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Methodist and Pietist

Retrieving The Evangelical United Brethren Tradition

Abingdon Press

The Pietist Background of The Evangelical United Brethren Church

K. James Stein

To discern Pietism's influence in the creation of The Evangelical United Brethren Church, we must first come to grips with the nature or meaning of Pietism itself. Most scholars agree that defining and describing Pietism are not easy. For example, Ernest Stoeffler began his book The Rise of Evangelical Pietism with this discouraging sentence: "One of the least understood movements in history of Christianity has undoubtedly been that of Pietism." Similarly, when Carter Lindberg raised the questions about what Pietism, piety, and a pious person really are, he immediately concluded: "Here we jump with both feet into that vast swamp of Pietist studies. The scholars of Pietism give us many and sometimes conflicting maps for traversing this swamp." Keeping in mind that there is a vast scholarly debate about the nature and meaning of Pietism, we can begin to get our bearings by attending the origins and aims of this important movement in the history Christianity.

THE ORIGINS AND AIMS OF EARLY PIETISM

Despite the scholarly debate about the nature and meaning of Pietism, there is general agreement among scholars that Pietism originated as a renewal movement within Protestantism. This view has much to commend it. For example, Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), whom I like to call "the Pietist Patriarch," was accused by his orthodox Lutheran detractors of being dissatisfied with Martin Luther's Reformation. To be sure, Spener denied being discontented with what Luther had done in the previous century. He even praised the good that had emerged in the Reformation. However, he also believed that Christians must go beyond and improve the Reformation. Indeed, early Pietists like Spener frequently saw their seventeenth-century movement as being "the second phase of the Reformation."

A later example of Pietist dissatisfaction with the Reformation can be found in early American Methodism. Bishop Francis Asbury's Journal entry of April 28-29, 1775, recounts having dinner with William Otterbein and Benedict Schwope and reports their intention to make proposals to the German Reformed synod "to lay a plan for the reformation of the Dutch congregations."

These examples suggest an obvious question. Why were early Pietists dissatisfied with the Reformation churches of their day? Although many Pietists publicly acknowledged their gratitude for the theological foundations provided by Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin, they clearly felt that the churches founded by these major sixteenth-century Reformers were lacking in their time. But what precisely did they lack? To answer this question we need to familiarize ourselves with additional background developments.

Shortly after Martin Luther's death in 1546, internal theological battles threatened to divide the German Lutheran branch of Protestantism. In the wake of this threat, the adoption of the Formula of Concord in 1577 and the publication of the Book of Concord in 1580 provided a theological center around which Luther's followers could rally. This led, however, to a strong creedal ethos within Lutheranism so that, by the seventeenth century, many Lutherans came to view churchmanship largely in terms of adherence to creeds and living an outwardly acceptable moral life. To a degree this also occurred in Calvinism.

Spener, who helped revive catechetical instruction and confirmation in German Lutheranism, recounted how when he was ministering in Frankfurt, an intelligent foreigner, who was passing the city, visited his catechetical classes and remarked that instruction went only into the children's heads, but how they "bring the head into the heart?"

Pietism was and is "heart religion." It seeks not to change basic doctrines, but to enable the gospel that the doctrines arouse an affective and not just an intellectual response in believers. Indeed, many early Pietists believed that in failure to engage the affections, Reformation churches failed believers with what they needed most to survive the social and political realities of their day. Hence, Karl Heussi the origins of Pietism as follows:

German pietism is a partial appearance of a great interconfessional movement, which was aroused in the seventeenth century the great economic and political vibrations and the stiffness of orthodox church life. It had its parallels in Catholic mysticism and Jansenism, in English Puritanism and Quakerism of seventeenth century, and in English Methodism of the eighteenth century.

Heussi clearly associates the rise of Pietism with the horrors of the Thirty Years' War (1618–48) and the inability of entrenched Protestant orthodoxy to address the spiritual needs of European Protestants. Yet a deeply spiritual movement swept across early seventeenth-century Europe embracing not only Roman Catholic and Protestant but also Jewish believers. Pietism seems to have emerged within this devotional and less formal religious atmosphere that antedated it. Indeed, one can see this explicitly in the work of Johann Arndt (1555–1621), whom many regard as the father of Pietism. Arndt was a Lutheran pastor advocating the mystical union existing between Christ and believers, and his major work, Wahres Christenthum (True Christianity), beautifully weds Lutheran doctrine with Roman Catholic mysticism. His chief aim is to help people see that a living faith involves trusting God, uniting oneself with God, wishing for nothing except God, and doing all of this through Jesus Christ. For Arndt, true Christianity is a "living faith whose fruit is a godly, active life."

In the light of its origins and aims, many scholars view Pietism spiritual movement seeking to inculcate conversion and a sanctification ethic. For example, Stoeffler defines Pietism as "the manifestation of the experiential tradition within post-Protestantism." Similarly, Edward Farley recognizes "an exclusive concern with warmness of heart and religious emotions." Donald Bloesch casts the net wider, saying, post-Reformation spiritual movements known as Pietism, and Evangelicalism all sought to recover the centrality priority of Christian commitment and devotion."

