Neander refused to adopt the order of the Reformed Church and he would not subscribe to the Heidelberg Catechism. He was censured by the Presbyterium (similar to a presbytery) in October, 1676, and added to the charges concerning his church ministry were accusations regarding his operation of the school. At the school he had developed curriculum and did not seek its approval by the Presbyterium; he rescheduled examinations without approval; and he made repairs on the property without approval. These were the main points against him. So, the Presbyterium presented a declaration to Neander, February 3, 1677, suspending him from directing the school and forbidding him from preaching in the church.
Joachim Neander was born at Bremen, Germany, 1650. His father was a teacher in the local Latin school until he died when Joachim was sixteen years old. After his father’s death, he entered the Reformed University at Bremen to study theology in order to become a minister. At the time, he viewed the ministry as nothing more than a profession that would provide for a good future and job security. However, growing in influence at the time was a movement in Germany called pietism which believed the existing Protestant churches in the land, both Lutheran and Reformed, over emphasized doctrine at the expense of personal experience and practical Christian living.
James I. Good expressed the situation as follows:
Two causes led to the development of Pietism in the Reformed Church in the close of the seventeenth century. The first was a reaction against the dead orthodoxy and formalism that had crept into the Church. The second was the rise of the Cocceianism, or the Federal School of Theology. The two really were one, Cocceianism a reaction against deadness of doctrine, and Pietism a reaction against deadness of life. Through the theological controversies religion had become a matter of the head, rather than of the heart and life (314-315).
Pietism first began among the Lutherans then spread to the Reformed Church. One Sunday in the fall of 1670, Neander went to hear Theodor Untereyck (1635-1693) preach with the intention of making fun of his teaching, however, he instead found himself convicted of his hardness and folly as he came to faith in Christ. After the service he left the church and mentioned to the two friends with him that he had decided to follow Christ. From then on, Neander attended Untereyck’s services and became a follower of his teaching. Neander’s ideas concerning life and the ministry had changed entirely.
The spring of 1671, Neander accepted an offer from some French Reformed (Huguenot) families in Frankfurt to take their five sons about sixty miles south in Germany to the University of Heidelberg. It was not unusual for parents with means to hire someone to oversee their boys and keep them out of trouble while away at college. It was a good opportunity for Neander because he could study according to his own interests as he tutored and chaperoned the boys until they returned to Frankfort in 1673.
Continuing with his pietist interest, the next year Neander participated in private Bible study and prayer meetings in Frankfurt led by Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705). Spener opposed what he believed were the rigid organization and doctrinal inflexibility of Lutheranism while he also condemned the lax morality of many clergy. Neander became more deeply associated with the pietist movement and found in Spener the teaching that continued Untereyck’s influences from his past. Joachim Neander’s most significant work during these years in Frankfort was writing hymns. As the pietist movement grew it increasingly included Reformed as well as Lutheran Germans. The Lutherans sang Neander’s hymns in prayer meetings and as pietism came to influence the Reformed they too sang his hymns as they became less committed to Psalmody.