Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Pietism as a Movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pietism as a Movement. Show all posts

Friday, December 5, 2014

"Pietism" - The Other Side of Evangelicalism


Today Roger gives a short history to "the other side of evangelicalism" when it was pietistic and irenic in doctrine. Then moves quickly through the influences of the Swedish church upon the Baptist church and how early Christian Fundamentalism changed all again. Enjoy.

R.E. Slater
December 5, 2014

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The historical movement known as Pietism emphasized the response of faith and inward transformation as crucial aspects of conversion to Christ. Unfortunately, Pietism today is often equated with a "holier-than-thou" spiritual attitude, religious legalism, or withdrawal from involvement in society.

In Reclaiming Pietism Roger Olson and Christian Collins Winn argue that classical, historical Pietism is an influential stream in evangelical Christianity and that it must be recovered as a resource for evangelical renewal. They challenge misconceptions of Pietism by describing the origins, development, and main themes of the historical movement and the spiritual-theological ethos stemming from it. The book also explores case studies of Pietism's influence on contemporary Christian theologians and spiritual leaders such as Richard Foster and Stanley Grenz.


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by Christopher Gehrz (Editor)

Pietism has long been ignored in evangelical scholarship. This is especially the case in the field of Christian higher education, which is dominated by thinkers in the Reformed tradition and complicated by the association of Pietism with anti-intellectualism. The irony is that Pietism from the beginning "was intimately bound up with education," according to Diarmaid MacCulloch. But until now there has not been a single work dedicated to exploring a distinctively Pietist vision for higher education. In this groundbreaking volume edited by Christopher Gehrz, scholars associated with the Pietist tradition reflect on the Pietist approach to education. Key themes include holistic formation, humility and openmindedness, the love of neighbor, concern for the common good and spiritual maturity. Pietism sees the Christian college as a place that forms whole and holy persons. In a pluralistic and polarized society, such a vision is needed now more than ever.


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Two Forthcoming Books about Pietism

by Roger Olson
December 3, 2014

Reclaiming Pietism: Retrieving an Evangelical Tradition by Roger E. Olson and Christian T. Collins Winn will be published in January by Eerdmans. The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education: Forming Whole and Holy Persons edited by Christopher Gehrz will be published in January by InterVarsity Press. See Amazon.com for details.

These two books emerge out of a decades-long project at Bethel University in Minnesota where I taught (1984-1999) and where Christian and Christopher teach (theology and history respectively). The project was and is to reclaim Bethel’s Pietist heritage. Bethel was founded in the 19th century by Swedish immigrants who happened to be Baptist but were also Pietists—Pietists who became Baptists.

The Swedish Baptist Conference (later renamed the Baptist General Conference) is a distinctive Baptist tradition in being Pietist first and Baptist second. The movement grew out of a Pietist movement in Scandinavia called the (in Swedish) Lasäre—“Readers”—because they met in small groups to read and discuss the Bible which was illegal in Sweden in the early 19th century (and before). Many of these Scandinavian Pietists emigrated to the U.S. in the 19th century to find religious freedom. In their home countries they were being persecuted. In the U.S. they eventually founded several distinct denominations that became the Evangelical Free Church of America and the Evangelical Covenant Church of America.

But many became Baptists—even before arriving in the U.S. Some of them melted into the Northern Baptist Convention (now the American Baptist Churches). That was the case with many Danish Baptists. Others, however, retained their distinctness—especially the Swedes. Bethel and the BGC emerged out of that tradition. During the 20th century, however, the BGC and Bethel lost much of their Pietist heritage as they melted into the larger evangelical movement. Gradually fundamentalists joined as pastors and began to pressure the denomination and university (college and seminary) to conform to American fundamentalism.

The Pietists were noted for an “irenic approach” to non-essentials of the Christian faith. For example, they decided not to require premillennialism and agreed to disagree about Calvinism and Arminianism—permitting both to co-exist on an equal basis within their movement. Gradually, however, the non-Pietist fundamentalists who came into the denomination without that irenic spirit began to pressure it and the college and seminary (now a university) to elevate non-essentials to essential status. The motto of many Pietists has been “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity (love).” During my own fifteen years among the Swedish Baptists I felt the increasing pressure from pastors and some constituents to drop the irenic spirit and move with the rest of evangelicalism in a more fundamentalist (or neo-fundamentalist) direction. For example, I had a dear colleague who taught Old Testament who happened to be amillennial in his view of the Kingdom of God and eschatology.

Throughout his teaching tenure at Bethel he was harshly attacked by some pastors and constituents who thought premillennialism, if not dispensationalism, was an essential of evangelical faith. When one of my other colleagues published a book containing his view of the future as open even for God (“open theism”) many pastors called for his firing even though that view did not in any way contradict the denomination’s statement of faith (which was nearly identical with the National Association of Evangelicals’ statement of core doctrines).

Out of that milieu of controversy came a strong impulse, especially on the part of Bethel faculty, to rediscover, retrieve, and renew the denomination’s and university’s Pietist heritage—and then to tell the whole world about it with a hope of other evangelicals re-embracing the Pietist ingredient in American evangelical Christianity. “Pietism” had become almost a dirty word even among evangelicals; it was being misrepresented and surrounded with misconceptions. (One BGC pastor told me “Pietism is just a mask for doctrinal indifference.”)

Bethel held several conferences with notable scholars of Pietism present and presenting. An earlier book entitled The Pietist Impulse in Christianity came out of those conferences. (I already blogged about it here earlier.) Now these two books emerge from that decades-long project. The book Christian Collins Winn and I authored (above) is independent of the project but inspired by it. The one edited by Christopher Gehrz is a product of the project and contains essays on Pietism and Christian higher education by (mostly) Bethel faculty.

I believe this retrieval and renewal of the Pietist heritage deserves greater notice and comment by evangelical leaders. Hopefully that will come. We will keep pressing for it.

Unfortunately, the reason this project and these books are necessary is the overwhelming suspicion of Christian inwardness and experience among “mainstream” evangelical leaders—especially theologians. Although we believe Carl F. H. Henry and his minions have made great contributions to “the evangelical mind,” we also think they brought about an over-emphasis on the intellect to the neglect of the heart. In other words, we think there is a “scandal of the evangelical heart”—especially in evangelical theology where any mention of experience immediately raises cries of “Schleiermacher!” (Friedrich Schleiermacher was the “father of liberal theology” and claimed to be a “Pietist of a higher order.” What he really said was that he was still a “Herrnhutter of a higher order.” “Herrnhutter” was a term for “Moravian.” Somehow that quote of his, in a letter to his sister meant for his father who had disowned him, has been translated as “Pietist of a higher order.”)

For me, this project is similar to the one I have worked on for twenty-five years—of reclaiming “Arminianism.” Like “Arminianism” “Pietism” has been so distorted and surrounded with so many myths that those of us who claim the label and the heritage it represents struggle to overcome the undeserved stigmas placed on them and us.

I urge you to at least go to Amazon.com and read the descriptions of these two books and the promotional statements for them. Then, I hope you will purchase and read them. If you are not involved in Christian higher education the volume edited by Gehrz may not be for you, but mine and Christian’s will interest all who have any interest in Christian history and especially those with an interest in the “other” side of evangelical history and theology (the one rarely mentioned or explored by the semi-official spokespersons for “mainstream” evangelicalism).