On another front, Dale Brown, whose book Understanding Pietism is one of the best analyses of the movement, points to the problem of subjectivity in Pietism. Brown views Pietism's moralism as minimizing the doctrine of justification by grace, and he sees Pietism's religious empiricism as lessening the importance of revelation and tradition. These concerns notwithstanding, Brown acknowledges that Pietists found great meaning in accenting the inner life of the individual Christian.

In my work, I have often defined Pietism as a movement in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Lutheranism and Calvinism that sought to reform the church, not with creedal or institutional change, but with spiritual renewal in terms of personal religious commitment and holy living. Of course, like any succinct definition, this one only scratches the surface of the origins, aims, and nature of Pietism. Indeed, there are important aspects of Pietism that we have not yet discussed.

ADDITIONAL ASPECTS OF EARLY PIETISM

One additional aspect of Pietism worth noting is its relationship to the Aufklärung (the Enlightenment). Both Pietism and the Enlightenment, albeit from different perspectives and for different reasons, fought the predominant Lutheran and Calvinist orthodoxies of the time. Both resisted intellectual dogmatism—the Pietists with their plea for Christian experience and the Enlightenment with its appeal to reason. Both stressed individual rights and inner development. Similarly, some see in Pietism's chiliasm, its expectation of Christ's thousand-year reign on the earth, a parallel to Enlightenment optimism with regard to human self-improvement. Likewise, the perfectionist tendencies of some Pietists in ethical and spiritual matters can be seen as supporting the aims of the Enlightenment.

Despite these similarities and confluences, the jury is still out as far as the coalescence of Pietism and the Enlightenment is concerned. For example, some have argued that it was not Pietism's inwardness but the extreme intellectualism of orthodoxy that paved the way for the Age of Reason. Moreover, some eighteenth-century Pietists considered rationalism as an enemy to be confronted. Thus if Pietism and the Enlightenment shared some common concerns, it is far from clear that there was an alliance between them.

A second important aspect of Pietism worth noting is its durability. Emerging in the seventeenth century, Pietism abides today. Manfred Kohl declares, "Pietism is to be understood not merely, or even primarily as a movement in modern church history from about 1675 to about 1750, but even more important, as a force within the stream of Protestantism to the present day." Indeed, I saw this firsthand when, during my sabbatical in 1970–71, I met with Pietist members of the Landeskirche in Tübingen, Germany. At a Pietist men's group one evening, I watched as the full-time director of the pietistic programs led a devotional. This particular Pietist group had its own building, youth work, men's group, women's organization, prayer meetings, and social outreach. To be sure, most members attended Sunday services regularly at the local state church congregation. Yet while remaining in the state church, they were a lively "church within a church," following their own Lutheran Pietist theology.

Though small in number, today's German Pietists still believe that Pietism has much to offer the church's ministry. For example, in the year 2000, a group of young Pietist scholars published a series of articles concerning Spener's relevance for issues facing the twenty-first-century church. One scholar, Peter Steinacker, maintained that, for Spener, true Christianity consisted not in an outwardly good moral life, but in spiritual formation so that love for God and neighbor can take living form within believers. Steinacker sought to apply this "true inheritance" to contemporary church life, pleading for increased churchrun kindergartens and a greater place for contemporary worship in order to reach people more effectively with the gospel.

STRENGTHS AND WEADNESSES OF EARLY PIETISM

Like any movement, early Pietism had its weaknesses. Occasionally, early Pietists exhibited self-righteousness by refusing to receive the Lord's Supper with persons they deemed unconverted. Early Pietists can also be viewed as undermining church unity, as some Pietist small groups separated from the Lutheran and Calvinist state churches in which they originated. Further, some regard as problematic the occasional emotional excesses in early Pietism. Finally, early Pietism is sometimes criticized for depriving people of the pleasures of life, such as attending the opera, dancing, and card playing, and for demanding a legalistic Sabbatarianism.

There were also strengths in early Pietism. For example, Gary Sattler affirmatively referred to the "Pietist Trinity" as being "God's glory, neighbor's good, and one's own holiness." In addition, Pietism has been credited with awakening "many thousands of souls." This resulted from Pietism's stress on the Wiedergeburt (the new birth) and Erneuerung (renewal or sanctification), its emphasis on daily Christian living in word and deed, its gathering of renewed persons into conventicles that promoted Christian fellowship, and its resultant increase of the laity's involvement in the life of the church.

