Review of Gillespie, Michel and Robert Beachy (Eds.) Pious Pursuits. German Moravians in the Atlantic World, European Expansion & Global Interaction Volume 7. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Religion on the Margins: Transatlantic Moravian Identities and Early American Religious Radicalism
2017
Author(s): Pietrenka, Benjamin Michael | Advisor(s): Westerkamp, Marilyn J | Abstract: This dissertation traces transatlantic processes of German religious and social identity formation in eighteenth-century North America through the lens of an expansive correspondence network established by the pastoral missionaries and common believers of the Moravian Church, a small group of radical German Protestants who migrated to all four Atlantic world continents and built community outposts and mission settlements in diverse religious, political, and social environments. Common Moravian believers, I argue, fashioned this pioneering correspondence network into a critical element of their lived religious experience and practice, and it became fundamental to both the construction and maturation of their personal and collective identities. In addition, this correspondence network functioned as a medium for ordinary believers to articulate nonconformist spiritualities, communicate new standards ...
This “rends in Pieces all the Barriers between Virtue and Vice”
The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 2011
I would like to thank the Pietism Studies Group, which meets each year in conjunction with the American Historical Association, for inviting me to present a paper on this material for the 2008 annual meeting in Washington, DC. This article is a revised version of that presentation delivered as "Anglo-Moravians and Tennentist Propaganda: The Nature of Moravian-New Light Relations in the Delaware Valley, 1741-1748." I am also indebted to Paul Peucker and Lanie Graf for their assistance at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Lisa Jacobson at the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia, as well as several people who have reviewed and offered comments on this piece. Among them are Craig Atwood, Ned Landsman, and Mark Norris. This article is much improved because of comments I received from these individuals and those of an anonymous reviewer. I am, however, solely responsible for those deficiencies that remain.
Proofs Connecting Worlds and People
Connecting Worlds and People. Early modern Diasporas, 2017
In recent decades historians have emphasized just how dynamic and varied early modern Europe was. Previously held notions of monolithic and static societies have now been replaced with a model in which new ideas, different cultures and communities jostle for attention and influence. Building upon the concept of interaction, the essays in this volume develop and explore the idea with specific reference to the ways in which diasporas could act as translocal societies, connecting worlds and peoples that may not otherwise have been linked. The volume looks at the ways in which diasporas or diasporic groups, such as the Herrnhuters, the Huguenots, the Quakers, Jews, the Mennonites, the Moriscos and others, could function as intermediaries to connect otherwise separated communities and societies. All contributors analyse the respective groups' internal and external networks, social relations and the settings of social interactions, looking at the entangled networks of diaspora communities and their effects upon the societies and regions they linked through those networks. The collection takes a fresh look at early modern diasporas, combining religious, cultural, social and economic history to better understand how early modern communication patterns and markets evolved, how consumption patterns changed and what this meant for social, economic and cultural change, how this impacted on what we understand as early developments towards globalization, and how early developments towards globalization, in turn, were constitutive of these.
The Moravians: a model of spirituality and mission for the Asian Church
The Moravians have left us a remarkable mission legacy, the relevance of which can be explored in various missiological directions. In this essay their relevance is pursued under the rubric of spirituality and mission, since few Christian communities have combined these themes in such a compelling way. A significant part of what follows is concerned with the missionary motivation of the Moravians and how their spirituality shaped their community and missionary endeavours. This paper was published in Tan Kang San (ed), The Soul of Mission: Perspectives on Christian Leadership, Spirituality and Mission in East Asia: Essays in Appreciation of Dr David Gunaratnam (SUFES, 2007)
‘They Call Me Obea’: German Moravian Missionaries and Afro-Caribbean Religion in Jamaica, 1754-1760
‘They Call Me Obea’ examines the role of obeah within the Moravian mission to Jamaica between 1754 and 1760. While much scholarship has focused on the significance of obeah in Tacky’s Revolt of 1760 and later, there has been less attention paid to obeah before it became linked to rebellion and criminalized in British West Indian law. The Moravian missionary sources, a voluminous yet largely unexamined archive of letters, diaries, and account books written by Moravian missionaries and their enslaved and free converts, offer new insight into the significance of obeah in pre-1760 Jamaica. When Zacharias George Caries, the first Moravian missionary to be stationed in Jamaica, arrived in 1754, he was an outsider on many levels. A German Moravian who had toured with the evangelist John Cennick through the British Isles, Caries brought with him a radical vision of the New Birth and a commitment to converting enslaved Africans to Christianity. Three months after his arrival, the enslaved men and women at the Bogue estate began to call Caries “obea,” a term that Caries defined as a “Seer, or one who is able to see things in the future.” What did it mean for Caries to be called “obea,” and how did his behavior before writing this letter contribute to the perception that he was an obeah man? I argue that Caries’ identification as an obeah man demonstrates that obeah was not just an Afro-Caribbean practice – it was also the frame through which Afro-Caribbeans interpreted European religious and medical practices. Several scholars have argued persuasively that obeah conflicts with European methods of categorization that divide “religion” from “medicine” and “true religion” from “superstition.” This article contends that in order to fully appreciate the role of obeah in mid-eighteenth century Jamaica, scholars must view Christian practice and European natural history as being part of the Afro-Caribbean category of obeah.
