George Schmidt
THE MORAVIAN ADVANCE: DAWN OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS
The upsurge of Roman Catholic missions that occurred during the sixteenth-century Catholic Counter-Reformation had no parallel among the Protestants. Worldwide missions was not a primary concern of most of the Reformers. Just holding their own in the face of Roman Catholic opposition and breaking new ground in Europe were considered achievements in themselves, and there was little time or personnel for overseas ventures. The Protestants, moreover, lacked the opportunities for overseas missions that were readily available to Roman Catholics, who dominated the religious scene in most of the seafaring nations and who consequently were able to travel with and live under the military protection of explorers and commercial companies. The land-locked Swiss and German states, early strongholds of Protestantism, offered no such access to foreign lands. Furthermore, the Protestants did not have a readymade missionary force like the Roman Catholic monastic orders.
Protestant theology was another factor that limited the vision of missionary enterprises. Martin Luther was so certain of the imminent return of Christ that he overlooked the necessity of foreign missions. He further sought to justify his position by claiming the Great Commission was binding only on the New Testament apostles, who had fulfilled their obligation by spreading the gospel throughout the known world, thus exempting succeeding generations from responsibility. Calvinists generally used the same line of reasoning, adding the doctrine of election that made missions appear extraneous if God had already chosen those he would save. Calvin himself, however, was at least outwardly the most missionary-minded of all the Reformers. He not only sent dozens of evangelists back into his homeland of France, but he also commissioned four missionaries, along with a number of French Huguenots, to establish a colony and evangelize the Native Americans in Brazil. But that short-lived venture, which began in 1555, ended shortly in failure when the renegade leader, Villegagnon, defected to the Portuguese, who then plundered the fledgling colony and left the few remaining defenseless survivors to be overpowered by the Jesuits.
The seventeenth century saw more scattered Protestant missionary efforts, but aside from the work carried on in the American colonies, none of the ventures had real staying power. The Quakers had more than a passing interest in foreign missions; in 1661 George Fox commissioned three of his followers to serve as missionaries to China, but the party never reached its destination. Some years later the first Lutheran overseas missionary, Justinian von Weltz, sailed to Surinam on the Atlantic Coast of South America, where he gave his life in an unsuccessful effort to establish a mission.
The eighteenth century witnessed the first thrust of Protestant missions, for it was only then that various groups of Protestants began acknowledging their responsibility to evangelize those without the gospel. Among the first to recognize this biblical obligation were Lutheran Pietists such as Philip Jacob Spener and August Hermann Francke, who were seeking to bring renewal to the state churches. Francke, a professor at the University at Halle, turned that school into the center of Continental Pietism and along with that a center for evangelism and foreign missions. Overseas mission, however, was not commended by most eighteenth-century church leaders, and Pietists were often ridiculed as “enthusiasts.” But the biblical mandate propelled them forward.
The first significant breakthrough in Protestant missions came when King Ferdinand IV of Denmark, a Pietist himself, appealed to Halle for missionaries to evangelize the people in his overseas holdings—particularly in Tranquebar, along the southeast coast of India. Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Henry Plütschau, Lutheran missionaries supported by the Danish-Halle mission, were the first to be commissioned. They began their ministry near the southern tip of India in Tranquebar. Though hampered by the commercial interests of the Danish East India Company, they nevertheless made progress and witnessed many converts during their years of service. After six years Plütschau returned home due to ill health, while Ziegenbalg remained to oversee the infant church and translate the New Testament and a large portion of the Old Testament into one of India’s many languages. He died in 1719 after fourteen years of service.
Ziegenbalg’s translation was completed by another Danish-Halle missionary, who in turn influenced Christian Frederic Schwartz to serve in India. Schwartz, also a devout Lutheran, was the most notable eighteenth-century missionary to serve with the Danish-Halle mission. He arrived in India in 1750 and served faithfully until his death forty-eight years later. Much of his missionary career was spent traveling along the coast of India, preaching the gospel and planting churches, an accomplishment that would have been impossible without his mastery of several languages and dialects. Though he remained unmarried and without children of his own (like Roman Catholics before him), he conducted an effective ministry with children, who matured in the faith and swelled the ranks of his church in Tanjore to a membership of some two thousand. During his lifetime the Danish-Halle mission had seen significant growth, with approximately sixty of its missionaries coming from Halle alone, but the enthusiastic spirit of earlier years was waning. At the time of his death there were few new volunteers to fill the vacant posts.
