Reviews for World of Toil and Strife: Community Transformation in Backcountry South Carolina, 1750-1805

The average rating for World of Toil and Strife: Community Transformation in Backcountry South Carolina, 1750-1805 based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-04-06 00:00:00 Tony Race Dale Brown's study and apologetic for Pietism offers some wonderful insights into the theology of Spener, Francke and other Pietists. He examines Pietist ecclesiology, their doctrine of scripture and proper interpretation of it, the centrality of regeneration, the experience of new birth in the Spirit, their 'otherworldliness' and the ways in which it was tempered by their activism. He concludes with a contemporary critique of where Pietism has run amok into ethics, individualism but he also explores the gifts Pietism has to teach us in our day (namely as a reform/renewal movement it called people beyond doctrinal formulations to an experiential faith. Brown's research into the Pietists began while he was working on his doctorate and heard many criticisms and dismissals launched at the Pietists in academia. His own heritage is Brethren so he had a vested interest in exploring the teaching of the Pietists (the Brethren are heirs of Pietism). What he discovered is that many of their so-called weaknesses are offset by their strengths. Pietism calls those who experience new birth to live lives characterized by faithfulness. Such a prophetic challenge remains important.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-01-08 00:00:00 Glenn Murphy 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.