Pietism

At the beginning of part two, Weber mentions four principal bearers of the mysterious ascetic Protestantism that he talks about.

Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism, and the sects that grew out of the Baptist movement.

Weber acknowledges, of course, that all of these movements were distinct, but he also maintains that they converged and intersected in very important ways.

And in this context, he makes the quite interesting claim that it is not their theological outlook that he is interested in, that it is not the written theological or ethical codes that the central authorities within these denominations have formulated, Now Weber wants to focus on the concrete religious practices and consequences for the life of the quote-unquote common believer, not the theoretician.

And now one important movement within this Reformed tradition is Puritanism.

And Puritanism has a special place and somewhat a hard-to-pin-down place in Weber's text.

As I just mentioned, Weber tells us that the four principal forms of ascetic Protestantism are Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism and the Baptist movement.

So Puritanism is not on that list.

But pietism, pietism was a thing back in the 1500s in the Lutheran denomination.

And it was essentially that the same thing is that, well, the church isn't supposed to get involved in politics.

Well, interestingly enough, the German princes loved that idea and poured a ton of money into Pietist coffers.

And my question to people is, which... which thought process is easier to corrupt, right? Is it easier to corrupt a church that says, you know, which is actually closer to our founding and our heritage, a Congregationalist church that understands that we're supposed to pick our representatives and we're supposed to hold them to account and hold them to the ways of God? Or is it more easy to corrupt a church that says we're not supposed to get involved in politics? And I would probably venture that the latter is easier to corrupt because the state can absolutely then, you know, pour money in and the people that are saying that the church shouldn't be involved are actually going to welcome that money.

And so, you know, I would just kind of like kind of throw the whole, you know, you'll know them by their fruit back at people when it comes to that conversation.

And that's when Wilhelm looks at his older brother and basically says, hang on, he's hanging out with these crazy people.

evangelical Christians in Prussia, the Pietist movements, and they have crazy ideas.

And I don't want them to put those ideas into my brother's head because he's going to be king in the future.

And over those circles in which then Crown Prince Friedrich von der Forst hangs out, that's kind of where the two brothers start arguing and bickering and eventually move apart quite rapidly.

And so, Katrina von Schlegel wrote many hymns.

Of them, 29 were published, and they became part of what churches were singing at that time, and that movement, which was known as Pietism, she was part of that.

And Pietism would have a ripple effect across all Protestantism and even modern day evangelicalism.

There's a focus about renewing your personal devotion and faith to Christ with repentance and obedience to him.

This influenced the Wesleys in England in the 1700s in the American colonies where revival was breaking out in the first great awakening and Katrina von Schlegel's adult life overlapped with that period almost exactly.

So these, they're talking about the alchemists, the capitalists, the mystics, the Rosicrucians, all those crazy... cults that came over like um in the mayflower days plymouth brethren and the quakers and the shakers and um uh who's the other guy moravians there's one in 1690 the german pietist theologian magister johann Helpius sailed for America with a group of followers who all practiced mystical and esoteric rites.

The Pietists settled in Pennsylvania and their descendants still flourished there.

This was in 1940.

I don't know if there's any of them left by 1942, but the Pietists brought with them the writings of the German mystic Jacob Boheme, where we get the word Bohemian, books on magic astrology alchemy and kabbalah they had curious manuscripts illumined with strange designs and their principal text was called an abc book for young students studying in the college of the holy ghost looks interesting So this is like the inner circle.

Kelpius was a man of feeble health.

After years, he died from hardships and exposures of his religious austerity.

Painting brought into life by religion no sooner reached maturity than it led people away from religion by pointing out sensuous beauties in the type rather than the religious beauties in the symbol.

Fara Bartolomeo was among the last of the Pietists in art.

He had no great imagination, but some feeling and a fine color sense for Florence.

Naturally, he was influenced somewhat by the great ones about him, learning perspective from Raphael, grandeur from Michelangelo, and contours from Leonardo da Vinci.

It's not Christian.

This maps onto pietism in many ways.

Pietism is kind of the idea of, uh, kind of, uh, an otherworldly spirituality that never touches, uh, real life.

And so the practical example that, that would be readily accessible to most people is, is the reticence or hesitation that many Christians have with engaging in politics today.

So politics is a different domain than church work, than vocational work or industry.

Puritan Scientists The Merton thesis is an argument about the nature of early experimental science proposed by Robert K. Merton.

Similarly to Max Weber's famous claim on the link between the Protestant work ethic and the capitalist economy, Merton argued for a similar positive correlation between the rise of English Puritanism, as well as German Pietism, and early experimental science.

As an example, seven of ten nucleus members of the Royal Society were Puritans, In the year 1663, 62% of the members of the Royal Society were similarly identified.

The Merton Thesis has resulted in continuous debates.