Pietism in Germany and North America 1680–1820

Hartmut Lehmann, James Van Horn Melton, Jonathan Strom

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351911207
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: World History

This collection explores different approaches to contextualizing and conceptualizing the history of Pietism, particularly Pietistic groups who migrated from central Europe to the British colonies in North America during the long eighteenth century. Emerging in German speaking lands during the seventeenth century, Pietism was closely related to Puritanism, sharing similar evangelical and heterogeneous characteristics. Dissatisfied with the established Lutheran and Reformed Churches, Pietists sought to revivify Christianity through godly living, biblical devotion, millennialism and the establishment of new forms of religious association. As Pietism represents a diverse set of impulses rather than a centrally organized movement, there were inevitably fundamental differences amongst Pietist groups, and these differences - and conflicts - were carried with those that emigrated to the New World. The importance of Pietism in shaping Protestant society and culture in Europe and North America has long been recognized, but as a topic of scholarly inquiry, it has until now received little interdisciplinary attention. Offering essays by leading scholars from a range of fields, this volume provides an interdisciplinary overview of the subject. Beginning with discussions about the definition of Pietism, the collection next looks at the social, political and cultural dimensions of Pietism in German-speaking Europe. This is then followed by a section investigating the attempts by German Pietists to establish new, religiously-based communities in North America. The collection concludes with discussions on new directions in Pietist research. Together these essays help situate Pietism in the broader Atlantic context, making an important contribution to understanding religious life in Europe and colonial North America during the eighteenth century.

PART I

Defining Pietism in the World of Transatlantic Religious Revivals

Chapter 1

Pietism in the World of Transatlantic Religious Revivals

Hartmut Lehmann

In discussing the various aspects of Pietism in the context of transatlantic religious revivals, three theses may be helpful. First, definitions of Pietism have changed considerably over time, and particularly in the last hundred years. Second, Pietism never was a homogenous religious movement; rather, the term Pietism always characterized a conglomerate of more or less different religious revivals. And third, as of now, with the exception of W.R. Ward’s The Protestant Evangelical Awakening, no scholar has attempted to define Pietism as part of a series of religious revivals in the Atlantic World. If we look at Pietism as a religious reform movement in a transatlantic context, however, new questions deserving careful consideration arise.

Since the beginning of scholarly interest in the history of Pietism, this movement of religious renewal within continental European Protestantism has eluded definition.¹ In the first surveys of the history of Pietism, published in the middle of the nineteenth century, “Pietism” meant attempts to reform the Protestant churches of Germany, as initiated in the 1670s in Frankfurt by Philipp Jakob Spener, and as continued in the 1690s in Halle by August Hermann Francke. Pious clergymen like Johann Albrecht Bengel and Friedrich Christoph Oetinger followed in the tradition of both Spener and Francke. Up to the 1850s, Zinzendorf and the Herrnhuter, or Moravians, were believed to have formed a religious movement separate from Pietism. Radical minds like Johann Jakob Schütz or Conrad Beissel, who decided to migrate to the British colonies in North America rather than give in to the demands of church authorities, also were not considered Pietists.

One generation later, in the 1880s, Albrecht Ritschl, professor of theology at Göttingen University, produced a magisterial three-volume history of Pietism.² Influenced by Heinrich Heppe,³ Ritschl also treated reform efforts in the Netherlands, the Nadere Reformatie. Like most of his contemporaries, Ritschl believed that the Herrnhuter had been a genuine part of the reform movement of Pietism. Furthermore, by discussing the life and work of the followers of Francke and Zinzendorf, as well as the early nineteenth century followers of Spener, Ritschl extended the movement of Pietism chronologically. In retrospect, however, another feature of Ritschl’s work seems even more important: he, like many late-nineteenth-century Protestant theologians, believed that Pietist devotion and Pietist religious practices still contained too many Catholic elements. A staunch believer in Protestantism as a progressive cultural force, Ritschl was rather critical of the historical role of Pietism.

Another generation later, historians like Carl Mirbt,⁴ church historians like Horst Stephan,⁵ and religious sociologists like Max Weber⁶ challenged Ritschl’s critical view. After studying the social and educational activities of many Pietists, they concluded that Pietism had been a progressive religious and social force, much like Puritanism in Great Britain or Jansenism in France and Italy. But these scholars did not extend the geographical or chronological scope of Pietism beyond Ritschl’s definition.

