German Pietism And The Evangelical Revival
7
GERMAN PIETISM AND THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL
John D. Manton
In presenting this paper one must recognize the fact, at the outset, that the words “Pietism” and “pietistic” are no longer popular words. Not only are they rarely used, but when they do appear, they almost invariably carry a pejorative meaning so that many Reformed Christians are prejudiced against Pietism, regarding it, in the words of Concise Oxford Dictionary (1964) as “pious sentiment, exaggeration or affectation of this.”
There has even been a tendency, of late, to attribute to “Pietism” what properly belongs to “Quietism,” i.e., a complete withdrawal from the world or a district of “good works” as part of a believer’s duty toward his fellow men.1
I hope to demonstrate that such an understanding of Pietism is both woefully inadequate, and, indeed, utterly false. This paper gives, in very broad outline, an account of the rise of German Pietism in the seventeenth century and its consolidation under its two most eminent leaders, P. J. Spener and A. H. Francke. Then follows a brief survey of the influence exerted by Zinzendorf and the Moravian Brethren upon the English leaders of the eighteenth century Evangelical Awakening, in particular the Wesleys. Finally, there is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of German Pietism, from a twentieth century Reformed point of view.
A paper of this kind must necessarily be selective, and must leave out of consideration large areas of what is, after all, a vast subject.
German Pietism has received considerable attention from German theologians and historians representing a wide spectrum of opinion. Literature on the movement is still being produced, and recent researches by such scholars as Martin Schmidt and Erich Beyreuther, to name only two, have brought fresh material to light.2 Most of this work, however, has remained in the original German and is therefore not easily accessible to English-speaking readers. One recent work in English deserves to be mentioned, however: F. Ernest Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism (1965).
The impact of the Moravians on the early Methodists is well covered in English, one specialist study being that by Clifford W. Towlson, Moravian and Methodist (1957).
The Rise of German Pietism
During the century which followed the Reformation, the complaint was increasingly heard in both the Lutheran and the Reformed Churches on the continent of Europe, that the Reformation had been one solely of doctrine and church polity, without producing a Reformation in the lives of Church members. The German Reformed Church, which was found predominantly in the north of the area now known as Germany (at that time a collection of largely autonomous states each under its own ruler) was very deeply indebted to the Netherlands for many of its ideas, first because of the firm hold the Reformed faith had taken in the Netherlands—it was no accident that the famous Synod of Dort was held there in 1618, second because of the geographical and linguistic proximity of Holland and Northern Germany, and third because the Thirty Years’ War which devastated the German states between 1618 and 1648 left Holland comparatively unscathed, and dominant both culturally and economically over her exhausted neighbors.3
Now there was in the first half of the seventeenth century considerable interchange between the English Puritans and the Dutch Reformed. They were linked, of course, by their common Calvinism, and numerous English Puritans took refuge in Holland from persecution at home, probably the most eminent being William Ames, a pupil of William Perkins. Ames was forced to flee from England through the enmity of Archbishop Bancroft, and eventually (1622) became Professor of Theology at Franeker. Under the Latin form of his name, Amesius, he wrote voluminously and has been called “the first theologian of Reformed Pietism.” His debt to Perkins is very marked; he shares Perkins’s practicality of thought, and just as Perkins had taught in his Golden Chain: “Theology is the science of living blessedly for ever,” so Ames began his Medulla Sacrae Theologiae (1623) with this sentence: “Theology is the doctrine of living unto God.”4 This statement may be said to represent the essence of what the Pietists believed.
