Pietism Conference Features Seminary Presenters

Volume 22 No 2 | Spring 2009

The Lilly Fellows Research Conference titled “The Pietist Impulse in Christianity” was hosted by Bethel University in March. More than 100 scholars, administrators, and pastors from locales as far away as Calgary and Costa Mesa were in attendance.

The event was possibly the largest conference ever to address many different aspects of pietism in their historical and theological contexts. “You cannot tell the story of evangelicalism,” says Chris Armstrong, Bethel Seminary St. Paul associate professor of church history, “without first exploring pietism. It encompasses spiritual regeneration, social reform, and biblical understanding.”

More than 40 papers were presented at the conference, including research by four Bethel Seminary professors:

• Chris Armstrong, associate professor of church history (St. Paul): “The Victorian American Holiness Movement: When Wesleyan Pietism Met the Sentimental Novel and They Lived Happily Ever After”
• Kyle Roberts, assistant professor of theology (St. Paul): “The Living Church or the Living Word?: Kierkegaard and Gruntvig on the Locus of Revelation”
• Glen Scorgie, professor of theology (San Diego): “The Missional Piety of Madame Henriette Feller (1800-1868)”
• James Smith, associate professor of church history (San Diego): “Gottfried Arnold Speaks English: A Radical Pietist Introduces His ‘Nonpartisan History’ (1697)”