Understanding Pietism Book

A valuable contribution that corrects the common caricatures and misrepresentations of this movement, based upon his doctoral dissertation and his continued research in Germany afterwards. Brown evaluates and gives a restrained defense of Pietism primarily in relation to Lutheran and mainline Protestant criticism, and seems to bend over backwards in order to accomodate them, fearful that he might be considered "biased" in favor of the movement. He evaluates primarily the Spener-Francke axis, and does not deal with those "Radical Pietist" who could be considered closer to the western esotericism of Jacob Boehme than Evangelical Protestantism. There are a few questionable historical conclusions, such as tracing Darby-Scofield Dispensationalism to Pietism. In his own views and critiques he does not inform us of his own presuppositions by which he evaluates it. This is primarily a historical study, and contains no careful or thorough exegetical or biblical-theological examination of the movement.