Moralism and Pietism

Of late, I've been pondering on two aspects of 'pop' Christianity that might be contrary to the authentic Christian witness and which feed into the 'Second Storey Universe' and the packaging of God. 

One could say that moralism and pietism are two temptations that the Church faces.  In past posts we've discussed 'ethos' and it becomes difficult to positively list what this Orthodox 'ethos' is, because to do so could be a reduction itself. However perhaps we can point out that looking at the presuppositions of moralism and pietism, both definitely tempt the Church away from her calling.

As a shorthand it appears, moralism could include:

• salvation requiring a set of 'goals' and requirements to be 'Christian'
• a certain degree of codes and behavioral stipulations
• division of the world into halal vs haram
• focus on functionality and utility, "the doing"
• faith as mental activity of 'belief'
• checklist approach to the Christian life
• focus on justification and legal language, fear of God and salvation defined as protection from 'wrath'
• system of moral precepts for personal and social ethics
• no place for the broken or the inefficient
• desire to conqueror the world, or set the world 'on fire' instead of offer the world back as Sacrament

while pietism could include:

• individual spirituality apart from the corporate and apostolic life of the Church
• an anti-ecclesial perspective and the personal private relationship with God
• prayers focused on the individual's needs
• Eucharist and Baptism reduced to fulfilling one's personal piety
• anti-intellectualism, ultra-spiritualist, almost manichean or docetist like hatred for material and world
• "principles" and "axioms" which one accepts like any other ideology
• deification reduced to merely an improvement in someone's personal character
• Second Storey Universe
• Focus on religious feelings
• Charismatic criteria for Christians

Of course these are all just a few points and there's a risk of reductionism in the above lists. You'll notice that there also seems to be some crossover on some of the characteristics of moralism and pietism and this might also be because they seem to also feed into and support each other's presuppositions. 

Perhaps Orthodox Churches have at some point bought into some of these presuppositions due to lack of education or active proselytizing by European or Islamic rulers and conquerors. Perhaps there's always contemporary trends rooted in moralism or pietism that can tempt Orthodox Parishes. Thankfully I think we live in an era where as Orthodox we can look and embrace the opportunities for education that the Church has been blessed with. Some generations are tasked with preserving what has been passed to them, often blindly and with rigor due to persecution. We thank our Fathers and Mothers who have preserved the faith for us and we pray to do the same.

We also have been granted an opportunity to not just repeat or look romantically at the past, but to also have greater clarity concerning the beauty of what has been passed to us and which we shall pass on. We have also been granted the gift of being more aware of what is not authentic to our ethos and have the dialogue with other Orthodox Churches to help us in this mutual journey. Often we might be tempted to look at the 'mainstream' American or consumerist second-storey ideology and methods of pop-Christianity, but I think we have a rich witness to actually share with each other from within Orthodoxy.

Where the pop-Christianity ideologies continue to encourage reductionism, moralism and pietism, Orthodox Churches must be alert to their presuppositions and be ready with love and humility to witness the Truth in Love. If we as Orthodox buy into or perhaps even advocate a pop-Christian ethos then we also risk losing our ability to recognize, restore and recapitulate what is fallen and systemically damaging for all Christians and the world.

With moralism and pietism, there's what many of the modern Orthodox fathers and mothers have written and lived and died as a witness against: the fundamental separation of sacred and profane, which perpetuates and feeds secularism, atheism and the horrors of human hubris.

There is a choice, there is an alternative, which is no rigorist moralism or dead traditionalism, neither is it spiritualist and sentimentalist liberalism. Neither of these two paths and their permutations are actually concerned for the salvation of the world, as much as they argue for it.

The alternative Orthodox path may be even more necessary as both religious fundamentalism (sacred) and rampant atheistic secularism (profane) war with each other. Neither the fundamentalist nor the secular path and their permutations are actually 'relevant,' as much as they argue for it.

I would argue that the Orthodox way, the Way of Christ chooses neither of the presuppositions of moralism or pietism. That path chooses not to define or package the human being into functional value or to reduce Father, Son and Holy Spirit to rationalist modes.

That path seems to be in our witness as Church, as the Body of Christ, as deified human beings, humbly taking up the Cross and becoming holy, becoming love, with a clarity, beauty and authenticity that is Orthodoxy, even to the point of death...for the life of the world, the resurrection of the dead and life of the age to come.

Please bear with me and forgive me if what I say in itself is a reduction or a misrepresentation. Since I'm still looking into what both moralism and pietism are and how the presuppositions of each are contrary to Orthodox ethos (one could even suggest that moralism and pietism have a distinct Protestant and Secular ethos), the rest of this post is a collection of block quotes from various writers discussing moralism and pietism for your own consideration.

Please pray for me, pray for the Church, pray for our Clergy and lay teachers, pray for the martyrs, confessors and saints, and for the life of the World.

Glory to the Holy Trinity.


Moralism

"Our desire for morality, a life of virtue and obedience to the divine commandments, in other words, can all too easily turn into moralism.

Moralism is the antithesis of authentic morality. It makes of such positive and essential values as keeping the commandments and questing after virtue something other than what they were always meant to be. Moralism leads to idolatry. It substitutes the means for the end. It substitutes a “virtuous life” for him who is the sole Author of life.

Returning to the quotation with which we began the previous column: The true progression in Christian existence, when lived out according to the Gospel and in the freedom of the Spirit, is not: inherent faith that produces fear of (a redoubtable) God, which compels us to obey the commandments, and which finally issues in a life of (Godless?) virtue. It is rather a progression marked by ongoing repentance and a calling upon divine mercy for forgiveness and the gift of faith (“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”). With this gift, we can strive ever more consciously to be faithful to the will of God as expressed in the commandments (epitomized as “Love one another as I have loved you…”). And this finally, and by the sheer grace of the Holy Spirit acting within us, can lead to the ultimate goal: unbroken and unending life in blessed communion with the God whose very nature is love."