Holland herself produced many generations of godly men, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who shared this same concern, that the Reformation of doctrine should be completed by a Reformation of life.5 To mention only two or three out of many: William Teelinck (d. 1629) has been called “the Father of Reformed Pietism” and had been deeply influenced, significantly enough, by staying in an English Puritan home in 1604; the great Voetius himself (d. 1676), who for half a century was a giant among theologians and who insisted that a believer’s life should conform to the requirements of the law of God; J. van Lodensteyn (d. 1677), like Voetius a Professor at Utrecht, with a great pastoral concern for his students and renowned as both preacher and hymn writer; and William à Brakel (d. 1711) who in 1700 produced a massive work entitled Redelyke Godtsdienst (The Reasonable Service of God), concerning which Stoeffler says: “All that the Pietists on both sides of the channel had ever thought and said was here summarized and put into the language of the people. It is safe to assume that had it not been for the language barrier the younger Brakel would have achieved the distinction of being one of the outstanding Pietistic theologians of Europe and America.”6
Jean de Labadie (d. 1674) is a somewhat enigmatic figure in the history of Reformed Pietism.7 A former Jesuit, converted through the study of Calvin’s Institutes, he held pastorates in Geneva and London before settling in Middelburg, Holland. Here he aroused so much opposition from his Synod on account of the criticisms he directed against the intellectualism and moral indifferentism of the Reformed Church and particularly its ministry, that in 1669 he was expelled, and proceeded to set up his own religious community in Amsterdam, from which numerous evangelistic treks were made into the surrounding territories, including northwest Germany, by his own “Labadist” preachers, whom he trained in his own seminary. His movement was highly influential for two decades, and his program for the reform of the pastorate (published 1667) is remarkably similar, in its general tenor, to Spener’s program which was to be published, from within German Lutheranism, only eight years later. Spener is known to have been influenced by Labadie, and to place the two men side by side highlights some of the common features of Pietism, whether Reformed or Lutheran, and also some of the diversities which existed within the movement. Here it must suffice to point out that Labadie’s Pietism forced him to separate from his Church, while in Spener’s case Pietism had no such effect.
Other Reformed influences which came to bear on Lutheranism, and thus on Spener himself, were as follows: the ministry of a Dutchman, Theodor Undereyck, in the Ruhr District in the 1660s—his use of conventicles within his own church impressed Spener deeply; the hymns of one of Undereyck’s converts, Joachim Neander (author of “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty”) who, although he died at the age of thirty, became a leading Reformed hymn writer; and some of the writings of English Puritans, particularly Lewis Bayly’s Praxis Pietatis—this name may well be significant!—and Richard Baxter’s Saints’ Everlasting Rest.
Stoeffler’s succinct account of the results of the Pietist movement within the Reformed Church is worth quoting in full:
While the Pietistic dream of reforming the Reformed never succeeded, it could hardly be doubted that the perfectionistic ideals of this reform party brought about significant changes in the life of the Church. It was responsible for an emphasis upon effective, religiously significant preaching such as is seldom found in territorial Churches, together with a similar emphasis upon pastoral work which is equally unusual under such surroundings. Many of the classes and synods began to stress catechization, to a degree unknown since the early days of the Genevan Reformation. Church discipline, which had been exercised almost solely with regard to faith and order, was oriented to include the daily conduct of Church members. A devotional literature was created such as continental Protestantism had never known because its need had not been recognized. Family worship was encouraged and free prayer found a place among the printed prayers. In fact prayer was encouraged as perhaps never before within the Reformed Churches. Even conventicles, carefully supervised by the clergy, were authorized by various ecclesiastical bodies. For the first time since the days of Geneva the Reformed Churches knew of genuine religious awakenings such as the one in Friesland in 1672, where a group of pastors entered together upon an evangelistic venture with noticeable results. Last, but not least, the matter of training an effective ministry, interested in piety as well as doctrine and polity, was given serious attention. The result was the later development of theological seminaries.8
Now these events within the Reformed Church had not left the Lutheran Church untouched. The century and a half from the death of Luther (1546) to about 1700 has been known as the period of “Orthodoxy” within this Church;9 the Confession of Augsburg (1530) had been followed in 1577 by the “Formula of Concord,” and three years later the Confession, the Formula, and several other documents such as the Schmalkald Articles, Luther’s Catechism, etc., were adopted as the official “Symbolic Books” of Lutheranism, and a process of entrenchment behind these standards took place. Unfortunately, however, insistence upon “pure doctrine” tended to become an end of itself; religion became equated with correct theological formulation; dogmatics took on an increasingly abstract character, and polemics became the order of the day not only in university faculties, but in the pulpits of the land. The “heresy-hunt mentality” took a firm hold, and in general, orthodoxy was esteemed far above godliness.10 The irony, indeed the tragedy of the situation, was that