Many early Pietists also stressed the amelioration of social ills and the importance of education. The Pietist foundations encouraged and made possible by Spener and creatively and forcefully led by August Hermann Francke (1663–1727) at Halle in Brandenburg in the early eighteenth century set a high standard for popular education, care for orphans and widows, publication and distribution of inexpensive Bibles and devotional literature, and foreign missions. Indeed, the high quality of the theological education at Halle University caused Lutheran congregations in Europe and in colonial America to seek Halle graduates as their pastors. Equally telling is the fact that the Prussian King Frederick Wilhelm I chose many Pietists to be Prussian army chaplains. For that matter, the cooperation between Francke and King Frederick IV of Denmark resulted in the founding of the successful Danish- Halle mission in Tranquebar, India, in 1705. Thus, in 1715, the New England Congregationalist pastor Cotton Mather (1663-1728), who maintained a correspondence with Francke, could exclaim, "The world begins to feel a warmth from the fire of God which thus flames in the heart of Germany, beginning to extend into many regions; the whole world will ere long be sensible of it."

THE PIETIST HERITAGE OF THE EVANGELICAL UNITED BRETHREN CHURCH

There can be little doubt concerning Pietism's influence on the movements that eventually formed The Evangelical United Brethren Church, namely, the United Brethren in Christ and The Evangelical Association. Most tellingly, the founders of each of these predecessor denominations had personal Pietist connections. For example, Martin Boehm (1725–1812), the cofounder of the United Brethren in Christ, had a grandfather who was persecuted in his native Switzerland for his adherence to Pietism. When Boehm's grandfather arrived in America, he joined the Mennonites, who later disapproved of his grandson Martin's conversion experience while plowing on his Pennsylvania farm. Apparently, the experience had "too Pietist" a ring to it.

Martin Boehm's partner in founding the United Brethren in Christ, Philip William Otterbein (1726–1813), was the product of a Reformed parsonage in the German state of Nassau. Together with his five brothers, Otterbein followed his father into the ministry of the Reformed Church. The brothers were educated at Herborn Academy, where Professors Johann Henry Schramm and Valentine Arnold, both Pietists, sought to arouse thätiges christenthum (active Christianity) in their students. Indeed, J. Steven O'Malley has shown that by the time the Otterbein brothers studied at Herborn Academy, it had "become the veritable center of Reformed Pietism."

Arriving in America in 1752 as a Reformed Church missionary, Philip William Otterbein began a Pietist-oriented pastoral career in several parishes. At the Lancaster parish, he experienced a growing religious assurance. At Tulpehocken, he instituted prayer meetings. But the most significant event happened during his York pastorate. In 1767, Otterbein attended a grosse Versammlung (a big meeting) at Long's barn near Lancaster. The sermon at this meeting so moved Otterbein that he hugged Martin Boehm, the little Mennonite preacher, uttering the words, "Wir sind Brüder" ("We are brothers"). This event precipitated the founding of one of the first new denominations in North America. Beginning in 1800, Otterbein and Boehm began holding annual conferences of the like-minded preachers associated with them. They referred to themselves as unpartheiische (unsectarian or nondenominational)— manifesting Pietism's penchant for placing mission above denominational affiliation.

Philip William Otterbein's Pietist heritage can also be seen in his brothers' theological publications. Among these works were Georg Otterbein's three large volumes of sermons on the Heidelberg Catechism—the creedal formulation of German Calvinism. These sermons were aimed against the rationalists and moralists of the time. On another front, there were Johann Daniel Otterbein's published sermons against radical and separatist Pietists. During his thirty-nine-and-one-half-year pastorate of an independent German Reformed Church in Baltimore, Philip Otterbein worked to circulate these volumes in the new world.

Also indicative of his Pietism are Philip William Otterbein's extant writings. Though few in number, one of these works is a sermon titled "The Salvation-Bringing Incarnation and Glorious Victory of Jesus Christ over the Devil and Death." In this sermon, Otterbein urges that the indwelling of Christ in believers is essential to the Christian life, saying, "If there is no Christ in us, there is also no Christ for us." His Pietist point is only too clear. Justification without sanctification means little.

The Pietist roots of The Evangelical Association are as readily discernible as those of the United Brethren in Christ. A Pennsylvania farmer and tile maker, Jacob Albright (1759–1808), founded The Evangelical Association, which later became The Evangelical Church, during his brief twelve-year ministry career. Albright's family emigrated from the German Palatinate to Pennsylvania, where he was born. He was baptized and confirmed a Lutheran. How much he was influenced by Pietism in his youth remains debatable. On the one hand, Raymond W. Albright, a great-great-grandson of Albright, claims that his forebear came from a pietistic German home. On the other hand, James Bemesderfer suggests that there is a lack of direct evidence for this early influence. Still, even Bemesderfer acknowledges a strong presence of Pietist influences in Albright's later life and ministry. Indeed, these influences appear to have played a significant role in Albright's conversion to Christianity in 1791 and his subsequent acceptance of a call to preach in 1796.

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Excerpted from Methodist and Pietist by J. Steven O'Malley, Jason E. Vickers. Copyright © 2011 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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