Introduction:
The term Pietist was
first used in 1670s. The recent scholarship indicates that Pietist research can
contribute significantly to how historians understand the development of the Christianity
in the last three hundred years. This attention and methodological advance has
not resulted to uniformity in what is pietism or how it should be limited
chronologically or geographically. Though there were disagreements among scholars,
the understanding of pietism was widely existed among them and contributors often
differed about the nature of pietism. In spite of all disagreements about the
nature of pietism the broad understanding helped in making with other movements
in the religious history but the lack of definitional clarity related to pietism
stands as a hindrance to the fruitful application of the term. [1]
In this paper we analyze some present issues in Pietist research such as definition,
and the problems and the promise which historians of Christianity encounter.
Problems of Definition
In the late 1680’s the Pietistery and Pietismus
were referred to renewal movement within Lutheranism associated with Philipp Jacob spencer and August Hermann Francke. Since its inception
the origin and scope of the movement became a matter of debate but many understood
pietism as a movement within German Lutheranism. In the late 19th
century Ritschl reformed a renewal
movement in Netherlands and Germany alongside Lutheran expressions. While his contemporary
Heinrich Heppe related pietism to
English Puritanism, both linked pietism to varieties of medieval mysticism
which was strongly opposed by many German scholars and church historians. [2]
Problems of scholarship
Present
scholarship accepted, three general approaches to pietism. First one was represented by Martin
Brecht which emphasis the origins of
pietism in a crisis in piety that
occurred in late 16th and 17th
century Protestantism
and same was echoed in England,
Netherlands and Germany . All these movements
caused for the growth of pietism based on repentance, sanctification and imitatio, while Brecht does not consider contemporaneous movements such as
Jansenism in Catholicism or Hassidism in Judaism as historical one same as of pietism.
Brecht understanding of pietism and
reformed movements within Protestantism influenced each other and encouraged research
across the world. Brecht’s idea of
pietism leaves this movement more unclear because of this other scholars were
hesitant to apply it widely; Klaus Deppermann does not refer
pietism within the Puritan movement, Johannes Von
Den Berg avoids the term
pietism in his movement in Netherlands but replaces with “nadere reformatie” Brecht’s vision of
the early Pietist movement primarily emphasizes
the practice of piety and does
not place much emphasis on innovative
forms of religious association or community. [3]
Second approach seeks to
distinguish pietism in a narrow sense from the broader piety movements. Johannes Wallmann argues that specific
characteristics such as formation of groups of conventicles and chiliastic –
hopes for better times distinguish pietism in the narrow sense. He strongly stresses
the difference between the narrower and broader understanding of pietism. The
third approach is emerged in late 1680 when there was a confliction and
formation of Pietist and Orthodox parties. Hans
Leuune is the proponent of this approach
and this view of pietism is the narrowest in scope and has the advantage
of avoiding an out dated application. It also emphasis conflict and controversy which in turn includes
more radical varieties of pietism and at the same
time restrictive in understanding and applicable to other confessional and national contexts. [4]
None of the above three
approaches suggests a clear endpoint to pietism. Apart from Wurttemberg, Pietism was traditionally
understood to have waned by the mid-18th Century, when the enmities of
the orthodox and Pietist parties broke in the face of the new challenges by
rationalist and enlightenment.[5]
Pietism is associated with the larger revival and evangelical movements
throughout protestantinism in the 19th and into 2oth centuries. Advocates
of this approach recognize the methodological problems and discontinuities of
extending pietism to the last two centuries. [6]
Methodological Problem
Pietism
is seen as complex, and mixed movement that involves changes in the practice of
piety and shifts in theological understanding. This has led to the
incorporation of social psychological, political and cultural historical
methods into research on pietism in history of Christianity. The loss of
theological normative notion of pietism forced scholars to include radical
priests as part of the movement. The usage of terms radical separatist and
ecclesial pietism remains difficult because Radical priests are usually contrasted
with ecclesial Pietists.[7]The
more comprehensive understanding of pietism has led to greater integration of
Zinzendorf and Moravians into Pietist studies; likewise scholars want reformed
pietism should be included in Lutheran Pietism. In Netherlands, the use of Pietism
referred to the piety and renewal movements of 17th and 18th
centuries. Some historians after World War II resisted the extension of pietism
to the Netherlands and preferred the indigenous term nadere reformative or further reformation. This movement is accredited to
William Teellink, Gisbertus Voetius, Jodocus Van Lodenstein.[8]
Territorial Problem
In
North America Peitism was brought by German Protestant who is prosecuted in
Europe found refuge in the British colonies of North America. The American
descendants, such as the Dunker or Brethren, develop their own
historiographical traditions. As a result, English language scholarship on
Pietism has tended to grant a larger place to the radical or separatist.[9]
The phrase “Pietism”
can be used in wide differing context I Anglo-American scholarship. Pietism can
designate a general religious piety movement regardless its connecting to the
historical movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Pietism
refers to Protestant experiential movement that are parallel to but not derived
from Pietist movements of continental Europe. In 1965, F. Ernest Stoeffler
proposed “evangelical Pietism” that included much of Puritanism as well as the
more familiar piety figures of the Netherlands and Germany. Anglo-American
schools of Puritanism have generally not accepted Stoeffler’s inclusion off a
pietistic Puritanism within Pietism. Others have designated Pietism the era of
the “Second Reformation.”[10]
Hermeneutic Problem
The
meaning of the term “second Reformation” in the current historiography of early
modern Germany limits its usefulness with regard to Pietism. Recent literature
in English discussing Pietist movements indicating a trend away from sweeping
understandings of Pietism and often larger phenomenon in the history of
Christianity. Pietism emerged across
Protestantism and Catholicism the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. W.R.
