German Pietism and the Problem of Conversion

Abstract

Scholars of Moravian history are not surprised to hear that questions related to the nature and necessity of conversion created difficulties and disagreements for Moravians within Pietist circles of the eighteenth century. Such scholars might be surprised by Jonathan Strom's argument that, at that time, disagreements were far more widespread because paradigmatic understandings of conversion was not as widely publicized or uniformly held as many have previously argued.Following an introduction where Strom notes a variety of understandings of conversions throughout the history of Christianity and subsequent interpretations by later scholars, he begins to focus on the conversion of August Hermann Francke. Strom hints at his arguments early on, noting “no other conversion experience in Pietism has received as much attention among historians” and that this experience has served as “a model for Pietist conversion in the historiography” (italics added). Strom then devotes a chapter to Francke's conversion, his own interpretation of it, and its publication and reception history during his lifetime. This last point is key to Strom's argument. By positing that there is scant evidence that Francke's account was widely known or disseminated, and that Francke himself rarely mentioned the account, Strom holds that Francke's conversion was not the paradigm that later historians have argued. Shortly before he died, Francke began to write and speak more about his conversion experience. After Francke died in 1727, some of those who memorialized him, including his son-in-law, Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen, began to pay much more attention to Francke's conversion, giving it a more central place in his life's story. Even so, Francke's conversion did not reach its paradigmatic status until much later in the century.Strom argues that in the intervening time two other types of narratives dominated thoughts about conversion. First, reports of conversions around the city of Dargun, where pastors with ties to Halle began to exert a lot of influence on the local congregations, generated both excitement and polemical attacks. Most of the polemical attacks did little to discourage the movement for conversions because they were so outlandish that they were easy to refute. Second, stories of deathbed conversions and execution narratives play a key role in the discussions about conversion. The rise of accounts of deathbed conversions is somewhat ironic given Francke's dislike of them. Some of Francke's followers deviated from him in other ways as well, such as preaching openly about conversion, calling others to do so, and prescribing ways in which they needed to do that. A further development in the understandings of conversions was the move toward third-person accounts or narratives. Strom addresses issues of veracity and editing related to this, pointing out that even though authors and editors argued that they were not changing details, they did in fact shape the understandings of conversion by choosing whose stories to tell. Furthermore, pastors themselves play a significant role in many of these narratives, thus solidifying the role of the pastor in Pietist understandings of faith. This is especially important given the arguments against Pietists from “orthodox” Lutherans, and arguments within Pietism itself, where some argued for a church Pietism, and others argued for more radical forms freed from the corruptions of the state church and unawakened clergy.Strom points out that death plays a key role in deathbed conversions and execution narratives, which is important for two primary reasons. First, dead people cannot dispute the details of the narrative told about them. This further increases the agency of the author in shaping the conversations about conversions. Second, a dead person cannot backslide, meaning that those who convert near the end of their life have no worries about losing their salvation. While authors intended these stories to show that no one, not even criminals who had committed capital crimes, were beyond conversion, and therefore that everyone is capable of converting, they may have had the unintended consequence of causing people to delay converting, or worse. Strom devotes a section to suicide by proxy, where people would commit capital crimes in hopes that they would then be justified by shedding their own blood. Though authors wrote against this even as they narrated the events, it did happen on rare occasions. Controversies over death narratives and the conversions at Dargun led to their declining influence over understandings of conversion.Descendants, both biological and theological, of August Hermann Francke began filling this void. At this point August Hermann Niemeyer and Georg Christian Knapp found and began publishing accounts of Francke's conversion. Other historians of the Pietist movement followed suit, and from the late eighteenth century through today historians have seen Francke's conversion as influential and paradigmatic, even though it was not at the time. As a result, Strom concludes, scholars have had a fundamental misunderstanding of the role that conversion played and a fundamental misunderstanding that Pietism was more similar to the then-contemporary British and American evangelicalism than it was.Scholars of Moravian history will find several points of interest throughout Strom's work, even though he does not address Zinzendorf or Moravians systematically. First of all, those with interests in Moravians will note that Strom's arguments imply a problem with conventional understandings about the split between Zinzendorf and the Moravians from Halle. If the emphasis on a conversion like Francke's and an emphasis on Busskampf were not really key components of Halle Pietism at the time, which Strom argues they were not, the question becomes: what was the nature of the disagreements between the Moravians and Halle? Strom does not answer that problem. Those interested in Moravians will also find Strom's differentiation between the third-person narratives of the broader Pietist movement and the first-person Lebensläufe to be of interest. Finally, Strom also notes the similarities between Moravian understandings of mystical marriage and some of the conversion narratives where those dying, even hardened criminals facing excruciating execution tactics, could look forward to death as their wedding day when they would come face to face with the Heavenly Bridegroom.Strom's well-researched book, drawing from both eighteenth-century publications and archival material, is suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduates and quite readable. He argues persuasively for an important corrective to modern understandings of conversion within Pietism and therefore to Pietism as a whole.