+ Fr John Breck, http://oca.org/reflections/fr.-john-breck/morality-or-moralism

"our issues are not moral in nature (obeying things because they are right, etc.) but ontological in nature. The great choice of humanity is between union with God and His Life, or a movement towards non-being and emptiness. Our salvation is not a juridical matter – it is utterly ontological."

+ Fr. Stephen Freeman, http://glory2godforallthings.com/2011/09/09/why-morality-is-not-christian/

"The biblical tradition as preserved by the Fathers cannot be identified with or reduced to a system of moral precepts or Christian ethics. It is rather a therapeutical asceticism which is not daunted by any degree of malady of the heart or noetic faculty short of its complete hardening. To take the shape of this asceticism without its heart and core and to apply it to a system of moral precepts for personal and social ethics is to produce a society of puritanical hypocrites who believe they have a special claim on God's love because of their morality, or predestination, or both. The commandments of' Christ cannot be fulfilled by any simple decision to do so or by any confidence in having been elected. A person with broken legs cannot run in the race no matter how much he wants to. One can do so only when one's legs have healed and have been restored to a competitive degree of power. In the same way, one cannot fulfill the commandments unless he undergoes the cleansing and illumination of his noetic faculty and reaches the threshold of glorification."

+ Fr. John Romanides, http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.19.en.jesus_christ_the_life_of_the_world.01.htm

"The context of the activity determines what is moral, not some absolute standard which is superimposed on moral discussion from the outset." 

+ Fr John Anthony McGuckin, "For the Peace from Above: An Orthodox Resource Book on War, Peace and Nationalism." Edited by Hildo Bos and Jim Forest (Orthodox Research Institute: 2011) 436.

"Moralism is false. It is based in fear and anger, and is often a cover-up for one's own vices. Morality is based in love and advocates the concepts of morality given us by Christ because we understand that what we are taught by Christ and the Apostles is given for our benefit and salvation. It is not filled with fear and anger, but rather it offers a better, safer and more fulfilling life to mankind, and the hope of the Kingdom of God.

Morality can become a heresy because it can become a substitute for a life in Christ. One can begin to fulfil any given moral code and forget about the struggle for the transformation of the inner person, of the heart. When morality becomes a substitute for a life in Christ, it also leads one into a self-centred and self-entertaining form of worship. There is a moral code and a "worship service" that is centred on pleasing and entertaining yourself, with some vague references to Christ. This is, for example, one of the main heresies of Evangelical Christianity. The so-called worship services often consist in rock and roll bands, torch singers, sometimes in dancing around the altar like witches around a culdron, holding hands in prayer as with a Medium or "spirit channeler" at a seance but refusing to follow the first century Christian practice of making the sign of the Cross on oneself. All is focused on self and self entertainment rather than on pouring the soul out to God in genuine worship. One can speak of "praising the Lord" without ever coming to a sincere repentance or truly pouring out the soul in humble worship, praying with hearfelt repentance and struggling for the transformation of the heart.

We have studied the subject carefully over the years, and observed the unfolding of ultra-conservative fundamentalists and other "moralists." I want to assert that ultra-moralism is form of pornography and self-hatred. There will be more to say about it later, but it might be a good idea for those who are interested in the subject to look back over history and examine this question. It has been taken up before. Nathaniel Hawthorne touched upon it in the story of THE SCARLET LETTER. The parson on the coach with Moll Flanders is another examination of this phenomenon. We have had so many examples of it in North America in the past few decades, that there are plenty of living examples to examine, even to Jerry Falwell's public denial of the principle of mercy, when he appeared on Larry King's television programme. Yet our Saviour commands us to "go and learn what it means, 'I will have mercy and not sacrifice'."

+ Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, http://orthodoxy21.blogspot.com/2008/03/morality-and-moralism.html

“If our faith is primarily a mantra to drive away punishment, our faith isn’t really a faith, it is a fear. We feign faith in order to keep from being punished. When we do that it usually manifests itself as a kind of harsh and brutal moralism. Because in this system it is psychologically comforting to see ourselves as better than other people. Thus trying to hype up our ego leads us to a kind of moralism where we have to denigrate others in order to make ourselves feel better.”

+Archbishop Lazar Puhalo

"Man has such powers that he can transmit good or evil to his environment. These matters are very delicate. Great care is needed. We need to see everything in a positive frame of mind. We mustn’t think anything evil about others. Even a simple glance or a sigh influences those around us. And even the slightest anger or indignation does harm. We need to have goodness and love in our soul and to transmit these things. We need to be careful not to harbour any resentment against those who harm us, but rather to pray for them with love. Whatever any of our fellow men does, we should never think evil of him. We need always to have thoughts of love and always to think good of others. Look at Saint Stephen the first martyr. He prayed, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. We need to do the same.

We should never think about someone that God will send him some evil or that God will punish him for his sin. This thought brings about very great evil, without our being aware of it. We often feel indignation and say to someone: ‘Have you no fear of God’s justice, are you not afraid of God’s punishment?’ Or else we say,‘God will punish you for what you’ve done,’ or,‘O God, do not bring evil on that person for what he did to me’; or, ‘May that person not suffer the same thing.’

In all these cases, we have a deep desire within us for the other person to be punished. Instead of confessing our anger over his error, we present our indignation in a different way, and we allegedly pray to God for him. In reality, however, in this way we are cursing our brother. And if, instead of praying, we say, ‘May God repay you for the evil you have done to me,’ then once again we are wishing for God to punish him. Even when we say,‘All very well, God is witness,’ the disposition of our soul works in a mysterious way and influences the soul of our fellow man so that he suffers evil.

