Church History in Plain Language

by Bruce L. Shelley

In this sense Pietism was the fountain of all modern revivals. It set the experience of new life in Christ at the center of the Christian message and the Christian ministry. For this reason it is impossible to think of evangelical Christianity today without the imprint of Pietism. Evangelicals inherited two important traits from Pietism. First, emotion played so large a part in the Pietist’s religious life that reason was endangered. Since the mind of man could not fathom the mysteries of human destiny, feelings were left to carry the meaning of faith. Consequently Pietism had little to say about God’s place in nature or human history. And it presented few challenges to the spread of secularism. Evangelicals often surrendered to the same weakness. Second, Pietism assumed the existence of the institutional church. It made no frontal attacks upon it. But it shifted what was essential to Christianity—the new birth and the spiritual life—from the traditional state churches to intimate fellowship groups or voluntary associations of believers. In the United States, where no state church ever prevailed, Evangelicals made an alliance with the denominational concept of the church and simply multiplied religious movements stressing evangelism or some aspect of the Christian life. Clearly, then, Pietism lives on, not only in the Moravian denomination, but also in evangelical Christianity at large, the spiritual descendants of John Wesley and George Whitefield.