Part four of our romp through The Pietist Impulse in Christianity raises another deceptively simple question, “Was John Wesley a Pietist?” Even if one accepts a definition of “Pietist” that encompasses people other than early modern German Lutherans, Wesley is a controversial figure. He is included in Carter Lindberg’s popular collection, The Pietist Theologians, and … More The Pietist Impulse: Wesley
Today we come to the end of a series that has looked at 20th century (neo)Anabaptist critiques of Pietism, starting with Harold Bender‘s influential “Anabaptist Vision” speech and Robert Friedmann‘s famously anti-Pietist “thesis.” After a pause to sum up that critique and look at its continuing influence, we examined how revisionist and post-revisionist Anabaptist historians … More What Pietists Can Learn from the Anabaptist Vision
As we’ve already heard from Roger Olson, Pietism is often caricatured as being anti-intellectual, and Pietists as being so concerned to avoid head-centered “dead orthodoxy” that they substitute heart-centered emotional subjectivism. In part three of our series previewing chapters in our new book, The Pietist Impulse in Christianity, we find that tension, but more importantly, … More The Pietist Impulse: Modernity
In the first preview of chapters from our new book, The Pietist Impulse in Christianity, I made much of our volume’s affinity for expansive definitions of the “Pietist impulse,” by implication rejecting the “strict constructionist” take that Pietism properly construed was a certain segment of German Lutheranism in the early modern period. So it’s only … More The Pietist Impulse: Germans
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
This week I’m launching a new series previewing the chapters in our newly released book, The Pietist Impulse in Christianity. Where better to start than with the deceptively simple question, “What is Pietism?” As we point out rather obviously in our editors’ introduction, that question “is not easily answered” (xxi). Some scholars prefer a “strict … More The Pietist Impulse: Definitions
My friend Jim Hawkinson passed away two months ago today. In that time, he’s been honored by two memorial services (the one at our church, where he served as visitation pastor, drew something like 700 people) and several excellent essays. And while I promised my own appreciation a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure that … More J. Hawk
This afternoon we’ll pick up our series examining the critique of Pietism bound up in the “Anabaptist vision” promoted by Harold Bender and like-minded Mennonite scholars in the mid-20th century. Last time I noted that Bender’s critique (as substantially developed by Robert Friedmann) continued to influence neo-Anabaptist scholars like the young Mennonite Brethren professors who … More The Anabaptist Revision
For the third part of my series on (neo)Anabaptist critiques of Pietism, I’d like to pause, sum up the points of criticism, and invite readers’ responses before moving on. In the first entry in the series, we reviewed Harold Bender’s “Anabaptist Vision” speech, then continued in part 2 with the “Friedmann thesis” promulgated by Robert … More Taking Stock: Anabaptist Critiques of Pietism
…the publication by Wipf & Stock of The Pietist Impulse in Christianity (Princeton Theological Monographs Series), edited by Christian Collins Winn, G.W. Carlson, Eric Holst, and myself. You can find it on Amazon, but save yourself some money and go straight to the publisher for a 20% discount. I’m going to start a series in … More I’m Proud to Announce…
The Pietist Schoolman 