This essay examines how pietists in Stockholm during the early 18th century built networks to develop their faith and to exchange information. At the same time, it examines which resistance strategies they used to face the strictly regulated church life that the state and the church had jointly set up. 

The source material is a diary written by Sven Rosén in the years 1730–1731 in which he describes daily events in the form of books he reads, people he meets and his own struggle for faith. 

The results show that the pietists met in small groups in secret worship-like gatherings where forbidden pietist literature was shared and also written off.

The networks were based on trust and were both non-hierarchical and class-heterogeneous. Within the networks there were also mechanisms for exclusion where trust did not exist.