Productive Nostalgia: Telling our story in new ways
With the completion of this issue, we celebrate 30 years of publishing Pietisten!
It was back in 1986 that a modern group of Mission Friends got the idea to resurrect this journal as a way of continuing to tell the story of Pietism, particularly how this tradition had informed the growth of the Evangelical Covenant Church. The desire to tell this story broadly and well inspired us to reconnect with friends in several related traditions, such as Augustana and other Lutheran groups, Baptists and Evangelical Free, among others. What a rich conversation this has been!
Retrieving and understanding the past is a recurring necessity, as new generations inherit the unfinished work of their predecessors. What does one do when the older generation steps aside, leaving the younger one exposed? As I get older and see my peers stepping into leadership positions, I often wonder “what happened to all the adults?” Are we really the ones running the show? This unsettling thought also occurs with every tribute we receive for our readers who have passed away, seasoned men and women of faith. We might wish we could rely on the previous generation to tell our story for us. Yet, we also realize that too much nostalgia–or rather, the wrong kind–can prevent our own necessary growth. At some point we have to pick up the story where they left off.
This process of storytelling becomes extra difficult when the story began, not in English, but in less-commonly-taught languages (the so-called LCTL’s). In the mid-20th century in all of the Scandinavian-American church traditions, heroic efforts were undertaken to record and translate this history into English (names like Herbert Palmquist, Karl A. Olsson, Glenn Anderson, Elmer Dahlgren and Royal Peterson come to mind; a sampling of some of these earlier translations has been gathered by Mark A. Granquist, published in the handy volume Scandinavian Pietists by Paulist Press, 2015). Furthermore, being small traditions within the overwhelming landscape of American Christianity meant that explaining Pietism has been much more difficult and obscure than general Evangelicalism. Even though a topic like Pietism is widely known within the field of church history, its research has traditionally been dominated by its critics, as well as heavily focused on German-language sources. While German Pietists greatly influenced Scandinavian movements, they were not identical, as sometimes has been assumed. And Pietism is not simply a “problem child,” a foil for more conventional Lutheran practice (such myth-busting was notably the work of several recent conferences at Bethel University, which produced the book The Pietist Impulse in Christianity, 2011; see also Olson and Collins Winn, Reclaiming Pietism, 2015, and Gehrz et al, The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education, 2015).
Recent decades have seen additional changes as the constituencies of these denominations have been enriched by becoming more multiethnic. This marks a coming-of-age for these institutions, as they integrate into the broader American society. But it has also brought a challenge to historiography, in that official story-telling, from pulpit and denominational office, has often validated current multiethnic programs by shifting attention away from the specific ethnic pasts of these institutions (pre-WWII). Perhaps these goals don’t need to be set at odds? Perhaps the promotion of multiculturalism can also find ways to integrate the specific past into the celebration of the present? The past constantly needs to be re-evaluated in light of each new generation. A history written in 2016 will inherently be different than one written in 1962, because the scholars and readers will be asking different questions, based on new contexts and realities. And that will require freshly retrieved insights that won’t be found in stilted, half-century-old textbooks, no matter how well-written they were originally.
It was out of concerns like these that several of us began working on a documentary film project, “God’s Glory, Neighbor’s Good: The Story of Pietism.” Thanks to the generous support of many of you, we were able to raise well over $16,000 in a two-month campaign in early 2015! This made it possible in May and July for two of us to travel throughout Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany, filming historic sites and conducting interviews with a variety of experts on Pietism and representatives of several denominations. Among the sites visited were the birthplace of Hans Nielsen Hauge in Fredrikstad, Norway, Maria Nilsdotter’s school and orphanage in Karlskoga, Sweden, as well as the historic institutions at Halle and Herrnhut in Germany. Our funds raised to date will get us through the initial stages of editing, but we would be tremendously grateful for your ongoing support (checks may be sent to Pietisten’s address with “Documentary Film” in the memo line). We look forward to being able to present this documentary as a resource for congregations across denominational lines. Stay tuned for updates.
Thank you to all of our readers and writers for enriching our community over these past 30 years.
Guds frid – God’s peace.