Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Stress on the emotional and personal aspects of religion.
- noun Affected or exaggerated piety.
- noun A reform movement in the German Lutheran Church during the 1600s and 1700s, which strove to renew the devotional ideal in the Protestant religion.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun 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.
- noun [lowercase] Devotion or godliness of life, as distinguished from mere intellectual orthodoxy: sometimes used opprobriously for mere affectation of piety.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The principle or practice of the Pietists.
- noun Strict devotion; also, affectation of devotion.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Christianity, often capitalized A
movement in theLutheran church in the 17th and 18thcenturies , calling for a return topractical anddevout Christianity .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun 17th and 18th-century German movement in the Lutheran Church stressing personal piety and devotion
- noun exaggerated or affected piety and religious zeal
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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If a teaching is called pietism but teaches no more than what God has always used to sanctify Christians, then it is not really pietism.
Apprising Ministries 2008
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If any one had maintained against Voltaire that the aspirations after a future life, the longing for some token that the Deity watches over his creatures and is moved by a tender solicitude for them, and the other spiritual desires alleged to be instinctive in men, constitute as trustworthy and firm a guide to truth as the logical reason, we may be sure that he would have forgiven what he must have considered an enervating abnegation of intelligence, for the sake of the humane, if not very actively improving, course of life to which this kind of pietism is wont to lead.
Voltaire 2007
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"pietism," of what is foolishly called "goody-goody," has long been abroad; a grievously exaggerated dread; a mere parody of rightful jealousy for sincerity in religion.
Philippian Studies Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians 1880
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Piety, however, can counteract pietism, but it requires some participation on the part of the free will.
Archive 2009-08-01 elena maria vidal 2009
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I think what many people may react against is not piety but the "pietism."
Archive 2009-08-01 elena maria vidal 2009
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Many of these new publications (including Hebrew tehinnot, supplemental prayers for men) developed out of and popularized a mystical pietism originating among the kabbalists of Safed; others originated among secret followers of Sabbetai Zevi (1626 – 1676), the failed mystical messiah.
Tkhines. 2009
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It was not the simple pietism of the shtetl that they remembered; it was the unrelenting poverty and the violent revolutionary struggle that they recalled in their poetry.
Yudica. 2009
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This reasserted privileging of the personal rather than the institutional can be seen as evangelical pietism by the young Episcopalian.
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Piety, however, can counteract pietism, but it requires some participation on the part of the free will.
Piety elena maria vidal 2009
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I think what many people may react against is not piety but the "pietism."
Piety elena maria vidal 2009
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