Christian History and Denominations: The Quakers
Christian History and Denominations: The Baptists
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Pietism was a late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century devotional reform movement that originated in the Lutheran Church in Germany.

Pietism stressed devotion and faith rather than evidence and reason (see fideism) and sought to replace the emphasis placed in orthodox Protestant circles on institutions and theology with a focus instead on the “practice of piety,” grounded in inner experience that manifests itself in a life of devoted religious service. 

Early Pietism

The hope was that the church could be reformed because many were convinced that the churches were corrupt. These Christians believed that God’s pious devotees should assemble in separate groups.

Pressure by the state and church exerted on these groups by the efforts of the authorities led many Pietists to emigrate, predominantly to the British colonies in North America. 

Some early pietists were inspired by Johann Arndt (1555–1621), a German Lutheran theologian and mystic, whose marked emphasis on the mystical union between Christ and the individual believer led to his posthumous veneration by German Pietists. 

Philipp Jakob Spener

Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705) was the dominant figure in the first generation of Pietists, and his 1675 publication of Pia Desideria was a pivotal point in the development of the movement. Spener established devotional circles for prayers and Bible reading but did not intend to separate from the church, like many other Pietists wanted to.

He authored thousands of letters providing spiritual advice to Christians across central Europe. In these, he articulated the aims of the movement: the need to study the Bible daily, the spiritual priesthood of all believers, and the better education of ministers. Some “radical” Pietist groups had anti-establishment tendencies, sometimes with millenarian expectations, although most supported a more moderate form of Pietism.

Second Generation

Second-generation Pietists, from the 1690s to the 1720s, such as August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), established an orphanage, several schools, an institute for training teachers, a pharmacy, and a publishing house for religious tracts and Bibles. His efforts proved successful and spurred the development of the Pietist movement.

Third Generation

In the eighteenth century, a third generation of pietists emerged through reformers Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760) and Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752).

Zinzendorf created an international network of religious communities known as the Moravians, an eighteenth-century offshoot of Pietism in Germany. In 1722, Moravian refugees settled on Zinzendorf’s estate in Saxony, forming a religious community. Zinzendorf’s disciples became missionaries in many parts of the world.

Bengel shaped Pietism in Württemberg through his reputation for his studies of the Bible, in particular New Testament exegesis and studies of millennial prophecies found in biblical scripture. In several decades, Pietism spread to Switzerland, Scandinavia, and Protestant parts of eastern Europe.

References

Livingstone, E. A. 2013. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3 ed.). Oxford University Press

Cannon, John., and Crowcroft, Robert. 2015. A Dictionary of British History (3 ed.). Oxford University Press.