Pietism 101

Spener, Thou Hast Conquered

A reader asked, "What is Pietism?"

Officially, Pietism began with Jacob Spener (1635-1705) when he published "Pious Wishes" as an introduction to an orthodox Lutheran book. Pious Wishes became a separate book and a movement, centered in Halle (where Muhlenberg came from). Muhlenberg began the General Synod, Pietistic and Unionistic from the beginning.

Several key components of Pietism are:

1. Accommodation with the Reformed, including compromise about the efficacy of the Word, baptismal regeneration, and the Real Presence in Holy Communion.
   
2. An emphasis on lay-led cell groups or conventicles - the real church. The Sunday worshiping and sacramental church is a corrupt shell for the pure, the noble, the far superior cell groups. New terms are prayer, share, care, koine, home Bible study, and affinity groups. WELS Prayer Institute, etc.
   
3. Cooperative (unionistic) missionary activity, often through separate para-church groups.
   
4. Opposition to Lutheran orthodoxy by teaching love as superior to pure doctrine, works as superior to justification by faith.
   
5. Eleemosynary activity in the form of hospitals, orphanages, old age homes, soldier and sailor missions.

Prayer as the means of grace.

A code of conduct, such as not drinking alcohol (even communion wine), not smoking, not watching any form of theatre, not playing cards. The German Pietists never gave up alcoholic beverages. The Swedes were very eager to promote the Temperance Movement.

The Reformed, unionistic tendency of Lutheran Pietism always wins out. The next stage after Pietism is Universalism - a doctrine dear to the hearts of UOJ fanatics. In the Wisconsin sect and the Little Sect on the Prairie, everyone is saved, everyone is forgiven.

WELS, Missouri, the ELS, and ELCA all had Pietistic roots. That is why all four groups have found the Church Growth Movement so harmonious. No one has been scandalized by CGM in Holy Mother Synod. Everyone who openly embraced CGM is promoted and extolled as wise man or woman, no matter how many scandals, arrests, and lawsuits follow.

We could argue that the liberal tendency in each synod is really a Pietistic urge, a deeply felt desire to return home to unionism, salvation by works, and rejection of the Means of Grace.

Readers, the Pietists have won.