When we speak evil about someone, an evil power proceeds from within us and is transmitted to the other person, just as the voice is transmitted on sound waves, and in point of fact the other person suffers evil. It is something like the bewitchment of the evil eye, when someone has evil thoughts about others. This occurs through our own indignation. We transmit our evil in a mystical way. It is not God who provokes evil, but rather people’s wickedness. God does not punish, but our own evil disposition is transmitted to the soul of the other in a mysterious way and does evil. Christ never wishes evil. On the contrary, He commands, Bless those who curse you…

Within us there is a part of the soul called the ‘moralist’. This ‘moralist’, when it sees someone going astray, is roused to indignation, even though very often the person who judges has strayed in the same way. He does not, however, take this as an occasion to condemn himself, but the other person. This is not what God wants. Christ says in the Gospel: You, then, that teach others, will you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? It may be that we do not steal, but we commit murder; we reproach the other person and not ourselves. We say, for example: ‘You should have done that and you didn’t do it. So see now what’s happened to you!’ When we think of evil, then it can actually happen. In a mysterious and hidden manner we diminish the power of the other person to move towards what is good, and we do him harm. We can become the occasion for him to fall ill, to lose his job or his property. In this way we do harm, not only to our neighbor, but also to ourselves, because we distance ourselves from the grace of God. And then we pray and our prayers are not heard. We ‘ask and do not receive’. Why? Have we ever thought of this? ‘Because we ask wrongly.’ We need to find a way to heal the tendency within us to feel and think evil about others.

It’s possible for someone to say,‘The way that person is behaving, he will be punished by God,’ and to believe that he is saying this without evil intent. It is not a simple thing, however, to discern whether he has or does not have evil intent. It does not appear clearly. What is hidden in our soul and how that can exercise influence on people and things is a very secret matter.

The same is not true if we say with a sense of awe that another person is not living well and that we should pray for God to help him and grant him repentance; that is, neither do we say, nor deep down do we desire that God will punish him for what he does. In this case not only do we not do harm to our neighbor, but we do him good. When someone prays for his neighbor, a good force proceeds from him and heals, strengthens and revives him. It is a mystery how this force leaves us. But, in truth, the person who has good within him radiates this good power to others, mystically and gently. He sends light to his neighbor and this creates a shield around him and protects him from evil. When we possess a good disposition towards others and pray, then we heal our fellows and we help ‘them progress towards God.

Do you see what happens? With the Spirit of God we all become incapable of every sin. We are made incapable because Christ dwells within us. We are henceforth capable only of good. Thus we will acquire the grace of God and become possessed by God. If we abandon ourselves to the love of Christ, then all will be overturned, all will be transfigured, all will be transformed, all will be transubstantiated. Anger, resentment, jealousy, indignation, censure, ingratitude, melancholy and depression will all become love, joy, longing, divine eros. Paradise!"

+ Elder Porphyrios, Wounded by Love: The Life and Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios,  http://tokandylaki.blogspot.com/2012/09/elder-porphyrios-disposition-of-moralist.html

"True morality consists far more in how well we care for one another than in what kind of external behaviour we wish to force on other people. Too often, moralism is confused with morality, but they are far from being the same. The moralistic notion that Christianity has a duty to try to force one or another denomination’s understanding of biblical morality on any nation or community is quite destructive and usually leads to persecutions and violence. People with such ideas will usually ignore the Gospel itself and rummage through the Old Testament seeking a bludgeon to use against someone or some group. Another construct that appears to be problematic is focusing the whole concept of morality on sexual matters, often to the exclusion of other very serious issues. One of the greatest moral problems in our era is the destruction of the environment, and this is rooted in egoism and self-centredness. These two, egoism and self-centredness (or "self-love") are the very bases of all that is genuinely immoral, and moralism itself is a form of egoism and self-focus.

Let us look, for a moment, at the usually misunderstood creation narrative in Genesis and see what this story actually teaches us about the human condition and the true meaning of morality.

The creation narrative is not a scientific treatise; it does not actually tell us any of the details about the creation of the universe, only that it was the work of God. The moral idea of the creation narrative is its most important aspect. We are told that God created mankind from pure love. This means that He gave man freedom, for love given without freedom is obsession but it is not love, and love demanded without freedom is a psychosis; it is not love. So God created us with love and gave to us that other factor which is essential to love – trust. If there is to be freedom then there also must be choice. The story of the two trees in the garden is essentially a prophecy about the Cross of Christ, but in this narrative they also signify a choice and the choice was whether or not to love God and trust Him. The story about the temptation is important because it was a test of the sincerity of love, for love without trust cannot be sincere. We are told that Adam and Eve were created in God’s image and they also had the grace of immortality through unity with God. Satan tempts mankind by offering him a counterfeit of something that he already has. In essence he says "Do not trust God; disobey Him and you will become like God." Adam and Eve accepted the counterfeit and this was the beginning of egoism and self love: "You will have special knowledge and you will become like God." The fall of mankind was a fall from an atmosphere of unselfish love and harmony into egoism, self-centredness and self-love.

The real moral issue for mankind is precisely this condition of egoism and self-centredness. Every normal emotion that races out of control into a destructive passion-- every offence, every explosion of anger, every murder and every war-- is rooted in our egoism and self-centredness. The real moral struggle, therefore, is against these deficits and an ascent to an unselfish love which blossoms into a cosuffering love. Since the real meaning of sin is the misuse of our energies, and this is driven by our egoism and self-focus, unselfish love is the key to true morality. Did Christ really say anything different when He told us that the entire law and the prophets are condensed into this one thing: that we love God with our whole being and our neighbour as ourselves? The only way we can love our neighbour as ourselves is through a genuine empathy. There is no other way to defeat Satan in our lives, the lives of our parishes and the world around us except through the power of cosuffering love, the kind of love that Christ Himself revealed to us in His life, His earthly ministry and the Cross. In order to do this we must see the foremost order of morality as a transformation of the heart, and not in the enforcement of a legalistic code of external behaviour.