Methodists and Money in the Long Eighteenth Century
2018
A. Introduction John Wesley’s Methodist Connexion began as a small and informal grouping of Anglican clergymen and ‘lay brethren’ sharing a vision of a revitalised Church of England. Its first (1744) Conference gave detailed consideration to matters of theology but also to discipline and organisation, especially how the religious societies associated with the movement should be run. From the outset there was a concern that its preachers should lead exemplary lives, and in particular an anxiety to avoid any appearance that they were profiting from their ministry. The preachers were told: “Take no money of anyone. If they give you food when you are hungry, or clothes when you need them, it is good. But not silver or gold. Let there be no pretence to say, we ‘grow rich by the gospel’.” In the succeeding years and decades the movement grew. Its membership multiplied, exceeding 70,000 by the time of Wesley’s death in 1791; it spread across the British Isles and beyond; it acquired hundre...
2014
The international mission network created in the 18th century by the evangelical Protestant group known as the Unity of Brethren, or Moravians, sustained a consistent set of beliefs and daily practices across widely scattered communities. The spiritual unity among the dispersed but cohesive communities in the Moravian Atlantic missions was achieved through the circulated written accounts of each mission’s activities. Material culture contributed to the communal approach adopted by the Moravians because the trades practiced in the North American and European communities funded mission work. This included potters who manufactured a slip-decorated, red earthenware, and the Moravian records document that these products were sent from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to the Danish Caribbean mission. The identification of fragments of this Moravian ware at six sites in the Virgin Islands demonstrates material aspects of this transatlantic community, as Moravian missionary ventures represented an intertwined web of religious belief and economics.
2017
The aim of this work is to address the development of experiential Protestantism in the nineteenth century, commonly called Pietism, through the theological contributions of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Søren Kierkegaard, and Phoebe Palmer. While an emphasis on experiencing God exists in all forms of Christianity, including Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and the various forms of Protestantism, the expression and development of experiential Protestantism faces interesting historical challenges. The first challenge is grounded in the community’s conception of itself, primarily the desire to remain an outsider movement. Unlike the other expressions of Protestantism, such as Scholasticism and Rationalism, Pietism’s early history in the development of Protestantism began as a counterweight to these intellectual movements. As a result, the necessity to remain outside of the established power structures became rooted in the habitus of Pietism. Pietism seeks to remain a countercultural ...
Aenigma Omnibus: The Transatlantic Humanism of Zinzendorf & the Early Moravians (with Tom Keeline)
Journal of the Warburg & Courtauld Institutes, 2020
On the tensions between Moravians and Presbyterian evangelicals see J. S. Burkholder, 'This "Rends in Pieces All the Barriers between Virtue and Vice": Tennentists, Moravians, and the Antinomian Threat in the Delaware Valley', The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, cxxxv, 2011, pp. 5-31. 4. It seems, nonetheless, that a German version of the speech was made available to Moravian elders before its delivery on 26 May; see below, n. 111. 5. Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Oratio, Philadelphia 1742. There has been some doubt about the attribution to the Franklin Press, since the setting is not typical of its work; see C. W. Miller, Benjamin Franklin's
Zinzendorf's Plan for a "Complete History of the True Church of Christ"
Journal of Moravian History, 2009
Zinzendorf had a lifelong interest in church history. In 1745 he brought together a group of men and women to collect materials and to write a history of the "true church of Christ." In this article the author examines the program Zinzendorf wrote for this project, revealing his ideas and views on historiography. Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760) is best remembered for the church he founded and shaped, the Moravian Church, which under his inspiring leadership spread to five continents. 1 In this sense Zinzendorf himself made church history. But Zinzendorf might also be considered a writer of church history in a more literal sense. Throughout his life, Zinzendorf worked on various scholarly projects for which he hoped to cooperate with scholars within and outside the Moravian movement. One of these projects was a church history. 2