"Everywhere at Home": The Eighteenth-Century Moravian Movement as a Transatlantic Religious Community
Beginning in the 1730s, the Moravians established their presence as a religious renewal and missionary movement in the Atlantic world. Operating with a global vision, they founded congregations and societies throughout Europe and established numerous settlements and mission stations in North America...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
Published: |
2006
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In: |
Journal of Moravian history
Year: 2006, Volume: 1, Pages: 7-29 |
Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Summary: | Beginning in the 1730s, the Moravians established their presence as a religious renewal and missionary movement in the Atlantic world. Operating with a global vision, they founded congregations and societies throughout Europe and established numerous settlements and mission stations in North America and South America and on the West coast of the African continent. They played an important role in the development of evangelical awakenings during the 1740s in Germany, England, and Pennsylvania. At the same time, they developed their own unique form of religious culture and social organization, based on their self-understanding as a trans-national and trans-confessional theocratic community. Numerous factors contributed to the cohesion of the movement, including a strong central leadership, an effective network of communication, a spiritual self-understanding that emphasized community, and uniform system of belief and worship. As a result, the transatlantic community structure of the Moravians was surprisingly stable throughout the eighteenth century, creating a cohesion across geographic space that enabled its members to feel, as one source put it, "every where at Home". |
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ISSN: | 2161-6310 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Moravian history
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