The efforts of some religious bodies to manipulate the civil government in order to have it legislate their doctrines and moral concepts into civil law is nothing else but sinful egoism, self-centredness and self-love. It is therefore the very opposite of true morality and it has no place for Orthodox Christians. Our greatest moral obligation is to develop an unselfish love for God, our neighbour, and the realisation that all of mankind is our neighbour and each one of those human beings is the image and likeness of the living God. If we cannot love the image and likeness of God how shall we learn to love God Himself? Moralism involves fantasies of a "more Christian past," and is filled with judgment and condemnation, yet Christ " came not to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved." Moralism does not use the language of healing, but the language of fire, the rhetoric of self-righteousness and often of hate and violence. Let us think back on two instances from Christ’s own example and one of His parables. The woman taken in adultery was brought before Christ and accused. "According to the law, she ought to be stoned to death!" With a few simple words, Christ sent the arrogant legalists slinking away in shame. To the woman herself, however, He made no word of accusation. But let us think about this: if the fear of the horrible death by stoning and the shame before the whole community could not deliver this woman from the bondage of her passion, how could the simple words of Christ, "go and sin no more," accomplish this? It could do so because at the same time, Christ penetrated into her heart with the power of His cosuffering love. Nor did our Saviour speak a single hurtful or critical word to the Samaritan woman who had lived with several different men. Rather, He likewise healed her heart with that ultimate healing ointment: the balm of cosuffering love. In the parable of the prodigal son, is it not clear that the father’s forgiveness did not come into being when he saw the son returning home; rather the father’s forgiveness followed him the very day that he left home, and it was always there waiting for him when he turned around to face it and entered back into the father’s arms and home. Such are the images of true morality and true faith which our Lord Jesus Christ has imparted to us. We are in this world to strive to be spiritual healers, not to be prosecuting attorneys.

If you desire to be a truly moral person then above all else struggle to conform yourself to the image of the unselfish, cosuffering love of our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Strive to escape the temptation to judge and condemn, and become a spiritual healer through unselfish love, even while you are striving to find healing for yourself. True righteousness consists in nothing else but a pure, Christlike unselfish love; true holiness consists in a heart transformed by the power of a cosuffering love that radiates out from that heart with the light of Christ."

+Archbishop Lazar Puhalo

Pietism

"Pietism originally did not involve any break from the mainstream denominations forming in the seventeenth century—most Pietists were Lutherans. What it did, however, was to form little "churches within churches,” small gatherings of believers for private devotions, Bible study, and so forth. This activity served to disconnect believers from a strong commitment to their local church as the formal community.

While the basic motivation for Pietism is something Orthodoxy can agree with—that is, a personal commitment to the life in Christ—the practices and results of the Pietistic movement are not something the Orthodox Church can laud. Pietism ultimately led to a general feeling that doctrine didn’t matter very much and that the concrete life of the church as a community is of only secondary importance. But for the Orthodox, personal piety is the expression of the truths of Christian doctrine, and that piety only makes sense within the community.

One of the outgrowths of the Pietist movement’s emphasis on individualism, particularly in its more radical sectors, came from a focus on the Reformation doctrine of sola fide (justification by "faith alone”). This theological phenomenon is called antinomianism, a term from Greek which means “against law.” Antinomianism is a logical deduction from the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In antinomian thinking, if the believer is justified before God by his faith alone, then whether or not he lives a moral life is not critical and therefore optional.

Paired with the doctrine of eternal security—the teaching that it is impossible to lose salvation once you have it—antinomianism leads the Christian to believe that, because he's“been saved,” he will go to heaven after death, even if he leads a life of selfishness and evil after his conversion to Christ.

Pietism in its more conservative form directly influenced the formation of the Methodist movement within the Anglican church. In its more radical forms, Pietism may be regarded as one of the most significant influences on all of modern-day Protestantism, especially evangelicalism with its emphasis on a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” and its believers’ tendency to change denominational or congregational allegiances several times in life. The individualism of Pietism is also one of the great currents that has affected the whole culture of the United States, which was founded in large part by English and German immigrants deeply influenced by Pietistic Christianity."
+ Fr Andrew Stephen Damick, "Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Exploring Belief Systems Through the Lens o f the Ancient Christian Faith." (Chesterton: Conciliar Media Ministries 2011) 84-85.

"the natural fruit of Pietism with its insistence on personal spiritual experience rather than on adherence to doctrine. This anti-intellectualism fits in well with a denial of the importance of history for Christian life, as well as bolstering the doctrine of sola scriptura, where it’s just “me and my Bible,” without any interference from snobbish academics or authoritarian figures.

...This approach is particularly seen in many modern mega-churches, which try to appeal to “seekers,” giving them whatever they might want to bring them through the door. This kind of religion, shaped not by Holy Tradition but by Madison Avenue, offers dozens of carefully tailored programs to meet the "needs” of individual believers.

Being consumer-oriented and consumer-driven, Christianity as self-help appeals to the selfishness of believers and caters to the cafeteria mentality of most American Christians. Instead of the Church transforming them, they are defining and transforming their churches, such that many of them appear not as houses of worship but as theatres, coffeehouses, and shopping malls. In this consumerist Christianity, Christ is there to "help” me with what I want. He is not there so that I may enter into His crucifixion and die and rise with Him, being transfigured into His likeness and becoming a partaker of the divine nature.

This kind of religion, which is focused on self-fulfillment rather than repentance, has also been successfully removed from the explicitly religious context and remarketed with great success. Perhaps the most successful example of this kind of religion is the spirituality offered by people like Oprah Winfrey, but what she offers is almost indistinguishable from what is sold by many televangelists and other mega-church pastors like Joel Osteen and Rick Warren, whose books are bestsellers and whose churches are packed with hordes of people looking to “feel better.”"

+ Fr Andrew Stephen Damick, "Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Exploring Belief Systems Through the Lens of the Ancient Christian Faith." (Chesterton: Conciliar Media Ministries 2011) 119.

