Pietism

PIETISM

PIETISM. The name given to the renewal movement in German Protestantism that flourished in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Pietism aimed to combat growing formalism in the Lutheran Church. The father of the movement was Philipp Jakob Spener, the senior Lutheran minister in Frankfurt am Main, who began collegia pietatis, small lay groups formed to promote bible study and prayer. He stressed the Christian behavior in daily life, urged lay members to play a larger role in church work, and promoted reform of theological education. His younger protégé, August Hermann Francke, established near the University of Halle a massive complex of institutions (including an orphanage, several schools, and bible and mission societies) that became the principal pietistic center.

In the American colonies the influence of churchly Pietism was exerted chiefly through the German Lutherans and the Moravians. Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg was sent to North America in 1742 by the church fathers at Halle to bring the troubled Lutheran congregations into order and to counter the proselytizing efforts of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, leader of the Moravian Church. Mühlenberg succeeded in organizing the Lutheran parishes and is thus referred to as the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America. The American Moravians were the most pietistic of all the colonial religious bodies and were especially adept at creating religious music. In addition, various movements were influenced by Radical Pietism, which advocated separation

from state churches. These included the Brethren (nicknamed Dunkers), who arrived in 1719, and the communitarian Ephrata Society that broke from them, led by Conrad Beissel. Later communal bodies of similar orientation were the Harmonists, the Separatists of Zoar, and the Amana Colonies. Pietism was from the beginning strongly missionary in emphasis and for that reason had large significance in colonial America and later church development.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pitzer, Donald R., ed. America's Communal Utopias. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Stoeffler, F. Ernest, ed. Continental Pietism and Early American Christianity. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1976.

Donald F. Durnbaugh

William W. Sweet

See also Religion and Religious Affiliation .

Justice James C. McReynolds, from the P ierce opinion:

"The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations."