Usually, historian D.G. Hart spends his weekends subtweeting Pope Francis, so I guess I’m honored to have been the subject of this tweet on Saturday: Isn't the point of pietism avoiding formal liturgical practices – question mark https://t.co/qLrvldApeL — Old Life (@oldlife) March 4, 2017 I know he’s not actually seeking an answer, but it’s not an unfair question. After … More Can Pietism Be Liturgical?
At the end of June I had the chance to spend a few days at Rathbun Lake in southern Iowa, joining my wife’s extended family for a reunion. Of course, even on vacation I couldn’t escape my research. In a part of Iowa most famous in religious history for being part of the Mormon Trail, I turned … More Pietism as Instincts, or It’s More Than Old Churches in Rural Iowa
Recently, I had the opportunity to travel to Bridgewater College, which is located in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, just outside Harrisonburg, Virginia. The occasion, spearheaded by Steve Longenecker, was a symposium on the history of the (Schwarzenau) Brethren tradition’s relationship with evangelicalism. The intersection of evangelicalism with Pietist and Anabaptist groups is a topic that has … More Recent Conversations on Evangelicalism and Pietist-Anabaptist Identity
If you’ve been wondering why our resident guest-blogger Jared Burkholder (Grace College, IN) hasn’t been blogging here in a while… Jared has spent the fall term as a Snowden Fellow with the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College. First things first: what’s the Young Center? (And what’s the specific purpose of the Snowden Fellowship?) The Young … More Live, from Lancaster County… It’s Jared Burkholder!
Here… • I shared answers to the first two of many good questions that I was asked via Skype by an 8th grade history class in Kalispell, Montana: Did my history teachers make me want to be a historian?; and Who’s my favorite historical figure? • Paying tribute to Dallas Willard, who died of cancer … More That Was The Week That Was
It’s been a long weekend teaching and preaching, but a rewarding, exhilarating one. Thanks again to the people of Bethlehem Covenant Church for making me feel so welcome as the guest speaker for their Winter Seminar! I’m particularly grateful to their senior pastor, Ryan Eikenbary-Barber, for extending the invitation and for being an active participant … More Further Reading on Pietism
Thanks to Brian Gumm for drawing my attention to a recent post by Joshua Brockway, a minister in the Church of the Brethren, considering how the Pietist half of the COB’s heritage contributes a “spiritualist corrective” to its Anabaptist half. As I continue to prepare my comments for this weekend’s seminar, Pious Wishes and Better … More A Pietist-Spiritualist Corrective to Anabaptism
Today we continue to consider why, for most historians and leaders of colleges and universities founded by Pietist denominations, Pietism seems not to provide a “usable past,” a living history capable of sustaining a distinctive mission and identity. In the first part of this post, I suggested, first, that this might be a byproduct of … More The Unusable Past: Pietism and Christian Colleges (part 2)
In the second (full) post in this briefly interrupted series, I went through the rather lengthy list of American denominations founded by Pietists, and the colleges and universities those churches went on to establish. Having said nothing in two weeks to develop that history (except to provide a few quick facts about those schools in … More The Unusable Past: Pietism and Christian Colleges (part 1)
When I associate with Pietists, I am convicted of our Anabaptist roots. When I am in a strong Anabaptist milieu, I want to espouse Brethren Pietism. (Dale Brown, 1994) For the fifth post in this series on Anabaptist critiques of Pietism, we hear from Dale Brown and other scholars associated with the Church of the … More Anabaptist AND Pietist
The Pietist Schoolman 