"Some specific products of pietism are the Halle movement (founded by August-Hermann Francke), the Moravian Brethren (Herrnhuter BrUidergemeine-founded by N. L. von Zinzendorf), the Methodists (founded by John Wesley, 1703-1791), the Quakers (founded by George Fox, 1624-1691), and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a host of “Free Churches,” missionary societies, schools of preaching, “inner mission” movements, Protestant monastic brotherhoods, etc. See M. Schmidt, Pietismus, pp. 243-60.

In Roman Catholicism we rarely bear of autonomous groups or moveInents of pietists, perhaps because pietistic tendencies and initiatives were Officially adopted by the Roman Catholic Church in the form of orders, societies, sacred confraternities, etc. In Roman Catholic mysticism, certainly, Pietism has always found the conditions for its natural generation. The in dividual approach to virtue, anthropocentric sentimentality and the transference of religious feeling to the “interior” of the individual are all hall. marks of Roman Catholic mystics, whether as individuals or in organized and officially recognized groups. The link with the body of the Church is of secondary importance and sometimes of purely legal and formal sig. nificance. “Bei ihnen kam alles auf die inneren Menschen, nichts auf die aussere Form der Kirchlichkeit an”: M. Schmidt, Pietismms, p. 26.

Of the Orthodox churches, the Russian Church was the first to be invaded by the spirit of pietism. Early in the eighteenth century, Bishop Feofan Prokopovich (1681-1736), professor and later rector of the Theological Academy in Kiev, represented in Russia the pietistic Halle movement (see Schmidt, “Pietismus,” article in Die Religion in Geschichte and Gegenwart, vol. 5, col. 372; R. Stupperich, “Protestantismus in Russland,” in the same volume, col. 1248). Prokopovich’s influence was very widespread and left a distinct mark on the Church and spiritual life of Russia, from the moment when Peter the Great (1672-1725) took him on as a close collaborator, after promoting him to the archbishopric of Novgorod, and let him fundamentally shape his religious reform. (See Igor Smolitsch, Geschichte der russiscben Kirche, 1700-1917 [Leiden, 19641, p. 94ff; and Reinhard Wittram, Peter I — Czar and Kaisar, vol. 2 (Gottingen, 1964], p. 189ff.) The religious reform of Peter the Great had as its aim the systematic westernization of the Russian Church both in structure and in spiritual life. And under the influence of Feofan Prokopovich, many areas of Russian church and spiritual life were shaped precisely in accordance with the spirit and the criteria of Protestant pietism. At the same time, his theological “system” and his writings imposed on the academic study of theology in Russia what Florovsky calls “the domination of Latino-protestant scholasticism” (Puti russhogo bogosloviia [Paris, 19371, P. 104; the reference is from 1. Smolitsch, Geschichte der russischen Kirche, p. 577. See also H. Koch, Die russische Orthodoxie im Petrinischen Zeitalter (Breslau, 19291; Cyprien Kern, "L'enseignement theologique superieur dans la Russie du XlXe siecle," Istina, 1960; Igor Smolitsch, Russische Monchtum, 988-1917 [Wiirzburg, 1953]. p. 383ff.) The influence of Feofan Prokopovich’s theology reached even as far as Greece, at least through Theoklitos Fafmakidis, “the first to teach dogmatic theology at the Ionian Academy on Kerkyra in 1824, following the text of the Russian Feofan Prokopovich”: Manuel Gedeon, The Cultural Progress of the Nation in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries [in Greek — Athens, 1976), p. 206.

Actual pietistic movements in Russia were probably very few; the best knawn is the Moravian Brethren, from 1740 in Sarepta on the Volga (R. Stupperich, "Protestantismus in Russland," col. 1250). What is more striking is the way in which the Church's mentality as a whole was undermined. In combination with the stress on sentiment introduced into Russia by the religious romanticism of the nineteenth century, and the corresponding prevalence of baroque in church art which distorted basic theological presuppositions in Russian Orthodox worship, a general climate of pietism often shapes the atmosphere and complexion of Russian church life.

Pietistic influence is apparent even in the figures most representative of Russian spiritual life. The most important spiritual figure in eighteenth century Russia, St Tikhon Zadonsky (1724-1783), is also a typical representative of pietistic and Roman Catholic influences. "He was strongly influenced by contemporary western piety, both Counter-Reformation Catholic piety and Protestant piety with an emphasis on pietism... We find in [his works] a direct echo of St Augustine and the Imitation of Christ, as of Lutheran works such as Arndt’s True Christianity… and Anglican ones such as the Meditatiunculae subitaneae by the Puritan Bishop Hall”: L. Bouyer, Orthodox Spirituality, pp. 37-38.

In the form of an organized movement, pietism appeared in the Romanian Orthodox Church just on the eve of World War II, under the name of “the Army of the Lord” and with the priest Joseph Trifa at its head. There, however, the Church reacted swiftly; she excommunicated the founders and excised from her body this danger which threatened to alienate her tradition and her life.

In Greece, pietism made its appearance as a symptom of a more general “europeanization” of the country. Quite early, around the eighteenth century, Humanism and the principles of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment exerted an obvious influence on Greek scholars and church writers who turned to the West for their higher education. Rationalism and moralism, as direct results of European thinking and theology, reached the Orthodox Greek East through the writing and teaching of the “enlightened Teachers of the Nation,” learned preachers and writers from the period of Turkish domination. At least in the works of Vikentios Damodos (16791752), Elias Miniatis (1669-1714), Evgenios Voulgaris (1716-1806), Nikeforos Theotokis (1730-1800), Theoklitos Farmakidis (1754-1860) and Neofytos Vamvas (1770-1855), there is manifest influence from western theological positions of their day: moral eudaemonism, the “religion of sentiment” (Schleiermacher), the connection of Church and 11 culture” (Kulturchristentum), the identification of spiritual regeneration with moral regeneration, the juridical understanding of morality (see Ch. Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West — Theology in Greece Today [in Greek-Athens, 19721, especially pp. 57-95, with bibliography).