Three generations after Mirbt, Stephan, and Weber, yet another interpretation of Pietism has emerged, which can be found in the four-volume Geschichte des Pietismus (History of Pietism) just completed under the auspices of the Historical Commission for Pietism Research.⁷ Two major revisions in this new interpretation of Pietism deserve special attention. Volume one covers religious reform in German and Central European Protestantism since the early seventeenth century, beginning with Johann Arndt and Johann Valentin Andreae.⁸ Arndt emerges as, if not the actual founding father of Pietism, at least the most important spiritual ancestor of Spener and Francke. And Spener, now seen as part of a reform movement that began even before the Thirty Years War, is no longer regarded as the theologian who almost single-handedly initiated Pietism. The second major revision emerges in volume three of the new History of Pietism,⁹ where the various contributors discuss religious reform movements within nineteenth and twentieth century Protestantism – thus acknowledging that Pietism extends right up to the present.

Another feature of this new History of Pietism deserves mention. The first volume contains a section by Klaus Deppermann on English Puritanism, the second volume contains a chapter by Gregg Roeber on Pietism in North America, and the third volume includes a large section by Mark Noll on religious renewal in nineteenth and twentieth century North America.¹⁰ After close consideration of these chapters, key questions arise: What, after all, is Pietism? What are its features? How far has Pietism extended geographically and chronologically? These, in turn, lead to one crucial question: What is the relation of the various revivals and awakenings – Puritanism, Pietism, Methodism – within British and North American Protestantism from the seventeenth century up to the twentieth? The new History of Pietism brings these movements into close relationship with Pietism, without discussing this relationship comprehensively or consistently.

In the last few decades, two scholars have addressed this complex issue in completely different manners. Ernest Stoeffler, in his 1965 study The Rise of Evangelical Pietism, incorporated many segments of Puritanism into his description of Pietism.¹¹ In retrospect, however, he did not achieve the necessary clarification that he intended. Scholars of Puritanism never accepted Stoeffler’s view, which appeared to them as a kind of Pietistic imperialist excursion into Puritan territory. In 1992, by contrast, William Reginald Ward, in his The Protestant Evangelical Awakening, incorporated most of Pietism into his panorama of late seventeenth and eighteenth century religious revivals within Western Protestantism.¹² But he does not discuss Pietism explicitly, nor does he attempt to interpret Spener’s special mission. While Stoeffler expanded the notion of Pietism to include large portions of Puritanism, Ward reduced the role of Pietism to an episode within early modern religious awakenings that originated in England.

This brings us to the question of whether Pietism was a conglomerate of varied and differing religious revivals. Several modes for explaining the relationship of Puritanism and Pietism exist. First, there is the national view, which argues that Puritanism was something typically British – or, rather, English – just as Pietism was something typically German, although some Protestants in Scandinavia and Switzerland also adhered to Pietism. Both of these religious movements are thus understood as expressions of national religious traditions and aspirations. Some interactions cannot and should not be denied, as proponents of this view would indeed argue, but on the whole they would contend that both of these movements were basically autonomous. Most of the literature on Puritanism and on Pietism has been written in this mode.

A second mode of interpretation regards Puritanism and Pietism, as well as later Methodism, as basically similar in religious motives and in religious practices. Pietism, in this view, also appears similar, but not historically simultaneous, to Jansenism in France. According to this interpretation, Puritanism preceded Jansenism by two generations, which in turn preceded Pietism by one generation. Ernst Troeltsch was the first to express this theory, even before the First World War.¹³ I attempted to describe this interpretation more systematically in 1980, in my Das Zeitalter des Absolutismus.¹⁴ Proponents of this view understand Puritanism, Jansenism, and Pietism as religious movements that refused to accept the politics and cultural life of absolutism.¹⁵ They stress that the members of these movements rejected Baroque splendor and the absolutist rule of princes who claimed to govern by divine right (Gottesgnadentum). Within European Christianity, these three movements – pious Protestants in England, pious French Catholics named after their spiritual leader Jansenius, and pious German Lutherans whom contemporaries labeled Pietists – all opposed early forms of secularization of politics and culture by challenging the aspirations of absolutism. They represented the first attempts to re-christianize European societies threatened by de-christianization.

Perhaps we can carry this interpretation a step further. If we look at central figures and characteristic features of both Puritanism and Pietism, we can observe striking similarities in their respective expressions of faith and forms of religious practice. We find the belief in renewal and rebirth on the individual and the community or congregational levels, and the belief that earnest and committed Christians should devote their lives to labor for the growth of the Kingdom of God. If we accept these similarities, then, working with the Weberian notion of ideal types, Puritanism and Pietism (as well as Methodism later) appear as distinct waves of religious renewal or awakening. Thus our research should not be guided by terms such as “Puritanism” or “Pietism,” labels attached by often hostile and envious contemporaries. Instead, our research should attempt to analyze the causes, the character, and the consequences of the sequence of waves of revivals and awakenings since the seventeenth century in various European countries and in North America.