the great doctrine which had liberated Luther from his spiritual bondage, namely justification by faith alone, was the very doctrine which re-imposed bondage upon his followers. At the risk of over-simplification, the situation may be explained as follows: those aspects of the doctrine were emphasized which were external to man, especially the judicial act of God in declaring the sinner righteous; moreover this was linked very closely with infant baptism (Luther himself had not been entirely without blame here!), so that the passivity of the human subject came to be stressed with great force. God’s grace was mediated to men through hearing the Word and receiving the sacraments (the confessional remained in widespread use within Lutheranism until the early years of the eighteenth century), and it is difficult to avoid the impression that the Roman concept of “Mother Church” had been taken over almost unchanged into the Lutheran system. Meanwhile, the “inward” accompaniments of justification tended to be neglected, such as regeneration, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, active faith, growth in grace, sorrow for sin, and so forth. Such was the fear of relying on works for salvation that even the good works resulting from salvation were regarded with suspicion or even hostility, so that early Lutheran piety tended to turn its back on the world in quietistic fashion, and “too often the doctrine of justification by faith was made a substitute for a holy life, or, what is worse, an excuse for an unholy one.”11
This was the situation against which Lutheran Pietists set their face, and although the term Pietist did not make its appearance until 1670—when it was first used as a nickname for Spener and his followers—numerous men had written and preached against these evils for nearly a century, the most influential being Johannes Arndt, whose four volumes entitled Of True Christianity had been published in the early years of the seventeenth century. Arndt was read in countless Lutheran homes up and down the land; he had some very distinguished disciples on the theological faculties of Rostock and Strassburg Universities, and till well into the eighteenth century was considered one of the true spiritual fathers of Lutheran Pietism. The work which has made Philipp Jakob Spener famous—Pia Desideria (1675)—was in fact an introduction to a new edition of Arndt’s sermons. Spener gives a six-point program of reform, which became, so to speak, the rallying cry of Lutheran Pietism. Here are his six points, with comments in each case:
1. Pastors should endeavor to preach from the whole Bible in the course of their ministry and should gather true believers into conventicles to feed them on the Word, and fathers should gather their families regularly around the Bible. Spener always made it clear that much as he respected the Lutheran Symbolic Books, they were only subordinate standards, not necessarily infallible, and always open to correction from the Scriptures. This attitude led to bitter attacks upon his orthodoxy being made by some of his fellow Lutherans, but for Spener the important thing was that the Bible should be spread abroad among the people. Conventicles were the most efficient way of achieving this in the Church, and Spener hoped that from them would come “ecclesiolae in ecclesia” which would ultimately restore Presbyterian functions within the Church. In this hope, however, he was to be disappointed.
2. The priesthood of all believers should be reemphasized. Conventicles would further this by encouraging lay participation, and Spener wished to break down what he considered to be the unbiblical and Romish distinction between clergy and laity. In this, of course, he was able to appeal directly to Luther; he regretted, however, that Luther’s successors had so far forgotten the doctrine of their founder as to invest the clergy with hierarchical powers, turning them into “lords over God’s flock.”
3. True Christian faith should be presented as “the faith that worketh by love.” It was not just intellectual assent to a theological system. Conversion to Christ was needed, and without this no amount of theological knowledge was of any account. Spener believed that the confessional, properly used and safeguarded, could help toward impressing on the people the need for inward and outward holiness, i.e., its use was primarily for pastoral examination.
4. Ministers in particular should avoid undue involvement with polemics since this was feeding the people with stones not bread. The way to deal with unbelievers or with heretics was not so much to argue with them as to pray for them. True believers should treat them kindly, not harshly, and above all should ensure that they themselves were setting a good example of Christian living. Spener himself knew what it was to be dealt with harshly (on one occasion, for example, the highly orthodox University of Wittenberg published an attack on him accusing him of no less than 264 errors!) but in his own personal gentleness toward his opponents he was well ahead of his time.12
5. Theological courses for would-be ministers should be drastically revised. Students should be introduced to the great godly writers of the past such as Tauler, à Kempis, and Arndt and should learn to practice godliness in their own lives. More moral surveillance of students was needed; it is interesting to realize that in Spener’s day students had a “public image” which was far from enviable: they were notorious for their drunken, brawling habits, and Spener was concerned particularly that theological students were, on the whole, not noticeably different from the rest. He saw this as evidence that many of them were unregenerate, and he regarded it as an evil that such men were entering the ministry of God’s Church. He created a great stir by insisting, as a basic principle, that no one could be a proper pastor, theologian, or divinity teacher without being born again; for this, like Francke and John Wesley after him, he was roundly condemned by many of his fellow churchmen as an “enthusiast.” Martin Schmidt sees this insistence of Spener as one of the keys to his whole thought, and in an article on the Pia Desideria published in 1951 he says, “Everything comes down to the individual being born again.”13
