Piety and pietism

I have listened to a CD of a talk given by Joel Beeke at the Met Tab School of Theology this summer. It is on the Puritan view of sanctification and (inevitably) is very good. One thing however puzzled me slightly. He referred to the bad press 'pietism' gets in some Christian circles, and told the congregation that if anyone was to say in a pejorative tone 'you're a pietist', they should regard it as a high honour and say ' I am not worthy of such an accolade'.

Now I know we want true piety and few would disagree. But I have always distinguished between true 'piety' and 'pietism'; between being 'pious' and being 'pietistic'. Pietism I would define (and I concede we all may define it somewhat differently) as the unhealthy separation between spiritual and secular, so that religious life is focussed on a supposed spiritual realm of private spiritual growth and experience, with a consequent neglecting of the Christian's duty in public life, say in politics, the arts or what we call 'the public square'.

Now Joel Beeke certainly does not discourage Christian effort in public life, because his theme was largely on the comprehensiveness of Puritan sanctification; and who would say of the Puritans they were not anxious to live all of life 'coram Deo'? So my slight unease is not with Dr Beeke's main thesis as with the confusion of terms. Surely we do need to make a distinction between true piety (seeking God's kingdom and the knowledge of God in all of life) and that distortion of it which restricts the spiritual life to little more than my personal experience and private life. That kind of spirituality is precisely what the Puritans would not have approved of, but it is just what the secularism of today would love us to practice.

Piety yes. But 'pietism' - or whatever else you call its counterfeit - no!