A Very Brief History of the Moravian Church (Unitas Fratrum)

Persecution by Rome continued for decades, but the church grew. Then, Martin Luther wrote his Ninety-Five Theses and started the Protestant Reformation. (While Hus's and Luther's messages were similar, Luther had a major advantage: the invention of movable type. Luther used the printing press to spread his message faster and farther. If Hus had been able to share his views through the power of the printed word, the Reformation might have begun a century earlier.)

Rome struck back with the Counter-Reformation. During the bloody Thirty Year's War, the Holy Roman Empire sought to exterminate Protestantism. Pietists in Bohemia and Moravia were especially targeted. About 2 million people were killed. The surviving faithful went underground, and families continued to cherish their beliefs and traditions. Some Moravians sought refuge in Marienborn, near the Leimbach hometown of Höchstadt.

Zinzendorf

In 1722, a convert to the faith, Christian David, persuaded the young Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf to allow refugees to settle on his estate in Saxony. Zinzendorf was deeply religious and let the Brethren onto his lands, where they built the settlement of Herrnhut. Zinzendorf became their leader and established the rules that Moravian society would follow.

Moravian settlements were communal. There was no competition in business, and the congregation, led by elders, owned and controlled all the resources of the community. Members of the community were divided into "choirs" according to their gender and station in life. There were separate houses for Infants, Young Boys, Young Girls, Older Boys, Older Girls, Single Men, Single Women, Widows and Couples.

The Brethren saw America as an opportunity to spread the Gospel. They launched their foreign missionary program -- the first by any Protestant group -- in 1732 among the slaves in the West Indies. In 1735, Moravians sailed to Georgia to establish new settlements. However, war between England and Spain put Georgia in the path between the Carolinas and Spanish Florida. The Moravians, being conscientious objectors, began looking for another place to settle.

David Nitschmann

Bishops Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg and David Nitschmann visited Pennsylvania from 1736 to 1739 to gather information on the conditions there. By 1740 the Moravians had migrated there. Settlements were founded at Lititz and Bethlehem. Zinzendorf himself gave Bethlehem its biblical name after celebrating Christmas Eve in a tiny cabin with an attached "lowly cattle shed."

In 1753, the Moravians established Bethabara, their first settlement in North Carolina. Bethania was founded in 1756, and Salem in 1766. Around the world, missions were established in Labrador, Greenland and Lapland. They went to Nicaragua, Honduras and Surinam. They also went to Ceylon, South Africa, Cairo, Constantinople, Baghdad, Jerusalem (where they established a home for lepers) and to Alaska. (James Michener described the church's work in his novel, Alaska.)

Today there are about 800,000 members of the church worldwide.

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