Pietism

Definitions

  • WordNet 3.6
    • n pietism exaggerated or affected piety and religious zeal
    • n Pietism 17th and 18th-century German movement in the Lutheran Church stressing personal piety and devotion
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Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
    • Pietism Strict devotion; also, affectation of devotion. "The Schöne Seele , that ideal of gentle pietism , in “Wilhelm Meister.”"
    • Pietism The principle or practice of the Pietists.
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Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
    • n pietism The movement inaugurated by the Pietists, who, from the latter part of the seventeenth century onward, sought to revive the declining piety of the Lutheran churches in Germany; the principles and practices of the Pietists.
    • n pietism [lowercase] Devotion or godliness of life, as distinguished from mere intellectual orthodoxy: sometimes used opprobriously for mere affectation of piety.
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Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
    • ns Pietism the doctrine and practice of the pietists
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Etymology

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
Cf. G. pietismus, F. piétisme,
Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
Fr. piété—L. pietas.

Usage

In literature:

Want of taste is a defect inseparable from false pietism.
"A Second Home" by Honore de Balzac
And yet through all her pietism surely she had been right!
"The Strolling Saint" by Raphael Sabatini
Those of us who have no form of pietism feel cut off from making the attempt at all.
"The Conquest of Fear" by Basil King
It is a spurious pietism.
"The Christian Home" by Samuel Philips
Like all violent revivals of pietism, it produced a no less violent reaction.
"Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series" by John Addington Symonds
The conflict with ecclesiasticism, however, was taken up also by Pietism, the other great spiritual force of the age.
"Edward Caldwell Moore" by Edward Moore
This and his stay in England gave an Anglican turn to his German pietism.
"Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II" by Martin Luther
Its religion shows no trace of theology, or the conventional pietism.
"Whitman" by John Burroughs
Brought up in an atmosphere of pietism, the natural reaction led him into a kind of romantic atheistic unbelief.
"Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 15" by Various
Together with Pietism there began also in Germany a new style of social intercourse.
"Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries, Vol. I." by Gustav Freytag
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Related words