Radical Pietism
Radical Pietism are those Christian churches who decided to break with denominational Lutheranism in order to emphasize certain teachings regarding holy living.
The Pietistic movement developed in Germany, led by those who believed a deeper emotional experience was incompatible with what they saw as a preset adherence to form, no matter how genuine.
They teach that personal holiness (piety), spiritual maturity, Bible study, prayer, and fasting are essential toward "feeling the effects" of grace.
[18] The Inspirationists' temporal affairs continue to prosper due to their "balanced combination of agriculture, tourism, and the manufacture of Amana refrigerators.
"[18] Adherents belonging to the Community of True Inspiration practice their Radical Pietistic faith relatively unchanged for hundreds of years.
[23] The Old Order River Brethren are an Anabaptist group in the Radical Pietistic tradition who are distinguished by their practice of plain dress and abstaining from what they see as worldly entertainment, such as the television set.
[31] A common trait among some radical Pietists is that they formed communities where they sought to revive the original Christian living of the Acts of the Apostles.
Other Radical Pietists "preferred a largely solitary life of prayer, living in modest cottages or even more primitive dwellings in the hills outside of the town.
Conrad Beissel (1691–1768), founder of another early pietistic communitarian group, the Ephrata Cloister, was also particularly affected by Radical Pietism's emphasis on personal experience and separation from false Christianity.
In Sweden, a group of radical pietists formed a community, the "Skevikare", on an island outside of Stockholm, where they lived much like the Ephrata people, for nearly a century.
[33] Eric Jansson was another Swedish Radical Pietist who formed a separatist community, the utopian Bishop Hill Colony, after emigrating to Illinois.
[34] Radical Pietism's role in the emergence of modern religious communities has only begun to be adequately assessed, according to Hans Schneider, professor of church history at the University of Marburg, Germany.
In Pennsylvania, Johannes Kelpius even installed a telescope on the roof of his house, where he and his followers kept watch for heavenly signs proclaiming the return of Christ.
Radical pietism had an influence on Anglican religion, especially as practiced in the United States, due to German immigrants especially in Pennsylvania, and combined with the influenced of Presbyterianism and Puritanism eventually led to the development of the so-called Third Great Awakening and the emergence of radical Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism peculiar to Christianity in the United States as it developed during the later 19th to early 20th centuries.
Further, he sees the theological content of radical pietism as forcing post Kantian idealisms to remain somewhat theological and characterizing certain central elements of modern philosophy, including "the priority of existence over thought; the primacy of language; the 'ecstatic' character of time; the historicity of reason; the dialogical principle; the suspension of the ethical; and the ontological difference.
