The Moravians

Abstract

The Moravian Church originated in 1722, when Protestant refugees from Moravia founded the town of Herrnhut on the estate of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Herrnhut developed into an independent religious community, only loosely connected to the local Lutheran parish church under the leadership of Zinzendorf, who was not only their secular lord but also their spiritual leader. This “renewed Moravian Church” quickly spread through the European continent, Britain, and North America. Moravian missionaries went to the enslaved in the Caribbean, to the Inuit in Greenland and Labrador, to the American Indians, and to the Khoi in southern Africa. Within a few decades, Herrnhut had become the center of one of the significant religious transatlantic movements of the eighteenth century, attracting Germans, Dutch, English, Scandinavians, American Indians, and enslaved men and women in the Caribbean.