Pietists meaning

Spener, the founder of the Pietists (1635-1705).

He came strongly under the influence of the pietists, particularly of Spener, and there was a mystic vein in his thought; but other elements of his nature were too powerful to allow him to attach himself wholly to that party.

Arndt has always been held in very high repute by the German Pietists.

He did not, like the later Pietists, insist on the necessity of a conscious crisis of conversion, nor did he encourage a complete breach between the Christian and the secular life.

Another Adiaphorist controversy between Pietists and their opponents, respecting the lawfulness of amusements, arose in 1681, when Anton Reiser (1628-1686) denounced the opera as antichristian.