This view should guide us as we attempt to place Pietism in context. Two ways exist of looking at Pietism within Western Protestantism and in the Atlantic world in particular. First, one can attempt to define the roots of Pietism with its beginnings in places such as Frankfurt, Halle, Herrnhut, and other Central European locations. After establishing the role that these centers played for the leaders of Pietism, one then traces the influence they exerted abroad, especially by following the paths of missionaries, examining the letters exchanged between centers such as Halle and the brothers and sisters in other countries, and counting the number of Bibles and barrels containing essentia dulcis shipped to other countries.

In this kind of research, the locations of the center and the periphery are always clear. Beyond Germany, one looks at connections, influences, and secondary effects of the initiatives that originated in places like Halle or Herrnhut. In this kind of research, Pietism always remains truly German. Important as contacts in other countries, such as “born-again” Christians in Pennsylvania, may have been, scholarly interpretation can best be described as following the mother and child method, most recently exemplified in the new History of Pietism. This helps to explain why Pietism research seems to be dominated almost exclusively by German scholars. The inside interpretation offered by German experts of Pietism appears more important than any interpretation from the outside, by non-German scholars. But such a view cannot solve the problems that arise when Pietism is examined in a transatlantic context.

Another and better way exists to study the historical phenomenon we call Pietism: comprehending it as part of a series of religious revivals in Central Europe, which were, from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century and beyond, part of a series of religious revivals in many European countries and in the Atlantic world. Of course, certain initiatives originated in specific locations and resulted from the labor of specific persons. But not one of these initiatives in Central Europe remained untouched by religious revivals elsewhere. Networks of individuals and groups with special religious experiences confront us. They exchanged letters with others whom they believed to be “born-again,” and they recommended pious devotional books and tracts to those brothers and sisters in other places whom they believed were preparing the ground for the Second Coming and laboring to establish God’s Kingdom. We should analyze these multiple – partially overlapping, partially conflicting – religious networks.

Some of these individuals and groups were inspired by eschatological speculations, others by social work and the desire to help the needy. Some, certainly, were more active than others, and some more successful. Moreover, some nurtured feelings of exclusiveness, while others were ready to share and cooperate. Overall, religious life in the Atlantic World in the second half of the seventeenth century and the eighteenth century was vibrant, marked on the one hand by feelings of anxiety caused by the fear of dying suddenly without the assurance of being saved, and on the other by the hope inspired by Spener’s explanation that a kind God would grant an extended period before the Second Coming during which His faithful children could begin building His Kingdom. And no one knew when and where Christ’s Second Coming would occur. Those on the margins, laboring in the mission-fields, were no less vital to the building of God’s Kingdom than those in places like Halle, Herrnhut, Amsterdam, and London. In this universal story of salvation, those who chose to seek refuge in North America were no less important than those who invested their time in reforming the church at home or preparing the missions of those who ventured abroad. One could even argue that those laboring on the frontier were the true heroes in the battle against unbelief.

I propose a new typological and historical approach to the history of Pietism that combines an analysis of religious orientation with a study of religious practices and religious activities independent of national traditions of interpretation. I am convinced that the full range, or the full impact, of religious renewals and revivals within the Western world since the seventeenth century can only be grasped if we transcend national boundaries. Put differently, this broader agenda and wider view of a sequence of religious renewals and religious awakenings since the seventeenth century should inform future research on Pietism. When researching the role of Pietism in the Atlantic World, we should deal with Pietism as part of an open field of religious revivals, initiatives to create fellowship, and religious experiences recorded and shared in letters, books, and tracts – in short, of attempts to build God’s Kingdom.

We should expand the scope of these explorations in two directions. First, we should look not only at the Atlantic World but also at Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, and the mission-fields in Africa and in the Far East. Not all who decided to leave Central Europe migrated to North America. Until the nineteenth century, America was not the first choice of those in Central Europe who felt they were persecuted on religious grounds.¹⁶ Missionary efforts included all continents. We have to analyze and interpret these steps towards globalization, and we should be aware that pious people – that is, the men and women who considered themselves “born-again” and who labored to pave the way to God’s Kingdom – transgressed all boundaries. For them, the progress of salvation-history was universal, and the whole world provided the arena of God’s planning in which they felt in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: Pietism in Two Worlds
• PART I: DEFINING PIETISM IN THE WORLD OF TRANSATLANTIC RELIGIOUS REVIVALS
• PART II: DISSENT AND MIGRATION: OLD WORLD HERITAGE
• PART III: DISSENT AND MIGRATION: NEW WORLD CONFRONTATIONS
• PART IV: NEW DIRECTIONS IN RESEARCH
• Index