Before he died, in 1705 , Spener had the satisfaction of seeing and contributing to the foundation of a new university (Halle), where his younger follower and successor, A. H. Francke, held the Chair of Divinity, and where many hundreds of theological students showed evident signs of being truly born of God, through the godly endeavors of Francke and his colleagues.14
6. Preaching should be edifying, not clever. Spener made the most of the fact that many cathedral-like gothic churches having been destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War, the rebuilt Churches were much more modest and homely, with simple architecture, flat ceilings, white-washed walls and colored woodwork, and above all better acoustics. He abandoned the traditional stilted, erudite pulpit diction and adopted a direct, simple style of preaching which eschewed barren theological controversy and insisted on the need for conversion to Christ, a holy life, a humble submission to God’s Word, and the duty of “men whose hearts God had touched” to speak often one with another.15 He would, in short, have agreed with Philip Doddridge, half a century later: “May I remember that I am not to compose an harangue to acquire to myself the reputation of an eloquent orator, but that I am preparing food for precious and immortal souls, and dispensing the sacred gospel which my Redeemer brought from heaven, and sealed with His blood.”16
It had been when he was principal minister in Frankfurt (1670) that he had formed new converts and inquirers into so-called “Collegia Pietatis,” and this appears to be the origin of the name Pietist.17 There seems, incidentally, to be no clear evidence of a link between these “Collegia Pietatis” and the religious societies which were coming into being about this time in England, even though one of the prime movers in England was a German, Anthony Horneck, preacher at the Savoy Church, London.18 It appears rather that conditions in the Lutheran Church of Germany were at this time so similar, in certain important respects, to those obtaining in the Church of England, that similar phenomena appeared, spontaneously and independently, in both. At any rate, Spener knew nothing of what was happening in England until 1678, when he heard the news from a Lutheran minister, Breckling, a resident in Amsterdam.
In the 1690s the leadership of the Lutheran Pietist movement passed from Spener to his younger contemporary, August Hermann Francke, one of the most brilliant men of his day. It was Francke who was to put into practice many of the reforms proposed by Spener, and to spread Pietism all over Germany, to Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, including Russia, the Middle East, the Far East, and North America.19 The focal point of the movement shifted to Halle, about 100 miles southwest of Berlin, where Francke managed to hold down three normally full-time positions: professor at the newly-opened university, from which many hundreds of young men, having been won for Christ, spread their faith abroad, either as ministers or missionaries; minister of the church at Glaucha (a poor district of Halle, at that time just outside the town wall), where Francke was diligent in both preaching and catechizing, with results which provoked the envy and, sad to say, the bitter jealousy of his fellow ministers in the town; and founder of a great orphanage and school complex, which began from the small gifts which well-wishers dropped into a collecting box affixed to the wall of the living room in his manse.
In the early years, the orphanage work was kept going solely by prayer and freewill offerings, and John Wesley, when he visited the vast buildings shortly after his conversion in 1738, referred to them as “that amazing proof, that all things are still possible to him that believeth.”20 He goes on:
There is now a large yearly revenue for its support, beside what is continually brought in by the printing-office, the books sold there, and the apothecary’s shop, which is furnished with all sorts of medicines. The building reaches backward from the front in two wings for, I believe, 150 yards. The lodging-chambers for the children, their dining-room, their chapel, and all the adjoining apartments, are so conveniently contrived, and so exactly clean, as I have never seen any before. Six hundred and fifty children, we were informed, are wholly maintained there; and 3,000, if I mistake not, taught. Surely, such a thing neither we nor our fathers have known, as this great thing which God has done here.
Kingswood School at Bristol, the projected Newcastle Orphanage, Howell Harris’s community at Trevecca, and G. Whitefield’s orphanage in Georgia, all owe a great deal to the inspiration of Halle,21 and it is of considerable interest to English Christians to note that George Müller, himself a German, was deeply impressed while staying in Francke’s institution 100 years after the latter’s death, and explicitly acknowledges his debt to Francke’s godly example.22 The great buildings can still be seen in Halle to this day.
The schools founded by Francke catered for a wide cross section of the community, including girls (a revolutionary venture at that time!), orphans, professional men, and the nobility. The whole work was one of the wonders of Europe and was frequently visited by distinguished persons, including some of the crowned heads of Europe.
There was a particularly close link between Francke and the King of Denmark, who, when looking for suitable missionaries for Danish colonies overseas, turned to Halle to supply the needed men. The result was the formation of the Halle-Danish Missionary Society which sent missionaries of many nationalities, including English, all over the world.
