What was Pietism?
According to Louis L. Snyder, in Encyclopedia of Nationalism (1990), Pietism was a leading religious movement that initiated with German Lutheranism during the seventeenth century. It accentuated personal faith and the secularization of religion. The movement stressed repentance, faith, regeneration and sanctification during its early phases.
Koppel S. Pinson argues, in Pietism as a Factor in the Rise of German Nationalism (1934), that three main characteristics explained Pietism. First, the movement favored a new kind of Christianity, which was more intimate, sensitive and fervent. Disaster and poverty prevailed in the German states after the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Therefore, mysticism proliferated across the German States as a response to purity of doctrine, scholastic studies and doctrine. The people desired a plain and uncomplicated religion without orthodox arguments. Second, the Pietists professed saintly conduct, purity in life and a vigorous practice of Christianity. Pietists must pray constantly, perform virtuous deeds and be missionaries. Third, Pietists insisted on the dogma of general priesthood, meaning that gaps should not exist between the official clergy and the common people. Pietists believed that everyone should read and study the Bible. As a result, influential Pietists, such as August Hermann Francke and Philipp Jakob Spener, circulated several thousand of Bibles. During the eighteenth century, this custom arrived at the distribution of three million copies of the Bible.
The Expansion of Pietism
Liah Greenfeld, in Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (1992), argues that Prussia and Württemburg were the chief centers of Pietism, although traveling scholars facilitated its expansion. A great number of children attended Pietist institutions. It is necessary to note the fact that architects of the German national consciousness, such as Johann Gottfried Herder, were educated in the Pietist tradition. By mid-eighteenth century, this religious tradition had become dominant in the Reformed Church.
Pietism as a Philosophy
Also, Pietism was similar to mysticism because it intended to employ the official religion as a plausible philosophy. In consequence, Pietists interpreted their status in the structure of society as something that they could not change. Instead, they perceived their status as a sign of grace, and poverty as a virtue. In other words, this religious doctrine elevated people's status and provided a foundation for self-worth. The result was that the majority of Pietists were people from the lower and middle classes.
Different Kinds of Worship
Greenfeld also points out that Pietism claimed that all types of Christian veneration were valid as long as there was emotion and faith was sincere. In a collective stage, this translated into the respect for the different types of worship of ethnic communities, and into a supernatural conception of the vernacular language. Christians might worship differently, but all the Bibles were in the same vernacular language, German. For that reason, the education of the lower classes, and its stress on German was a primary issue for Pietists. Each ethnic community was a distinct manifestation of God’s creation; therefore, the uniqueness of every one had to be preserved. God manifested his presence to each community by means of its particular vernacular language. As for the state, the Pietists conceived it as sacred, As a result, the individual had to merge with the community for the sake of the state, which was the incarnation of the Church.
Sources:
- Greenfeld, Liah. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992.
- Snyder, Louis L. Encyclopedia of Nationalism. New York: Paragon House, 1990.
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