Nov 2, 2026 · 1 hr 3 min · 11 segments
Few American Christians in the 21st Century question the compatibility of their faith with a capitalist economic system. Two hundred years ago, however, the social and economic changes that came with…
Bob CrawfordHost
All right, so you're talking about Puritan Calvinists, Wesleyan Arminianism, and Pietist Lutheranism.
So talk about the Pietist Separatist, who's behind it, and what does this communal business look like?
For those that are unfamiliar with the term pietism, I mean, this is like one of these obscure academic kind of sounding terms.
It's basically, I would say, analogous to the kind of religious person today that might be concerned about purity and compromise.
So the kind of person that sets up rules about going and watching R-rated movies, for instance, or how long a hemline needs to be on a dress or the kind of language you should use or whether you drink alcohol or those kinds of things.
That's the kind of person that we're talking about in the early 19th century.
These are German immigrants who want to preserve their particular ways of living as they see as being the best, basically, Christians out there, because they believe by living this really... guarded, purified sort of communal existence.
They're going to be the people that make it into the next millennium when Christ comes back.
And they kind of have these very interesting ideas about the coming, you know, the second coming of Christ.
First, Joe, I meant to, I meant to ask you to do this as we define our terms, right? premillennialism, postmillennialism.
I think that moving forward in this conversation, it will help everyone listening to kind of, if we just get a primer on premillennialists and postmillennialists.
But I would argue that understanding those two concepts is central to understanding how Americans have thought about our culture at large the last 200 years.
And that's why in the early 19th century, so many Protestant Americans were consumed with reform.
ending slavery, for instance, fixing prostitution, getting rid of poverty, temperance, not having people drink too much alcohol, all these kinds of things where, and then the big missionary movement, sending people all around the world and domestically to convert people.
But the pietists that we're talking about are actually not post-millennialists.
They think the world is unraveling and that Christ is gonna come back and make things right and then reign over a thousand year millennial kingdom.
All right, so you're talking about Puritan Calvinists, Wesleyan Arminianism, and Pietist Lutheranism.
So talk about the Pietist Separatist, who's behind it, and what does this communal business look like?
For those that are unfamiliar with the term pietism, I mean, this is like one of these obscure academic kind of sounding terms.
It's basically, I would say, analogous to the kind of religious person today that might be concerned about purity and compromise.
So the kind of person that sets up rules about going and watching R-rated movies, for instance, or how long a hemline needs to be on a dress or the kind of language you should use or whether you drink alcohol or those kinds of things.
That's the kind of person that we're talking about in the early 19th century.
These are German immigrants who want to preserve their particular ways of living as they see as being the best, basically, Christians out there, because they believe by living this really... guarded, purified sort of communal existence.
They're going to be the people that make it into the next millennium when Christ comes back.
And they kind of have these very interesting ideas about the coming, you know, the second coming of Christ.
First, Joe, I meant to, I meant to ask you to do this as we define our terms, right? premillennialism, postmillennialism.
I think that moving forward in this conversation, it will help everyone listening to kind of, if we just get a primer on premillennialists and postmillennialists.
But I would argue that understanding those two concepts is central to understanding how Americans have thought about our culture at large the last 200 years.
And that's why in the early 19th century, so many Protestant Americans were consumed with reform.
ending slavery, for instance, fixing prostitution, getting rid of poverty, temperance, not having people drink too much alcohol, all these kinds of things where, and then the big missionary movement, sending people all around the world and domestically to convert people.
But the pietists that we're talking about are actually not post-millennialists.
They think the world is unraveling and that Christ is gonna come back and make things right and then reign over a thousand year millennial kingdom.
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