Dear Editor,
I am largely in agreement with Ranald Macaulay’s concern over the prevalent evangelical tendency to shun engagement with society and its worrisome tendencies (en June ‘Evangelicalism in Crisis’). Yet I believe that his readiness to point the finger at European Pietism as providing an explanation of the origin of this tendency does not bear careful scrutiny.
European Pietists were not all of one type; some were rigorously biblical, some mystical. Some were separatist while others stayed in their state churches. Their orphanages, Bible Societies and Mission Societies pre-dated those of the English-speaking world and were evidences of activism.
