Reclaiming Pietism: Retrieving an Evangelical Tradition ed. by Roger E. Olson and Christian T. Collins Winn (review)

When it comes to the Protestant renewal movement called Pietism, a great number of misconceptions and judgments often surround it. Although a powerful movement leading to the enlivening of Protestantism from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, Pietism also occasioned many negative reactions, both from its contemporaries and from modern Protestants. The Pietist push toward renewal within the churches and the lives of individual Protestants was often seen as an implicit rebuke of other forms of Protestantism. The Pietist stress on personal sanctification and moral living was considered a means of bringing “works righteousness” back into Protestantism. Excesses of certain forms of Pietism lead to the formation of separatist Protestant groups, rather than the renewal of existing churches. The modern view often depicts Pietists as joyless prudes who have reduced faith to strict moralism, for whom anything enjoyable was automatically forbidden. While some of these charges do have a grain of truth, such criticisms have at times led to a sweeping rejection of Pietism, without a balanced appraisal of its immense importance for modern Protestantism.

Partially these misconceptions of Pietism arise from a lack of good materials. Theologians and historians often avoided Pietism in the twentieth century and so updated sources and studies were lacking. Fortunately, in the last twenty years or so, Pietist studies in Europe and North America have resurged, and materials have been developed to bring about a careful and nuanced reading of the Pietists and their movement. New editions of writings, through the “Classics of Western Spirituality” series and others, historical studies of Pietism, such as the recent history of German pietism by Douglas Shantz, and other important monographs and studies have appeared. A Pietism Studies Group meets within the American Society of Church History, and important conferences on Pietism have met in Europe and North America.

Roger Olson (Truett Seminary) and Christian Collins Winn (Bethel University) have crafted an immensely helpful book on the history, theology, and utility of Pietism, an introductory handbook to Pietism, incorporating the results of this recent resurgence of Pietism studies. In eight chapters they locate Pietism in the history of Christianity, explain its core theological commitments, as well as its internal divergences, the growth of Pietism and its spread, and conclude with some observations about the possible value of Pietism. They suggest that Pietism is a rich theological and spiritual tradition, and one that, though undervalued today, could have immense value for both Evangelical and Mainline Protestantism.

In the first chapter, subtitled “How a Good Word Got a Bad Reputation,” the authors examine how Pietism came under attack from European theologians. Albrecht Ritschl in the nineteenth century and Karl Barth in the twentieth century pictured Pietism as a divergence from the original impulses of Protestantism, mainly because they focused on the fringe excesses of Pietism and not its core value. Chapter two looks at the roots of Pietism in late medieval mysticism and early Protestantism, focusing on figures such as Johann Arndt, Jakob Böhme, and Jean de Labadie, and showing Pietism’s deep roots in early Protestant spirituality. Chapter three focuses on the two recognized pioneers of German Pietism, Lutheran theologians Philipp Jakob Spener and August Herrmann Francke, and the movement of Lutheran Pietism located at Halle, while chapter four explores some other forms of Pietism that grew out the original impetus, especially the radical Pietists, Zinzendorf and the Moravians, and the Württemberg Pietism of southwestern Germany.

Having established the basic historical elements of classical Pietism in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Germany, the authors continue to build a portrait of the growth and influence of Pietism moving into the modern era. Chapter five tries to manage the very difficult task of defining Pietism by concentrating on ten “hallmarks” of the movement, things that might well be applied outside of Pietism’s traditional spheres. Chapter six shows how Pietism moved into the Anglo-American world, both through the immigration...