The experiential impulse of Protestant Christianity, often identified as Pietism, is one of the key driving forces in shaping the western world, as well as promoting the ethos of individualism and antipathy toward the larger society. As such, understanding the foundations of Pietism is an essential and overlooked aspect of Western Christianity. This work helps to address this gap in scholarship by addressing the first two centuries of Pietism. First, this work shows where the experiential impulse is found within medieval Christianity, specifically in mysticism. Following the Protestant Reformation, this experiential impulse is unmoored from church tradition but still finds confessional variants, including Lutheran, Reform, and Anglican. The work then focuses on six key figures in the development of Pietism, specifically William Perkins, Johann Arndt, Philip Spener, August Francke, Count Zinzendorf, and John Wesley, demonstrating that Pietism begins as a protest against institutional forms but then grows into institutional and denominational forms itself. These institutional forms include Moravians, Methodists, and Prussianism, which directly shaped Germany, England, and America, though the latter not until the nineteenth century. This work reveals the diverse impact Pietism had while remaining a cohesive yet contradictory movement.

The majority of Christians in China over the course of the last century have worshipped not in missionary-founded churches or in congregations affiliated with the contemporary Three-Self Patriotic Movement or Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, but in independent and unregistered churches, often labeled "house churches." From the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements within the mission-church landscape of the early twentieth century, to the Calvinist Reformed movement in the present-day Protestant church, the vibrant faith life and extraordinary church growth of this sector of Chinese Christianity offer a fascinating witness and lesson to the world church. Yet despite the size of their congregations and the spread of their teachings, the theologies of these independent and unregistered churches have drawn much less academic attention than those of mission-church or "state church" theologians. This volume presents a selection of new studies on "house church" theologians and theologies. These begin in the early twentieth century with studies of the Spiritual Gifts movement in Shandong and the nature of Pentecostalism in Hong Kong, and arrive in the present with essays on the changing role of women's leadership in the church, given the spread of Reformed thought and the theological implications of Westminsterian Neo-Calvinism in China. The second section of the volume is devoted to the theological writings and lives of the two most prominent independent church figures of the twentieth century: Wang Mingdao and Ni Tuosheng (Watchman Nee). These chapters include studies of spiritual theology; of Ni's doctrine of humanity, his views on salvation, and his prison letters; and of Wang Mingdao's life and moral thought, his Confucian beliefs, and his understanding of the relationship of Christians to the state. The third section of the volume foregrounds church voices like the fundamentalist Samuel Lamb and the mediating figure Yang Shaotang, and considers local developments in Roman Catholicism in light of Vatican reforms.

Twenty-first-century Protestantism is radically different from the Protestantism of the Reformation. The challenges of modernity affected all aspects of Christianity and the more successful attempts to combat these challenges came about as a result of two rather different yet similar theologians in the nineteenth century. This work provides an exhaustive look at Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of modern liberal Protestantism, and Phoebe Palmer, the mother of the Holiness movement. The trend of liberalism is to strip away all but what is essential to Christian life, while the Holiness movement sought to make all of life applicable to the Bible and God. While these two movements may appear contradictory, they are grounded in a shared source of experiential Protestantism, commonly known as Pietism, and develop their theological systems from this starting point. This study includes not only their theologies, but also biographies that introduce the reader to these two luminaries. Liberalism and holiness, as created by Schleiermacher and Palmer, lay the foundation for Pentecostalism, fundamentalism, neo-orthodoxy, and the interdenominational movements of the nineteenth century. Only from this vantage can we understand the modern Protestant mindset.

This open access book offers an entangled history of hygiene by showing how knowledge of purity, health and cleanliness was shaped by evangelical medical missionaries and their encounters with people in West Africa. By tracing the interactions and negotiations of six Basel Mission doctors, who practised on the Gold Coast and in Cameroon from 1885 to 1914, the author demonstrates how notions of religious purity, scientific health and colonial cleanliness came together in the making of hygiene during the age of High Imperialism. The heyday of evangelical medical missions abroad coincided with the emergence of tropical medicine as a scientific discipline during what became known as the Scramble for Africa. This book reveals that these projects were intertwined and that hygiene played an important role in all three of them. While most historians have examined modern hygiene as a European, bourgeois and scientific phenomenon, the author highlights both the colonial and the religious fabric of hygiene, which continues to shape our understanding of purity, health and cleanliness to this day.

Christianity is essentially a historical religion. It cannot be understood merely through a set of dogmas, a moral code, or a view of the universe. Through the stories of Israel, Jesus, and the developing church, Christianity acknowledges the revelation of God in action. Augustine, the great medieval theologian, envisioned human society as composed of two “cities,” distinguished by two loves: the love of God and the love of Self. He viewed these cities as universal in scope and operative throughout human history. This perspective raises questions about the church’s nature, its role in society, and whether the church has lived up to its nature and destiny as God’s new creation. The New Creation defines the church as “the people of God,” related but not equivalent to Israel or the institutional church. This text provides a clear and concise survey of the church as God’s instrument for the providential care of the earth and its human family. The story of the church begins with Abraham in the second millennium BCE, long before Jesus or the birth of Christianity, and it proceeds through three epochs: 1.Formation (c. 1850–4 BCE), 2.Transformation (4 BCE–1500 CE), and 3.Reformation (1500 CE–present). Ideal for individual or group study, The New Creation divides church history into nine units, each discussed as a phase in the church’s organic growth and development. In addition to the narrative, each chapter includes three features for that epoch of church history: 1) a significant event, 2) a turning point or decisive moment, and 3) study questions.

A Companion to German Pietism offers an introduction to recent Pietism scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic, in German, Dutch, and English. The focus is upon early modern German Pietism, a movement that arose in the late 17th century German Empire within both Reformed and Lutheran traditions. It introduced a new paradigm to German Protestantism that included personal renewal, new birth, women-dominated conventicles, and millennialism. The “Introduction” offers a concise overview of modern research into German Pietism. The Companion is then organized according to the different worlds of Pietist existence—intellectual, devotional, literary-cultural, and social-political.

An up-to-date portrait of a defining moment in the Christian story—its beginnings, worldview, and cultural significance. Winner of the Dale W. Brown Book Award of the Young Center for Anabaptists and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College An Introduction to German Pietism provides a scholarly investigation of a movement that changed the history of Protestantism. The Pietists can be credited with inspiring both Evangelicalism and modern individualism. Taking into account new discoveries in the field, Douglas H. Shantz focuses on features of Pietism that made it religiously and culturally significant. He discusses the social and religious roots of Pietism in earlier German Radicalism and situates Pietist beginnings in three cities: Frankfurt, Leipzig, and Halle. Shantz also examines the cultural worlds of the Pietists, including Pietism and gender, Pietists as readers and translators of the Bible, and Pietists as missionaries to the far reaches of the world. He not only considers Pietism's role in shaping modern western religion and culture but also reflects on the relevance of the Pietist religious paradigm of today. The first survey of German Pietism in English in forty years, An Introduction to German Pietism provides a narrative interpretation of the movement as a whole. The book's accessible tone and concise portrayal of an extensive and complex subject make it ideal for courses on early modern Christianity and German history. The book includes appendices with translations of German primary sources and discussion questions.

Situates the female mystical tradition within the context of the epistemological shift which occurred at the dawn of the modern world.