Walther was a Pietist, almost starving himself to death with penitential suffering, when he wrote to Pastor Martin Stephan. According to official biographers, and Walther himself, Stephan gave him the insights into justification merged with atonement that became the core of his teaching. UOJ came to the Missouri Synod via Stephan at Halle University, Walther converted by Stephan.
The Saxon migration was a Pietistic enterprise, and the pastors were all Pietists in an age of rationalism.
Like the other ethnic groups that came to America, the Missouri Synod was led by Pietistic unionists who began to face their problems with the Book of Concord. Walther was not the Lutheran orthodox warrior who battled against the false teachers of his age. He was another Pietist who amalgamated his original education and life with a certain amount of Lutheran doctrine and practice. As one book says, the cell groups went away gradually. Pietism did not.
We all know that the cell groups came back with a shout of triumph. Halleluia. ELCA promoted them. Fuller knew they were the solution. Missouri, WELS, and ELS leaders met at Fuller Seminary to plot the final stages of Lutherdom's doom. They won without much of a fight. Cell groups are accepted as righteous medicine for all that ails.
Cell groups have promoted such evils in the Lutheran Church as:
- Pentecostalism
- Unionism
- Doctrinal indifference
- Women teaching men
- Women's ordination
- Despising the Means of Grace
- Rationalism
- Denigration of the divine call
- Lutheran papalism
- Entertainment Seeker Services
- Friendship evangelism
- Subjectivism - experience and emotions judging the Scriptures and Confess.
Important topics to study in relationship to Pietism are:
Spener's development of the cell group, borrowed from Labadie.
Halle established as the main center of Pietism, to teach Pietism.
Halle's rapid transformation to a center for rationalism.
Francke's exponential expansion of Pietism at Halle University.
Zinzendorf and Wesley.
Zinzendorf, Herrnhut, and Stephan.
Halle University, Knapp, Tholuck, Schleiermacher.
Famous Halle alumni - Muhlenberg, Stephan, Hoenecke.
How Pietism turns into secular activism (ELCA).
Pietism and the Church Shrinker Movement.
From Shrinker to "Emergent Church."
