PIETISM, a religious movement in the Lutheran churches of Germany, which had its rise toward the end of the 17th century. Like Methodism and Methodist, Pietism and Pietist were originally terms of contempt bestowed on religious innovators by their conservative op ponents. The author of the Pietist movement was Philip James Spener, a Lutheran pastor at Frankfort on the Main who in 1670 began to hold private conferences in his own house with devoutly inclined people, in which the Scrip tures were explained with a view solely to the promotion of inward piety instead of the in culcation of dogmatic beliefs. In a book en title °Pia Desideria' (1675) he sought to bring the Lutheran Church back to its original prin ciples. That Church, the foundation principle of which was, for Luther, Christian faith in the heart and acceptance of the Scriptures as the supreme rule of life and belief, had become a creed-bound institution with an inflexible sys tem. In the pulpits the dogmas of the creeds were continually expounded and defended, while the Bible was made of no account by preachers and pastors, in the theological schools or in the family. The true pastoral work of the Christian ministry, that of forwarding the moral and spiritual welfare of the people, was in desuetude. To remedy these evils Spener pro posed in his work: (1) Cultivation of devout study of the Scriptures in private meetings; (2) Recognition of the Christian priesthood of all the faithful by giving to the laity a share in the government of the Church; (3) Insistence, in pulpit discourse, upon the necessity of vital personal piety; (4) Kindly persuasion instead of polemic bitterness in dealing with heretics and unbelievers; (5) Making theological semi naries schools of personal piety no less than of doctrine; (6) Banishing from the pulpit the tricks of rhetoric and substituting heart-to heart hortation to Christian faith and love.
The book made a deep impression throughout Germany among the devout laity and the more earnest clergy. Spener was the same year ap pointed court chaplain at Dresden and in that station was the means of bringing about a ref ormation of the system of catechetical instruc tion throughout Saxony. In the Leipzig Uni versity some of the students and docents of the theological school formed themselves into a society for study of the Scriptures both intel lectual and devotional and those among them who were the more advanced conducted courses of practical exposition and application of the sacred text, to which students and townspeople resorted eagerly, so that the Church authorities were alarmed and the lectures were suppressed by the government. The young theologians thereupon left the university and the city and entered the new university just founded at Halle by friends of the new movement; there after Halle was the chief centre of Pietism. Like most other reformatory movements whether in church or state, its aims were from first to last condemned as impious or as seditious, but one by one they were adopted by their antago nists; Pietism as an organized movement sub sisted till the middle of the 18th century; its monument was a state church reformed in nearly every particular in accordance with Spener's program. Consult Schubert, 'Out lines of Church History) (1907).