the communal life of the church. His followers “focused on personal revivals rather than a revival of the church or the culture at large,” and his work came to dominate discussions not just in Germany but throughout Europe.

Philip Jakob Spener (1635-1705) built on the work of Arndt and is technically the founding father of Pietism. Serving as a pastor in Frankfort, Germany, he introduced something called Collegia Pietatis, or “piety groups,” thus Pietism. From these twice-weekly devotional meetings in his house, Spener published Pia Desideria, “Devout Desires,” in 1675, with six major proposals for reform and revitalization of the church. Spener’s reforms were pastoral and practical, easily adopted by the laity, but not popular with the German Lutheran Church who accused him of doctrinal laxity. Indeed, Spener considered doctrinal conflicts irrelevant and often harmful, which would be a hallmark of modern Evangelicalism in the centuries to come. To Spener, and Evangelicals in the future, religious and moral duties were far more important than doctrinal disputes.

We also see in Spener a kind of asceticism in his opposition to card playing, dancing, the opera, and theater, and his stress upon moderation in dress, food, and drink. This becomes a feature of the fundamentalism of the nineteenth and especially twentieth century, along with an undervaluation of the church’s liturgy’, sacraments, and clergy. We see the legacy of this in modern, stripped down services in many churches which consist of praise music and a sermon. It also wasn’t just his desire to reform the church separating him from Arndt, but his desire to confront the growing secularism of what was quickly becoming the modern world because of the effects of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).

Secularism was also given a push by French Philosopher Renes Descartes (1596-1650) and the development of rationalism, a radical, indeed revolutionary departure from the Middle Ages in which man began his pursuit of knowledge with God. Now, man would begin his pursuit of knowledge with man, as Descartes put it, Cogito Ergo Sum, or I think therefore I am. From Descartes sprung the period in Western intellectual history known as the Enlightenment, so called because man was supposedly coming out of what some thought “The Dark Ages,” and into the glorious light of human reason. On this freight train to modernism, secularism hitched a ride, and the Western world would undergo a slow moving irreligious revolution. Spener was determined to fight against that. As governments became more secular, it was the church through the preaching and the laity that would affect legislation for reform to create a more religious society. His embrace of Luther’s notion of a priesthood of all believers can be seen in a work he published in 1677 titled The Spiritual Priesthood, which would take Arndt’s more inner looking spirituality in a more outward, practical direction. Also, because of its lack of focus on a rigid orthodoxy, Pietism as it grew easily adapted to different theological contexts.

Finally, in its development, Pietism would not be limited to Lutheran Germany. Prior to its appearance in Lutheran circles, a Pietism without the name is found in the work of highly influential English Reformed theologian William Perkins (1558–1602), considered the “father of Puritanism.” Coinciding almost exactly with the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603), Perkins’ life influenced a whole generation of English churchmen and English piety. The focus of Perkins’ life and ministry was developing piety in others, his students, parishioners, fellow pastors, and readers. From his influential position at Cambridge in his preaching, teaching, and especially writing, he proved a gifted popularizer of Reformed theology.

His books outsold those of Calvin and Beza in England, and he became the first English theologian to enjoy a wide readership throughout Europe with books translated into several languages. He was also the first English Protestant theologian to be published North America. The English Puritans escaping persecution made their way to the New World in the great Puritan migration to New England from 1620 to 1640. “Anyone who reads the writings of early New England learns that Perkins was indeed a towering figure in their eyes,” wrote Perry Miller. Perkins and his followers were “the most quoted, most respected, and most influential of contemporary authors in the writings and sermons of early Massachusetts.” In fact, Jonathan Edwards was fond of reading Perkins more than a century later.

Perkins shows us that piety and intellectual rigor are not mutually exclusive. The problem, however, was that Pietism the movement tended to see them as exactly that, or if not, then at least in tension. Too much intellectual effort and you were in danger of your heart growing cold, but that’s not the way knowledge works, as is the case with any of the good gifts of God. As Tim Keller said, idolatry is turning good things into ultimate things, and that can happen with anything. Even though Perkins wrote extensively on theological topics, his teaching and exhortation on pious Christian living made the biggest impact in America where various forms of Pietism across denominational lines would come to dominate Evangelical faith. Add that to our next “founder,” and in due course Pietism would become the default Evangelical experience for Christians, as it was for me many years after these men lived.

John Wesley and the Institutionalization of Pietism
The man most responsible for bringing Pietism to dominance in Christianity is the impressive if problematic John Wesley. Prior to learning about Wesley, I would never have connected Pietism with the development of the modern world, leaving the blame, or credit as the case may be, for that on the Enlightenment. But both historical phenomena had a fascinating symbiotic relationship through time to give us the modern world. I’ve argued here previously that Pietism and secularism are two sides of the same coin.

