Since the publication of Orthodoxy and Reform (Mohr Siebeck, 1999), Jonathan Strom has established himself as a leading North American voice in Pietism Studies. His most recent work, German Pietism and the Problem of Conversion, offers insight concerning the contours of eighteenth-century Pietist conversion narratives, while also convincingly arguing that by making August Hermann Francke's conversion experience the “lens” through which the religious renewal movement was to be viewed, nineteenth-century historiography offered a story of Pietism and conversion that, at some level, distorted the movement's actual culture of conversion (144).
Francke's autobiographical conversion narrative, and the historiography built around it, provides the core to which Strom incorporates a broader analysis of the role of conversion accounts primarily found in “churchly” Pietism. The first chapter addresses the relative silence surrounding the details of Francke's actual conversion experience in the recounting of his life by contemporaries and his biographers of the decades just after his death. It was only in the nineteenth century that historians made Francke's conversion experience “an indispensable feature of Pietism” (27). The tension Strom stirs up concerning the history of Francke's autobiographical narrative leads to a breakthrough or Durchbruch of sorts in his research. The subsequent chapter demonstrates well the diversity of opinions within Halle Pietism regarding both conversion experiences and the theological ordering that defined specific conversion narratives. Strom notes that Philipp Jakob Spener, seen as one of the fathers of Pietism, expressed an aversion to publishing personal conversion narratives. Moreover, stories of conversion contemporary to Francke's, like those offered by Georg Heinrich Brückner of Erfurt and Johann Caspar Schade, do not conform to the conversion schema often applied by modern scholars to Pietism. In fact, the central idea of Bußkampf (repentance struggle) that is often set forth as the defining feature of Francke's own views of conversion and the views of those Halle Pietists, who followed in his footsteps, appears to have been much less theologically consistent, or at least consistently applied, as has been traditionally assumed in Pietism research.
The next five chapters are examples of the diversity of conversion narratives in Pietism, all of which Strom seeks in some way to tie back to A.H. Francke or those involved with his Halle institutes after his death. Using published collections of conversion narratives from the mid-eighteenth century, for example Johann Jacob Moser's Altes und Neues aus dem Reich Gottes … , Strom provides helpful insight into various types of conversion accounts. He not only analyzes those dramatic conversions that led to lives of godliness, which most modern readers of Pietism have come to expect of the movement, but he also examines narratives dealing with deathbed and execution conversions. Alongside this, he offers helpful insight into how churchly Pietists both encouraged conversion and at the same time maintained strong commitments to ecclesiastical institutions and confessional identities. There appears to have been a cautious awareness in some of the clergy that such subjective experiences could lead individuals towards “separatism” or “radicalism.” As a result, these narratives often focused on the work of the pastor and on the importance of recently converted individuals turning to the ordinary means of grace, the preached Word and sacraments, for the strengthening of their faith.
Chapter 6 is a republication of his work on Pietism in Dargun, which shows how certain rigid, pastoral methods to invoke conversions in parishioners, and the theological expectations these same Pietist clergy had for the process of conversion, were not always met with glad cheers from other churchly Pietist groups and individuals. Though some of the clergy in Dargun region required a conversion that included key features of Bußkampf (for example, an inward stirring, a personal struggle over sin, and a culminating spiritual breakthrough unto personal certainty of salvation), religious leaders like Michael Christian Russmeyer criticized such rigid expectations for conversion. Russmeyer even turned to the writings of A.H. Francke, as Strom explains, “not so much to discredit conversion experiences as to recognize their diversity” (104). Shedding light on the complexity and diversity of Pietist conversions is one of the important advances Strom's study makes for those interested in understanding the contours of Pietist theology and practice.
Strom's following chapter on execution narratives may turn out to provide one of the more innovative arguments in recent Pietism Studies. Offering a thorough analysis of the origins, transmission, and theological implications of conversion narratives of criminals facing their deaths, he also touches on the topics of gender and “suicide by proxy.” Taking note of the disappearance of execution narratives in published works in the late eighteenth century, Strom suggests, “The demise of the popular execution narratives allowed other genres to reassert themselves as normative Pietist conversion narratives” (143). Working from this premise, he argues that there is a discernable connection between the life and death of execution narratives and the “rediscovery” of Francke's autobiographical account. Strom's attention to death in this manuscript also allows him to provide valuable insight into distinguishing marks between Puritan conversion narratives, which were often published before the death of the individual, and Pietist narratives, which tended to wait until the individual had passed before the person's conversion was put to print (151).
The themes of death and dying in Strom's monograph offer readers a glimpse into some of the more fascinating aspects of his research, but at the same time, their scattered appearance throughout the chapters, gives the study a less coherent feel. This could also be said of the ways Bußkampf is discussed in bits and pieces in various sections of the book. Strom's study would also profit from a richer discussion of the development and application of the Lutheran Pietist ordo salutis (order of salvation). Halle Pietists situated conversion in a broader order of salvation, and though Strom discusses it briefly, his theological contextualization of conversion would have benefited from a more thorough incorporation of the concept. This would also help clarify why Pietists with Reformed confessional backgrounds, like Johann Heinrich Reitz, valued certain conversion accounts differently than their Lutheran counterparts (38).
These minor suggestions should not distract from the fact that Jonathan Strom's German Pietism and the Problem of Conversion stands out among more recent works on the early modern German renewal movement. Strom challenges long-standing assumptions about Pietist expectations concerning conversion, and he offers a convincing alternative to understanding the place of autobiographical accounts of conversion in the theological and historical world of Lutheran Pietism. Both specialists of Pietism and those interested in the history of Protestantism in the long eighteenth century would benefit greatly from his research.
