Horton on Piety

"Reformation piety. . . rather than expressing Christian life as flowing outward from the individual to broader relationships (i.e., the Church as the aggregate of the individually regenerate), sees it as cascading down from the Church and the family to the individual. . .At least in its American version, pietistic revivalism has generated a completely different conception of proper Christian piety. Instead of God's blessings cascading down from church to family to individuals, it tries to work the other way around. But, then, just as the focus of salvation falls almost exclusively on the individual, piety is largely regarded as a private affair. One's personal relationship with God is too intimate, too personal, to be regarded as mediated within ordinary social structures-even if they are structures such as family and Church, which God himself has founded.

So when some of our Christian brothers and sisters think that we Reformational folk do not care particularly about piety or life in the Spirit, they could not be more mistaken. It is just that our understanding of piety and life in the Spirit contrasts markedly with American Christianity's prevailing patterns. As we search the Scriptures together, we become aware of a piety that runs deeper and further than anything we have seen in pietism. By seeing the Spirit's work as intertwined with the ordinary means of grace we do in fact see him as crucially active in the everyday lives of his people. We see him at work whenever we encounter the Word of God preached and read, whenever we witness a Baptism, or receive the Supper. We also see him working in the fruit he produces when his people think of others as more important than themselves-even when it comes to cultivating piety.

Authentic Christian piety is expressed with others over a lifetime, as God's people are exposed to the work of the Spirit through Word and Sacrament, so that their union with Christ is concretely experienced in this life by their union with each other. This piety is not as flamboyant as the individualistic piety encouraged by spiritual fads, but it runs deeper and further under God's promised blessing. Then, instead of concentrating exclusively on our own spiritual blessing, we become instruments of blessing for others wherever God has placed us in this world and in the flock he has purchased with his own blood." Horton, Michael, "Reformation Piety," Modern Reformation Magazine (July/August Issue 2002).