Wesley was born in 1703 into a strict Christian family, attended Oxford University, and eventually became an ordained priest in the Church of England. In 1729 he returned to Oxford for a fellowship, joining his brother Charles in a religious study group derisively called the “Methodists” because of their emphasis on methodical study and devotion. The “Holy Group,” as they were also known by those who mocked them, were active in doing good works in the community and intense in their religious devotion. In November 1735 these concerns would compel Wesley to take a trip to Georgia to oversee the spiritual lives of the colonists and be a missionary to the Native Americans, in addition to seeking his own salvation of which he was still not assured. The trip would be filled with terror and doubt in the middle of which he would encounter a Pietism lived out that challenged his weak faith.

Specifically, Wesley encountered a group of Moravians, also called United Brethren, from what is the modern day Czech Republic. They were initially followers of Jan Hus, who foreshadowed the Reformation to come and was burned at the stake at the Council of Constance in 1417. Wesley’s trip to George was a failure, his dream of what he would accomplish turning into a nightmare. A couple years later he fled back to Britain. Even in his interaction with the Moravians, he still did not have assurance of his salvation, until he met another Moravian, a missionary himself heading to Georgia, Peter Bohler. Wesley was told he had no saving faith, and still hoped to become righteous by virtue of his own deeds, lacking true faith that comes in an instant, bringing rebirth and certainty of salvation. Talking to Bohler he was convinced he didn’t possess saving faith. This realization was Wesley’s real Evangelical conversion.

From this point on, age 35, Wesley would proclaim the good news of salvation by grace through faith, which he did in any pulpit he could find. The Church of England, however, did not like such displays of what was called at the time, “enthusiasm,” and he became persona non grata. This reaction was the opportunity to jump start the Great Awakening in England, something that had already been happening in America with Jonathan Edwards starting back in New England in 1734 with a series of sermons on “Justification by Faith Alone.” Initially Wesley worked with groups of Moravian church societies, but in 1739 when he got pushback there as well, George Whitefield persuaded him to go to the unchurched masses. It is difficult to convey to modern readers how radical Wesley was in the eyes of the religious establishment of his day. Any religious work done outside of the established parish churches was suspect because there could be no control mechanisms against “enthusiasm.”   

Even as Wesley became an itinerate preacher whose endurance was legendary, his mission wasn’t only saving souls, but keeping Christians accountable to live and grow in a life of holiness. To that end he developed rules for the Methodist Societies, and association within these societies had little to do with doctrine outside of the broad contours of a kind of “mere Christianity.” In due course Wesley would send lay preachers to the American colonies, where Methodism grew quickly and over time would become one of America’s largest denominations, though in time dividing over various issues.

How Pietism Came to Dominate the Evangelical Church
This was a complicated several hundred year cultural and sociological process, but in due course American Protestant Christianity would become a thoroughly Pietistic Christianity. The first Great Awakening had a profound impact on the spread of the distinctives of Pietism. George Whitfield (1714-1770), arguably the greatest evangelist ever, would preach the new birth and holiness throughout the American colonies as well as in Great Britain, arriving in America in 1738 after Wesley left. Through the spreading Great Awakening Pietism eventually was institutionalized in various Protestant denominations, The conversion experience would always be the driver, and a commitment to personal holiness would follow. My conversion and early Christian life would fit the Pietist mold to a T.

And speaking of holiness, Wesley’s striving for and obsession with holiness led him to preach something few Christians today have ever heard of, perfectionism. Eventually, holiness movements in various forms would have broad influence in Evangelical Christianity in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Also called the higher life, or victorious Christian living, it often included a “second blessing” which would eventually be integral to the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. Wesley’s teaching on perfectionism would not only inspire holiness teaching, but become an underlying assumption of modern fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. That was the case when I was a young Christian. Nobody I knew or heard overtly taught perfectionism, but it expressed itself in what I came to call moralism. Christianity was defined in practice as morality. I’m all for morality, doing good and right, living in obedience to God’s law, which is fundamental to Christianity, but Christianity is far more than morality.

This conception of Christianity is about jumping through hoops, and if you jump through all the right hoops, you can feel good about your faith and your relationship to God. It basically turns Christianity into a form of legalism, and given I’m a sinner guilt was a constant companion in my young Christian life no matter how hard I willed myself to overcome my sin. Even though perfectionism wasn’t overtly taught, I had imbibed Wesley’s theological assumptions. It wasn’t until my mentor led me to a book by the great Princton theologian B.B. Warfield called, Studies in Perfectionism, that I learned about the history of the holiness movements of the last two hundred plus years.

There is also a dualism inherent in Pietism that causes Christians influenced by it to tend to reject political or cultural influence as biblical imperatives. It wasn’t that way with the early Lutheran, English, or American Pietists. They very much saw their faith as logically having an impact for the good on the societies in which they lived. Unfortunately, because of their thin theology and focus on experience, any Christian societal impact could not be sustained, and thus secularism eventually came to dethrone Christianity in the West.