In 1700 Francke was elected a corresponding member of the newly formed Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, in London.23 This marked the beginning of half a century of reports on the work done from Halle reaching the English-speaking public through SPCK channels, for after Francke’s death in 1727 the reports were continued by his son Gottlieb August Francke, who succeeded his father as director of the Halle Foundation. In 1703 Anton Wilhelm Böhme, a young Lutheran minister, was sent to London from Halle and eventually became German chaplain to Queen Anne’s Consort, Prince George of Denmark. Two other activities kept him fully occupied: helping the hundreds of German Protestant refugees who, on their way to a new life in North America, broke their journey in London and were frequently destitute; and translating into English all the literature which was sent to him from Halle. He was, in fact, Francke’s personal representative in England.24
Samuel Wesley, the father of John and Charles, used to receive the regular reports of the Halle-Danish Missionary Society, through the SPCK, and at one time offered himself for missionary service with the Halle-Danish Society.25 His wife Susanna used to read to her family the accounts of the work done by Ziegenbalg and Plütschau, the first missionaries of the Society to settle in South India.26
It was in all probability Böhme who produced the original translation of two works known to the Wesleys: Francke’s tract “Nicodemus: a treatise against the fear of man,” which Charles Wesley lent to George Whitefield when the two men met for the first time, at Oxford, and Francke’s Pietas Hallensis (original title: Segensvolle Fussstapfen des noch lebenden und waltenden, liebreichen und getreuen Gottes, 1701) in which he tells the moving story of God’s work in the erection of the Halle orphanage. We know that John Wesley took both these works with him to Georgia in 1735.27
The Moravian Brethren and Methodism
Of all Francke’s pupils, none achieved such fame as Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf,28 who was pupil for six years (1710–1716) at the Halle school for the nobility. Spener, his godfather, had taken him in his arms shortly after Zinzendorf’s birth in 1700, and had dedicated him to the cause of the Gospel, and now in the formative years ten to sixteen he saw Halle Pietism from close quarters. He was very unhappy and unpopular at the school—both teachers and pupils seem to have regarded him as a prig—but he himself admits that, living in Francke’s own house, as he did, and dining at Francke’s table, he met missionaries and heard missionary work discussed, so that his own enthusiasm for the world-wide spread of the Gospel was aroused, and thereafter never left him.29
In 1722 he opened his estate at Berthelsdorf in Saxony to German-speaking refugees from Moravia—members of the so-called Unitas Fratrum movement which had been founded in the mid-fifteenth century, had undergone successive periods of persecution and respite, and had moved in doctrine in a generally Lutheran direction. After the loss of their last Bishop, the distinguished J. A. Comenius, who had died in exile in Poland 1671, the movement had come near to extinction, but under the leadership of Zinzendorf it not only revived, but soon became a force to be reckoned with wherever Protestants were to be found. The Moravian settlement at Berthelsdorf was given the name “Herrnhut”—the Lord’s Watch.
The year of A. H. Francke’s death, 1727, marked in some ways the high point of Halle Pietism, and although after that date it was by no means a spent force, yet in retrospect one can see that, certainly by the late ’30s, the impetus in foreign missionary work, for example, had shifted to the Moravians. Beyreuther regards the Moravians as the natural successors to the Halle Pietists, and says Zinzendorf “stands on the shoulders of Francke.”30
J. E. Hutton holds a similar view: “Without Zinzendorf the Bohemian Brethren (an older name for the Moravian Brethren) would probably never have returned to life; and without the fibre of the Bohemian Brethren, German Pietism would have died a natural death.”31
In 1733 the first company of Moravians to set sail for America were in the charge of August Gottlieb Spangenberg,32 who had at one time been a teacher at Halle University, and who was eventually to be Zinzendorf’s successor—a remarkably talented man with a strong practical bent, and a deep love for the Savior. He and his fellow Moravians formed a settlement on the banks of the Savannah River in Georgia, and he was therefore close at hand when, in the spring of 1736, the good ship Simmonds arrived from England, carrying a second batch of Moravians under their leader, David Nitschmann, and, of course, John and Charles Wesley, Benjamin Ingham, and others. John Wesley’s experiences on that voyage, his realization of his own spiritual shortcomings in comparison with his Moravian fellow passengers, and his study of the German language in order to converse with them, are so well known that they need not be dwelt upon here; Wesley gives all the details in his journal,33 showing how Spangenberg probed deeply into Wesley’s soul, how the practical faith and godliness of the Moravians in Georgia led him to see the inadequacy of his own religious profession, and how, on his return to England, the Moravian Peter Böhler34 taught him the truths of saving faith in Christ, instantaneous conversion, assurance, and sanctification. Wesley’s own “heart-warming” experience took place as he listened to a passage much beloved by German Pietists, i.e. a section from Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans.35 Space forbids a study of Wesley’s work in translating thirty-three of the best German Pietist hymns into English,36 nor can we follow him when, shortly after his conversion he paid a visit to Germany, taking care to call at both Halle and Herrnhut.37 Wesley retained a love for Böhler and Spangenberg throughout his life, but from 1740 onward the two movements were to go their separate ways, probably as a result, in large measure, of the clashing personalities of Wesley and Zinzendorf.38 It would appear that aspects of Methodist organization such as the conference and the band-system owe their inspiration to the Moravians, whose discipline and methods of instruction were consistently admired by Wesley.39 The real weight of Moravian influence on the Evangelical Revival is to be found, however, not in these areas, but in the personal contacts which John Wesley—and indeed Charles—enjoyed in the years just preceding and just following their conversion in 1738.
