Musings on the Rebirth of Pietisten
When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody’s help in any way.
And now these days are gone
I’m not so self-assured;
Now I find I’ve changed my mind;
I’ve opened up the doors.
Help me if you can I’m feeling down
And I do appreciate you being ’round.
Help me get my feet back on the ground.
Won’t you please, please, help me?
John Lennon’s words from the old Beatles song were wafting their way from the juke box, through the din of drunken conversations and clanking glasses, past the neon revolving brewery signs and smoke-laden air, somehow to land upon my ears and enter my mind like a convicting, long lost friend. I didn’t recall that particular tune as ever having been “meaningful.” Goodness knows, there are a host of other Beatles compositions that were quite serious and loaded with more cultural freight than this old title song from their movie Help! On that spring night in 1986, however, seated along a far wall in the C.C. lounge, deep in south Minneapolis, there could not have been a tune or epigram more succinct in its summary of where my journey had taken me.
I was two years removed from the pastorate and one year past the conclusion of psychotherapy, with my head and heart still reeling from the considerations of all that had happened since seminary. This much, at least, had changed for that confident and reflective twenty-six-year-old who had left the theological shores of North Park: to face crisis alone, without conversation and counsel as I had almost always done in the past, was now no longer an option! I was more actively developing friendships that allowed me the glory and necessity of conversing about how things were really going for me and what I was attempting to do about them. I had indeed changed my mind and I had opened up the door (and a thousand apologies and heartful regrets to some of those who had to live with me before I did just that).
So it was that I found myself that night in the company of David Hawkinson, another survivor of the great theological wars of Covenant, Inc. The topic of conversation that evening was what could be salvaged from lifetimes spent in Covenant households, attending both North Park College and its theological seminary, taking ordination vows, entering the parish ministry, and then finding oneself (OURselves!) so clearly and resolutely rejected by the collective whole. Far more bewildering and discomforting than the particulars of the theologies and politics and personages involved was the grief at the realization that the Covenant was no longer HOME! Certainly what the Covenant had become was no longer home. We had assumed that the unique community which had born us, nurtured and educated us, and had above all encouraged us in our vocational choice of ministry would also continue on and make place for us as well, just as we had seen it do for fathers, mothers, and friends of long-standing. Somewhere, though, between our being raised and our being sent forth, our family of faith had profoundly changed, leaving us removed and apart.
The Covenant’s unrelenting swing to the right and its embracing of American conservative evangelicalism had left us high and dry. Nonetheless, David and I wrestled that evening with our continuing, deep-seated conviction that there was a gift of perspective and experience that had been given to us by our church, which still informed us and to which we still clung; that was the spiritual movement of pietism. Through its literature and hymnody, its sons and daughters, its valuing of scripture and experience, its love of reflection and distrust of doctrinal boundaries, its schools and its missions, pietism had deeply affected us as no other past or current church movement had. The individuals and teachers to whom we felt the most intimately connected had nearly all identified themselves as pietists. As we prepared to leave the C.C. Lounge late that night, we resolved that, in some fashion, we would find a way to sustain our life as pietists and perhaps to provide an opportunity for others of our acquaintance to do so as well. That’s where I left things that evening and where I expected them to stay for some indeterminate amount of time.
Less than a week later, I found myself at a party in my old neighborhood. Within two minutes of my arrival, I was nearly knocked to the hardwood floor by the flurry and fury of David’s preemptive-strike eyebrows as he informed me that we were going to resurrect Pietisten and that I was to be Managing Editor. I leave it to David to let us know what happened between our evening conversation and his announcement to us at that party, but the end result was that I actually did become Managing Editor and that Pietisten was in fact reborn in the spring months that followed. The position of Managing Editor has thankfully passed into more capable hands; yet, to have helped create and edit the particulars of the form and features of the renewed Pietisten remains a source of much pride and reflective merriment for me.
In opening up a door to David, Phil, and Tommy, I have been in turn allowed to participate in the opening of doors to honest conversation among many readers and writers over the past eight years. What began as a small conversation between two pietists on the south side of Minneapolis has become a global dialogue and correspondence among pietists and friends of pietists, which have far exceeded any hope or expectations we sent forth along with that first eight-page issue of Pietisten in June of 1986. In amazement and gratitude, we continue to publish. We appreciate your keeping the door open. Tack så mycket.