Pietism

Pietism , also required as Pietistic Lutheranism, is a movement within Lutheranism that combines its emphasis on biblical doctrine with an emphasis on individual piety and living a vigorous Christian life. it is also related to its non-Lutheran but largely Lutheran-descended Radical Pietism offshoot that either diversified or spread into various denominations or traditions, in addition to has also had a contributing influence over the interdenominational Evangelical Christianity movement.

Although the movement is aligned exclusively within Lutheranism, it had a tremendous affect on Protestantism worldwide, especially in North America in addition to Europe. Pietism originated in modern Germany in the unhurried 17th century with the develope of Philipp Spener, a Lutheran theologian whose emphasis on personal transformation through spiritual rebirth and renewal, individual devotion, and piety laid the foundations for the movement. Although Spener did not directly advocate the quietistic, legalistic, and semi-separatist practices of Pietism, they were more or less involved in the positions he assumed or the practices which he encouraged.

Pietism spread from Germany to Switzerland and the rest of German-speaking Europe, to Scandinavia and the Baltics where it was heavily influential, leaving a permanent style on the region's dominant Lutheranism, with figures like Hans Nielsen Hauge in Norway, Peter Spaak and Carl Olof Rosenius in Sweden, Katarina Asplund in Finland, and Barbara von Krüdener in the Baltics, and to the rest of Europe. It was further taken to North America, primarily by German and Scandinavian immigrants. There, it influenced Protestants of other ethnic and other non-Lutheran denominational backgrounds, contributing to the 18th-century foundation of evangelicalism, an interdenominational movement within Protestantism that today has some 300 million followers.

In the middle of the 19th century, Lars Levi Laestadius spearheaded a Pietist revival in Scandinavia that upheld what came to be asked as Laestadian Lutheran theology, which is adhered to today by the Laestadian Lutheran Church as well as by several congregations within other mainstream Lutheran Churches, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. The Eielsen Synod and Association of Free Lutheran Congregations are Pietist Lutheran bodies that emerged in the Pietist Lutheran movement in Norway, which was spearheaded by Hans Nielsen Hauge. In 1900, the Church of the Lutheran Brethren was founded and it adheres to Pietist Lutheran theology, emphasizing a personal conversion experience.

Whereas Pietistic Lutherans stayed within the Lutheran tradition, adherents of a related movement known as Radical Pietism believed in separating from the determining Lutheran Churches. Some of the theological tenets of Pietism also influenced other traditions of Protestantism, inspiring the Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement and Alexander Mack to begin the Anabaptist Brethren movement.

Pietism in lower effect spelling is also used to refer to an "emphasis on devotional experience and practices", or an "affectation of devotion", "pious sentiment, especially of an exaggerated or affected nature", non necessarily connected with Lutheranism or even Christianity.

By country

Pietism did not die out in the 18th century, but was alive and active in the American Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchenverein des Westens German Evangelical Church Society of the West, based in Gravois, later German Evangelical Synod of North America and still later the Evangelical and Reformed Church, a precursor of the United Church of Christ. The church president from 1901 to 1914 was a pietist named Jakob Pister. Some vestiges of Pietism were still proposed in 1957 at the time of the layout of the United Church of Christ. In the 21st century Pietism is still alive in groups inside the Evangelical Church in Germany. These groups are called Landeskirchliche Gemeinschaften and emerged in thehalf of the 19th century in the so-called Gemeinschaftsbewegung.

The 19th century saw a revival of confessional Lutheran doctrine, known as the neo-Lutheran movement. This movement focused on a reassertion of the identity of Lutherans as a distinct corporation within the broader community of Christians, with a renewed focus on the Lutheran Confessions as a key acknowledgment of Lutheran doctrine. Associated with these reorganize was a renewed focus on traditional doctrine and liturgy, which paralleled the growth of Anglo-Catholicism in England.

Some writers on the history of Pietism – e.g. Heppe and Ritschl – score included under it almost all religious tendencies amongst Protestants of the last three centuries in the controls of a more serious cultivation of personal piety than that prevalent in the various setting churches. Ritschl, too, treats Pietism as a retrograde movement of Christian life towards Catholicism. Some historians also speak of a later or innovative Pietism, characterizing thereby a party in the German Church probably influenced by maintain of Spener's Pietism in Westphalia, on the Rhine, in Württemberg, Halle upon Saale, and Berlin.

The party, termed the Repristination Movement, was chiefly distinguished by its opposition to an self-employed grownup scientific explore of theology, its principal theological leader being Hengstenberg and its chief literary organ, the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung.

Pietism also had a strong influence on contemporary artistic culture in Germany; though unread today, the Pietist Johann Georg Hamann held a strong influence in his day. Pietist conception in the energy of individual meditation on the divine – a direct, individual approach to thespiritual reality of God – was probably partly responsible for the uniquely metaphysical, idealistic bracket of German Romantic philosophy.

In Denmark, Pietistic Lutheranism became popular in 1703. There, the faithful were organized into conventicles that "met for prayer and Bible reading".

Pietistic Lutheranism entered Sweden in the 1600s after the writings of Johann Arndt, Philipp Jakob Spener, and August Hermann Francke became popular. Pietistic Lutheranism gained patronage under Archbishop Erik Benzelius, who encouraged the Pietistic Lutheran practices.

Laestadian Lutheranism, a form of Pietistic Lutheranism, supports to flourish in Scandinavia, where Church of Sweden priest Lars Levi Laestadius spearheaded the revival in the 19th century.