With the establishment of the independent Greek state and the imposition of German and Protestant models on the organization of the Church of Greece (which became “autocephalous” in 1833) and of theological education, western influences prevailed in Greek academic theology and in “official” church life — though not without exceptions and reactions. The phenomenon could perhaps have been contained there, since popular spirituality and piety remained untainted by western alienation. But from the very first decades of our own century, pietism made its appearance in Greece in the form of a specific movement whose intention was to bring in the broad masses of the people. Initially it seemed that the aim of the “movement” was the renewal of church life, with the systematic organization of sermons, catechism classes, religious publications and confession. But it very soon separated itself and its activity from the life of the Church, the life of the parishes and the jurisdiction of the local bishops. It was organized as an independent effort, with a system of administration and organization independent of the church hierarchy, and with its own spiritual and theological direction.

It is quite extraordinary how closely the modern Greek pietist movement copied its German and Anglo-Saxon prototypes. Preaching and teaching were based on exactly the same premises: the theological truth of dogmas was ignored or passed over in silence and replaced with the teaching of ethics, a rationalist apologetic, utilitarian rationalism and moral eudaemonism, and stress on individual virtue and the cultural necessity of religion. Following Spener’s method to the letter, the “movement” organized a vast number of Bible study circles meeting in houses all over Greece. This led to the formation of a kind of private worship outside church — in imitation of the Protestant “service of the word” (Wortgottesdienst) — with the lay element alone. It consisted of reading from the Bible, always with a moral conclusion, ex tempore prayers and sentimental songs, usually from Protestant collections of hymns. The Greek pietist movement, exactly like the Protestant ones, came to be dominated by a strongly military discipline: its members were forbidden to go to public spectacles or recreation centers, to smoke, or to read books or other material of their own choosing. They have developed more or less a common style of dress, and cultivate a militant missionary spirit to gain followers.

To the general public, the pietistic movement in Greece is known as the Zoe movement, after the first “Brotherhood of Theologians” which began its organized efforts in 1911. Later, however, there emerged offshoots of this same organization (the Fellowship of Academics “Aktines,” the Student Christian Union, the Christian Union of Working Youth, the Women’s Fellowship “Evseveia,” the Fellowship of Nursing Sisters “Evniki,” the Christian schools “Elliniki Pedeia,” etc.). There were also parallel movements which copied the Zoe model in principles and structure (the Brotherhood of Theologians “O Sotir,” the organizations of Metropolitan Avgoustinos Kandiotis of Florina, etc.).

Making their moralistic criteria into absolutes, these movements in Greece turned into complete religious units, divorced from the life of the Church, and society. They developed into closed, autonomous religious groups, entry to which could be secured only by objectively recognized “suitabilie and moral rectitude. Divorced from the life of the parishes and from local bishops, these pietistic groups consolidated their independence by taking the form of secular “associations” with recognition from the state. They were thus able to control the numbers and the morals of their members, and organize a kind of “para-ecclesial” life in open opposition to the official Church. They acquired buildings of their own for catechism meetings and, where possible, their own churches. They have their own clergy who are formally attached to the local bishop but are in reality directed, down to the last detail by the administration of the organizations. They thus have their own confessors and separate confession, in the buildings belonging to the organizations rather than in the churches — own separate liturgies, where entry is controlled and only organizations are allowed in.

It may perhaps be useful to add some mention of the position taken up by the pietistic organizations in Greece on the question of ecumenism, a position which contradicts their principles. The organizations came out in fanatical opposition to the idea of church unity, although the idea of union had to a great extent been embodied by these same pietistic movements. It was they who had been exclusively responsible for transferring to Greek Orthodox territory both the practice of western piety and also, on many points, such western dogmatic teaching as was essential for their moralism. Such points of doctrine include the legalistic theory of the satisfaction of divine justice through Christ’s death on the Cross, denial of distinction between God’s essence and energies, rejection of hesychasm and the neptic tradition, an apologetic devised with utilitarian ends, the general priesthood of the laity as an autonomous absolute, a legal understanding of the transmission of original sin, etc. We are bound to conclude that their stance against church unity is simply the result of a tragic confusion in spiritual criteria, and shows the movements’ lack of theological selfawareness, or else is nothing but a conventional attempt to outdo everyone else in conservatism. Either way, it cannot be a matter of deliberately upholding Orthodox spirituality and the Orthodox tradition, since the organizations could be said to ignore these quite provocatively and to distort them systematically.

It would require a separate study to analyze the various forms these distortions take: the abolition of the holy icons, which are replaced with Renaissance art (both in their catechetical work and in the buildings belonging to the organizations), the almost exclusive use of Roman Catholic and Protestant manuals and religious literature for the spiritual nourishment of the faithful, the polemics against monasticism and the Holy Mountain, the institution of “lay brotherhoods” (like the western “orders”), neglect and erosion of the authority of the episcopate, etc...

Nevertheless, the most positive sign in the history of Orthodoxy in Greece over the last century must surely be the progressive weakening and ultimate disintegration of the pietistic movements. It is extremely encouraging how the Orthodox consciousness has reacted to this foreign intervention in its living body. Over approximately the last two decades, the pietistic movements have undergone a relentless series of internal problems; they have suffered splits and lost their followers, and have really ceased to be a substantial presence in the spiritual life of the country. At the same time, there has been an awakening of theological consciousness in the Church in Greece, and the initial fascination which pietism exerted over a majority of lay theologians and clergy has been significantly curtailed.