Ward sees Pietism as a component of a much larger revival and evangelical
movement that swept across Protestant Europe and North America in the
eighteenth century. [11]
Though
Pietism has multiple meaning, when limited to German context; it is not a
helpful historic term. Michel Godfroid called it “vague and confused” and argued
that “nothing more and nothing less” than the history of Protestantism in the
preceding three centuries.[12]
CONCLUSION
Nevertheless,
the debates on the scope and nature of Pietism in the past decade have been
helpful in clarifying the nature of Protestantism in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, and despite its heterogeneous nature, Pietism remains an
important historical category for understanding changes in modern Protestant
religion and practice.[13]
PROMISE
FOR RESEARCH ON PIETISM
Effects of Pietism
The promise of Pietist
studies and the research was the agenda for the last three decades. The central
theological issues that defined Pietist movements – Reformed and Lutheran, ”radical”
and “ecclesial” – cannot be neglected. The hindrance to such research is the lack
of critical editions of the published works of the Pietist movement. Further
research progress on the theological character of Pietist movements and their
relation to parallel movements will require close textual work. Understanding
the nature and scope of Pietist movements will also require the integration of
l historical methods into Pietist Studies. Lehmann argues that much more needs
to be known about networks of Pietist groups, their means of communication, how
they understood themselves, their mobility between Pietist centers and
migration to other territories as well as the political, economic, and cultural
influence Pietists exercised in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Lehmann proposes four broad areas of investigation of Pietist movements “time”,
“Space”, “inner-world” and “external world”.[14]
Women and Gender Issue
One
area that has particular promise for the history of Protestantism and the arena
for debate is the study of women and gender in the Pietist movement. Institutional Protestantism by and large
marginalized women from public taken greater role in Protestantism in the rise
of Pietism on the continent and radical Puritanism in England. Women began
prophesying, participating in conventicles, asserting their validity and
experience. The opponents of Pietist were quick to point out these women with
heresy. The study of women and the gender in the Pietist women has not keep
pace in the history of Christianity and in reformation studies. This is because
Pietist women leaders were frequently marginalized within the movement by
patriarchal. As a result scholarship on women and gender in Pietist movement
has been slow in emerging.[15]
Pietist research
contributes to a stronger understanding of the challenges and changes faced by
Protestantism in the post-Reformation era. Among the emergence of religious
reform and renewal movements in the seventeenth century, Pietism is one of the
most prominent one. Pietist studies suggests a different approach and asks why
many laity and clergy found the religious practices and piety of their own
confessional cultures lacking and consequently demanded greater religious
fervor. Pietists composed new types of
devotional literature.[16]
CONCLUSION
Even
though Research in the nearly half century has given us a much more complex
picture of Pietism, particularly in Germany but also in Netherlands and North
America, controversy on the character of pietism will continue and new findings
will challenge the existing one.
[1] Dale W Brown, Understanding
Pietism (Nappanee: Evangel, 1996), 11 - 14
[2] Albrecht Ritschl, Three Essays,
ed. Philip Hefner (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972), 53 - 147
[3] Jonathan Storm, “Problems and promises of Pietism,” Church
History 71/3( Sept, 2002): 539
[4] Jonathan Storm, “Problems and promises of Pietism,” Church History 71/3(Sept, 2002): 541
[5] Hans Leube, Orthdox and Pietism
(Bielefeld: Luther- Verlag, 1975), 113
[6] Jonathan Storm,” Problems and promises of Pietism,”………… 542
[7] Jonathan Storm, “Problems and promises of pietism,”…………. 542
[8] Fred A. Van Lieburg, “From Pure Church to Pious Culture: The
Further Reformation in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic,” in Later Calvinism, ed. David G Murpy
(Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Journal Pub, 1994), 409-30
[9] F. Ernest Stoeffler, ed., Continental
Pietism and Early American Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976),61
[10] Jonathan Storm, “Problems and Promises of Pietism,”…………….547
[11] Ted Campbell, Religion of
the Heart: A study of European Religious Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteen
Centuries (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 2-3
[12] Jonathan Storm,” Problems and Promises of Pietism,”……………… 549
[13] Jonathan Storm, “Problems and promises of pietism,” …………….. 549
[14] Jonathan Storm,” Problems and promises of Pietism”…………………. 550
[15] Merry E. Wiesner, Gender Church
and the State in Early Modern Germany (London: Longman, 1998), 200-203
[16] Jonathan Storm, “Problems and promises of pietism”………………….. 553
.jpg)