It is to be noted that the Moravians exerted far more influence on the Wesleys than upon George Whitefield. Indeed, Whitefield wrote in 1753 a fierce attack entitled An Expostulatory Letter to Count Zinzendorf, which reached a second edition, was circulated not only in this country, but in Germany too, and, because of its allegations of Moravian corrupt practices, particularly in the sphere of money, very nearly put an end to the Moravian’s cause in England. He deplored some of their modes of worship, regarded them as more German than scriptural (John Wesley had also leveled a similar charge at them, complaining that “they follow Luther, for better, for worse”40), and accused them of being crypto-Papists.41 On the other hand, Whitefield never had anything but admiration for the Moravian’s predecessors and contemporaries, the Halle Pietists, and frequently acknowledges his indebtedness to the example of faith left behind by A. H. Francke in building and maintaining his great orphanage. Furthermore, Whitefield corresponded with Francke’s son and successor at Halle, and over the years collected and sent many thousands of pounds for the relief of German Protestant refugees.42
German Pietism’s Weaknesses and Strengths
Among the weaknesses must be reckoned the following:
1. Indifference to the Church as an institution, with a visible order, government, discipline, and so forth. The movement as a whole tended to ignore these matters—largely, of course, because of the institutional churches’ resistance to the Pietists’ message—and to develop into “ecclesiolae in ecclesia.” Much modern evangelicalism has this same tendency, and Klaas Runia has no hesitation in tracing it back to Pietism.43
2. Indifference to large areas of biblical doctrine, a tendency to concentrate on conversion and the subjective experience of the individual in salvation, at the expense of much else.44 The “Doctrines of Grace” are far from prominent in Pietism.
3. A shift of emphasis from God to man. It has often been said that the eighteenth century Enlightenment is the direct successor of Pietism in the sense that Pietism made man’s experience a vital subject of study. Runia45 pursues this thought further and accuses Pietism of producing, in the long term, “liberalism à la Schleiermacher” and “the present neo-liberalism of a Bultmann, a Tillich, a Robinson and a Van Buren”—an unduly harsh judgment?
Nonetheless, one must recognize the following as some of the strengths of Pietism:
1. Emphasis on heart religion, with the twin truths of the necessity for personal, saving faith in Christ and for a personal Christian experience.
2. Insistence on “active faith,” to which the Halle Orphanage, schools, and missionary center are perhaps the most impressive testimony. True Pietism is the antithesis of “Quietism” at this point.
3. Insistence on the need for truly edifying preaching, teaching, and writing, by converted men. “Home” religion is to be encouraged as well as “Church” religion, and catechizing is a vital handmaid to preaching.
4. Emphasis on the Church’s duty to preach the gospel to the unconverted, both at home and abroad. The Moravians did it so successfully that in 1792, the date often regarded as the beginning of the modern missionary movement, William Carey, himself a Calvinist, faced his fellow Baptist ministers in Kettering, threw down on the table some numbers of a Moravian publication which was the first-ever English missionary magazine, and exclaimed: “See what the Moravians have done! Can we not follow their example, and in obedience to our heavenly Master go out into the world, and preach the gospel to the heathen?”46