This awakening is summed up and expressed in a truly unique manner, and in organic continuity with the Orthodox patristic tradition, in a text which is among the most important products of modern Greek theology and spirituality. This is the declaration of the “Holy Community” of the Holy Mountain on the academic approach to theology independent of the Church’s experience, and the pietism of the religious organizations which corresponds to it. This memorable Athonite text was published in the Periodical Athonitikoi Dialogoi (1975, pp. 20-27) a propos of Prof. P. N. Trembelas’ work Mysticism — Apophatism — Cataphatic Theology, vols. 1-2 (Athens, 1974):

The help of the logic and language of Western theologians and the spiritual opinions that spring from the experience of a closed, Pietistic mentality, are both things that leave no place for the mystery of the mystagogic coinherence of Orthodox theology and living experience…

The tragic state of our times does not allow us to concern ourselves with pietism and the obsolete theology of the workshops of scholasticism, that characteristic curse of the West which is effectively nourished by the Western tradition and which suffers from its divisions and passes on its sickness… Especially today, when young people all over the world, in their barren journey through the desert wilderness of modern so-called civilization remain dissatisfied with a dry scientific approach, with the paltry productions of an insipid pietism…

The theology of the universities and the various Christian movements needs to be rebaptized into the mystery of our living church tradition; this will give them new strength and new methods of work and evangelism…

A scholastic and spiritually jejune theology is useless for the salvation of man. And a dogmatically spineless pietism which thinks that deification is an improvement in character should by its very nature be rejected. Such a theology is at its last breath; and such a way of life is powerless to withstand the general crisis of our era. The two together, theology and pietism, form one of the causes and the consequences of the spiritual decadence of our times.

If the theology of the Church were like this, it would create not fathers and confessors who spoke the words of God, but cold academic researchers and disputants of the present age. And if the spirituality of our tradition were like this, it would not create the neptic fathers as “gods by grace” and “lamps of discernment,” but morbid sentimentalists who were prey to psychic hallucinations.

Why should we wander pointlessly in sterile concern with a cerebral and superfluous theology and an unreal, insipid pietistic way of life? Both of these are unknown to our holy tradition, alien to the wishes and needs of man and unworthy of them.

Our pietistic ideas about sanctity as -improvement in character” are shocked and rendered powerless when set side-by-side with the holy experience of our saints, who received Christ in their hearts .. as light, in a real and substantial way; seen invisibly and comprehended incomprehensibly, with formless form and appearance beyond appearance.”

We feel as Orthodox that we do not simply belong to the East geographically, nor do we fight the West in a geographical sense. We belong to the Church of the uncreated divine Light that knows no evening, which saves both East and West.

From henceforth, then, “let no profane hand touch” the mystery of Orthodox theology, but “let the lips of the faithful” sing without ceasing in praise of the Church, the Mother of God which brings forth gods according to grace; for only in her and through her saints are we led unfailingly to life and knowledge."

+ Phil Thompson, http://silouanthompson.net/2008/08/pietism-as-heresy/

"Pietism made its appearance as a distinct historical movement within Protestantism, at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, around 1690-1730. Its aim was to stress "practical piety," as distinct from the polemical dogmatic theology to which the Reformation had initially given a certain priority. Against the intellectualist and abstract understanding of God and of dogmatic truth, pietism set a practical, active piety (praxis pietatis): good works, daily self-examination for progress in virtues according to objective criteria, daily study of the Bible and practical application of its moral teaching, intense emotionalism in prayer, a clear break with the "world" and worldly practices (dancing, the theatre, non-religious reading); and tendencies towards separatism, with the movement holding private meetings and distinguishing itself from the "official" Church.

For pietism, knowledge of God presupposes the "rebirth" of man [i.e., a "born again" experience --web ed.], and this rebirth is understood as living up to the moral law of the Gospel and as an emotional experience of authoritative truths. Pietism presents itself as a mystical piety, and ultimately as a form of opposition to knowledge; as "adogmatism," in the sense that it ignores or belittles theological truth, or even as pure agnosticism cloaked in morality....

Pietism undermines the ontological truth of Church unity and personal communion, if it does not deny it completely; it approaches man's salvation in Christ as an individual event, an individual possibility of life. It is individual piety and the subjective process of "appropriating salvation" made absolute and autonomous, and it transfers the possibility of man's salvation to the realm of individual moral endeavor.

For pietism, salvation is not primarily the fact of the Church, the theanthropic "new creation" of the body of Christ, the mode of existence of its trinitarian prototype and the unity of the communion of persons. It is not man's dynamic, personal participation in the body of the Church's communion which saves him despite his individual unworthiness, restoring him safe and whole to the existential possibility of personal universality, and transforming even his sin, through repentance, into the possibility of receiving God's grace and love. Rather it is primarily man's individual attainments, the way he as an individual lives up to religious duties and moral commandments and imitates the "virtues" of Christ, that ensure him a justification which can be objectively veri. fied. For pietism, the Church is a phenomenon dependent upon individual justification; it is the assembly of morally "reborn" [i.e., "born again" --web ed.] individuals, a gathering of the "pure," a complement and an aid to individual religious feeling.

By this route pietism reached a result opposite to its original intent. Seeking to reject the one extreme of intellectual religion, it ended up at the other extreme, separating practical piety from the truth and revelation of the Church. Thus piety loses its ontological content and ceases to be an existential event-- the realization and manifestation of man's existential truth, of the "image" of God in man. It turns into an individual achievement which certainly improves character and behavior and perhaps social mores as well, but which cannot possibly transfigure our mode of existence and change corruption into incorruption, and death into life and resurrection.

Piety loses its ontological content; and, in addition, the truth and faith of the Church is divorced from life and action, and left as a set of "principles" and "axioms" which one accepts like any other ideology. The distinction between contemplation and action, between truth and life or between dogma and morality, turns into a schizophrenic severence. The life of the Church is confined to moral obedience, religious duties and the serving of social ends. One might venture to express the situation with the paradox that, in the case of pietism, ethics corrupts the Church: it turns the criteria of the Church into worldly and conventional criteria, distorting the "great mystery of godliness" into a rationalistic social necessity. Pietistic ethics distort the liturgical and eucharistic reality of the Church, the unity in life and communion of the penitent and the perfect, sinners and saints, the first and the last; they turn the Church into an inevitably conventional, institutional corporation of people who are individually religious.

A host of people today, perhaps the majority in western societies, evaluate the Church's work by the yardstick of its social usefulness as compared with the social work of education, penitentiary systems or even the police. The natural result is that the Church is preserved as an institution essential for morals and organized like a worldly establishment in an increasingly bureaucratic fashion. The most obvious form of secularization in the Church is the pietistic falsification of her mind and experience, the adulteration of her own criteria with moralistic considerations. Once the Church denies her ontological identity-- what she really, essentially is as an existential event whereby individual survival is changed into a personal life of love and communion-- then from that very moment she is reduced to a conventional form under which individuals are grouped together into an institution; she becomes an expression of man's fall, albeit a religious one. She begins to serve the "religious needs" of the people, the individualistic emotional and psychological needs of fallen man.

The utilitarian institutional mentality, a typical product of pietism, has led many churches and Christian confessions to a fever of anxiety lest they should be proved out-dated and useless in the modern technocratic, rationalistically organized society, and should appear to lag behind in keeping up to date with the world. Frequently they try to offer contemporary man a message as convenient and well-fitted as possible to his utilitarian demands for prosperity. "Humanistic" ethics-- the principle of keeping up appearances-- takes precedence over truth, over the salvation of existence from the anonymity of death. The miracle of repentance, the transfiguration of sin into loving desire for personal communion with God, the way mortality is swallowed up by life-these are truths incomprehensible to the pietistic spirit of our age. The Gospel message is "made void," emptied of its ontological content; the Church's faith in the resurrection of man is made to appear vacuous....

When the piety of the Church is transferred to the plane of individual ethics and separated from her truth, this inevitably results in a blurring of the difference between the truth of salvation and -the illusion of salvation, between the Church and heresy. The idea of heresy or schism loses all real content, and is confined to abstract, theoretical differences understood only by "experts" who discuss them at meetings and conferences, exchanging the thrust and parry of confessional articles and formulations which fail to correspond in any way to the life of human beings.

Increasingly pietism equates the spirituality and piety of the various churches and confessions, taking them on the level of individual, or socially useful and efficacious, ethics, while disregarding even fundamental dogmatic differences. The piety of a Roman Catholic, a Protestant and frequently even an "enlightened" Orthodox, do not present substantial differences; practical piety no longer reveals whether the truth one lives is real or distorted. Dogma does not appear as a "definition," laying down the limits within which the Church's experience is to be expressed and safeguarded. Christian piety appears unrelated to the way we experience the truth of God in Trinity, the incarnation of the Word, and the energies of the Holy Spirit which give substance to the life of the members of the Church.

The model of Christian piety in the different churches and confessions is increasingly equated with that of a more "perfect" utilitarian ethic, with an individual morality which takes precedence over the fact of the Church. The only distinctions in piety are variations in religious customs and religious "duties." Even the liturgical act is incidental to individual piety, a complement, aid or fruit; it is thought of as an opportunity for "edification" or a religious duty. The eucharist, the original embodiment of the fact of salvation, is distorted by the pietistic spirit; it is construed as a narrowly "religious" obligation, a duty to pray together and perhaps to listen to a sermon which usually confines itself to prescribing how the individual should behave. The eucharist is not the event which constitutes and manifests the Church, the changing of our mode of existence and the realization of the ethos of the "new man."

Ultimately, even participation in the sacraments takes on a conventional, ethical character. Confession turns into a psychological means of setting individual guilt-feelings at rest, and participation in holy communion becomes a moral reward for good behavior-when it is not a scarcely conscious individual or family custom bordering on magic. Baptism becomes a self-evident social obligation, and marriage a legitimization of sexual relations without regard to any ascetic transfiguration of the conjugal union into an ecclesial event of personal intercourse or communion.

... Pietism is a heresy in the realm of ecclesiology: it undermines or actually denies the very truth of the Church, transferring the event of salvation from the ecclesial to the individual ethos, to piety divorced from the trinitarian mode of existence, from Christ's way of obedience. Pietism denies the ontological fact of salvation the Church, life as personal coinherence and communion in love, and the transfiguration of mortal individuality into a hypostasis of eternal life.

Pietism undermines the ontological truth of the Church or totally rejects it, but without questioning the formulations of that truth. It simply disregards them, taking them as intellectual forms unrelated to man's salvation, and abandons them to the jurisdiction of an autonomous academic theology. Pietism preserves a formal faithfulness to the letter of dogmatic formulation, but this is a dead letter, irrelevant to life and existential experience.

In that particular, this real denial of the truth of salvation differs from previous heresies. It does not reject the "definitions," the limits of the Church's truth; it simply disconnects this truth from the life and salvation of man. And this disconnection covers a vast range of distinctions and nuances, so that it is exceptionally difficult to "excommunicate" pietism, to place it beyond the bounds within which the Church's truth and unity are experienced. But this is precisely why it is perhaps the most dangerous assault on this truth and unity.

...The linchpin of the capitalist ideology may be identified with the pietistic demand for direct, quantifiable and judicially recompensed results from individual piety and morality-- in this case, from hard work, honesty, thrift, rationalistic exploitation of "talents," etc. Work acquires an autonomy: it is divorced from actual needs and becomes a religious obligation, finding its visible justification and "just deserts" in the accumulation of wealth. The management of wealth similarly becomes autonomous: it is divorced from social need and becomes part of the individual's relationship with God, a relationship of quantitative deserts and rewards."

+ Christos Yannas, Pietism as an Ecclesiological Heresy",  The Freedom of Morality, Chapter Eight. (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY: 1984), pp. 119-136, http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/YannarasPietism.php