Other groups of Christians, however, became part of this early Protestant missionary movement. Also influenced by the Pietism at Halle were the Moravian Brethren (Unitas Fratrum)—one of the most remarkable missionary churches in Christian history. Stirred by Count Zinzendorf, who took the Great Commission to heart, the Moravians paved the way for the great era of modern missions. During the eighteenth century alone, the Moravians served in mission outposts in the Virgin Islands (1732), Greenland (1733), North America (1734), Lapland and South America (1735), South Africa (1736), and Labrador (1771). Their all-consuming purpose was to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth, a passion that was evident in their proportion of missionaries to laypeople, by some estimates a ratio of 1:60.
A unique feature of Moravian missions that made possible the large percentage of missionaries was the expectation of self-support. Moravians were primarily artisans and peasants, and it seemed natural that the missionaries should take their trades and work ethic with them as they traveled abroad. Voluntary contributions, according to Moravian mission theory, were simply inadequate to finance the task of world evangelism. The only alternative, then, was for Christians to be missionaries while pursuing their vocations.
In Labrador, Moravian missionaries supported themselves through trade, with enough money left over to provide basic necessities for needy Eskimos. They owned ships and trading posts, and through their example they interested Eskimos in productive pursuits. The effect of their ministry was not only to bring the gospel to the people but also to make an impact on the native economy and social conditions. In Surinam, the Moravians established a variety of businesses, including tailoring, watchmaking, and baking. As their economic influence grew, so did their spiritual influence, and a thriving Moravian church emerged in that country.
“The most important contribution of the Moravians,” writes William Danker, “was their emphasis that every Christian is a missionary and should witness through his daily vocation. If the example of the Moravians had been studied more carefully by other Christians, it is possible that the businessman might have retained his honored place within the expanding Christian world mission, beside the preacher, teacher, and physician.”1
Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf
Count Zinzendorf was one of the most influential mission leaders of the modern Protestant missionary movement. He pioneered ecumenical evangelism, founded the Moravian church, and authored scores of hymns; but above all else, he launched a worldwide missionary movement that set the stage for William Carey and the “Great Century” of missions that would follow. Yet in many respects he lacked leadership skills, and the mighty movement to which he devoted his life more than once nearly collapsed due to poor planning and decision making.
Zinzendorf was born in 1700 into wealth and nobility. The death of his father and the subsequent remarriage of his mother left him to be reared by his grandmother and aunt, whose warm evangelical Pietism turned his heart toward spiritual matters. His early teaching was reinforced by his formal education. At the age of ten he was sent away to study at Halle, where he sat under the inspiring teaching of the great Lutheran Pietist August Hermann Francke. Here Zinzendorf banded together with other dedicated youths, and out of their association came the “Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed,” a Christian fraternity committed to loving “the whole human family” and to spreading the gospel.
From Halle, Zinzendorf went on to Wittenberg to study law in preparation for a career in state service—the only acceptable vocation for a nobleman. But he was unhappy with his prospects for the future. He longed to enter the Christian ministry—yet to break with family tradition would be unthinkable. The decision weighed heavily on his mind until 1719, when an incident during a tour of Europe changed the course of his life. While visiting an art gallery, he viewed a painting (Domenico Feti’s Ecce Homo) that depicted Christ enduring the crown of thorns, with an inscription that read, “All this I did for you, what are you doing for me?”2 That experience had a profound impact not only on his future vocation but also on his theological and spiritual formation.
A turning point in Zinzendorf ’s call to ministry came in 1722 when some Protestant refugees sought shelter on his estate at Berthelsdorf, later named Herrnhut, meaning “the Lord’s watch.” He invited the refugees to settle on the land, and Herrnhut grew rapidly as word of the count’s generosity spread. Religious refugees continued to arrive, and the estate became a thriving community dotted with newly constructed houses and shops. But with the increasing numbers came problems. The diverse religious backgrounds of the residents created discord, and on more than one occasion the very existence of Herrnhut was in jeopardy.
Then in 1727, five years after the first refugees arrived, the whole atmosphere changed. A period of spiritual renewal was climaxed at a communion service on August 13 with a great revival, which, according to participants, marked the coming of the Holy Spirit to Herrnhut. Whatever may have occurred in the spiritual realm, there is no doubt that this night of revival brought a new passion for missions, which became the chief characteristic of the Moravian movement. There was a heightened sense of unity and dependence on God. At this time a prayer vigil was initiated that continued around the clock, seven days a week, without interruption for more than a hundred years.
Direct involvement in foreign missions did not come until some years after this spiritual awakening. Zinzendorf was attending the coronation of Danish King Christian VI, and during the festivities he was introduced to two native Greenlanders (converts of Hans Egede) and an African slave from the West Indies. So impressed was he with their pleas for missionaries that he invited the latter to visit Herrnhut, and he himself returned home with a sense of urgency for world evangelism. Within a year the first two Moravian missionaries were commissioned to the Virgin Islands, and in the two decades that followed, the Moravians sent out more missionaries than all Protestants had sent out in the previous two centuries.
Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf.
In 1738, some years after the first missionaries had arrived in the Caribbean, Zinzendorf accompanied three new recruits who were joining their colleagues. But when they reached their destination, they learned that their colleagues had been imprisoned. Zinzendorf quickly took charge, using his prestige and authority as a nobleman to secure their release. During his visit he conducted daily services for the Africans and revamped the organizational structure and territorial assignments for the missionaries. Satisfied that the mission work was on a solid footing, he returned to Europe. Two years later he sailed to the American colonies, where he observed the mission work to the native Indians.
Although Zinzendorf had renounced his life as a nobleman, he was never able to suppress his taste for the good life, and he found it difficult to lower himself to the life of a rank-and-file missionary. He did not conceal his displeasure with living in the wilderness and the drudgery of day-to-day missionary work. He viewed the Native Americans as uncivilized and crude, and he resented their invasion of his privacy. However, his inability to relate to them or even get along with them did not dim his enthusiasm for evangelizing them. Before leaving America he appointed twenty more missionaries to American Indian mission work.
As a missionary statesman, Zinzendorf spent thirty-three years as the over-seer of a worldwide network of missionaries who looked to him for leadership. His methods were simple and practical and ones that endured the test of time. All of his missionaries were laypeople who were trained as evangelists, not as theologians. As self-supporting artisans and laborers, they were expected to work alongside their prospective converts, witnessing their faith by the spoken word and by their living example—always seeking to identify themselves as equals, not as superiors. Their task was solely evangelism, strictly avoiding any involvement in local political or economic affairs. Their message was the love of Christ—a very simple gospel message—with intentional disregard for doctrinal truths until after conversion; and even then, an emotional mysticism took precedence over theological teaching. Above all else, the Moravian missionaries were single-minded. Their ministry came before anything else. Wives and families were abandoned for the cause of evangelism. Young men were encouraged to remain single, and when marriage was allowed, the spouse was often chosen by lot.
The chief example of single-minded ministry was Zinzendorf himself. His wife and children were frequently left behind as he traveled through Europe and abroad, and his exile for more than a decade from his homeland further complicated his family life. While he was away, his business and legal affairs were handled by his very capable wife, Erdmuth, but she was less adept at keeping their marriage relationship intact. It was no secret that he and Erdmuth had grown cool toward each other and that the last fifteen years of their marriage was a marriage in name only. Nevertheless, her death was a difficult time for Zinzendorf. According to John Weinlick, “the count’s sorrow was aggravated by remorse. He had not been fair to Erdmuth. Cynics to the contrary, he had not been unfaithful to her during their long periods of separation; but he had been extremely thoughtless. He had forgotten that she was a woman, a wife, and a mother.”3
After a proper year of mourning, Zinzendorf married Anna Nitchmann, a peasant woman who, along with others, had been his traveling companion for many years. The marriage was kept secret for more than a year, partly to avoid a family controversy over his marrying a woman so far beneath his social rank. Anna had a strong ideological influence on Zinzendorf, particularly in the area of mysticism, and this phenomenon led to grave problems for the mission.
Erdmuth Zinzendorf, Count Zinzendorf ’s wife.
Under the count’s leadership, the Moravian church had placed great emphasis on the death of Christ. As a child Zinzendorf had meditated on the death and agony of the Lord, and his call to ministry had been influenced by a painting depicting Christ’s agony. As time passed, what once had been an emphasis turned into an obsession, and the whole church seemed to be carried away in a radical form of mysticism. Through his example, the Moravians began denigrating their own worth as they morbidly meditated on the death of Christ. In a circular letter to the churches, Anna (years before she and Zinzendorf were married) had written, “Like a poor little worm, I desire to withdraw myself into his wounds,” and Zinzendorf himself spoke of the brethren as “little blood worms in the sea of grace.” An “Order of Little Fools” was formed, and he encouraged the members to behave like little children and to think of themselves as “little fish swimming in the bed of blood” or “little bees who suck the wounds of Christ.”4
This mysticism had a negative impact on missions. The more mystical and introspective the Moravians became in their identification with Christ’s physical suffering, the less they focused on world evangelism and the needs of others. Active missionaries were sometimes discredited because they had not yet reached the mystics’ high plane of spirituality, and the cause of missions therefore suffered.
This turn of events might have brought a quick demise to the missionary movement, but the count recognized the problem before that occurred. Admitting that the condition of the church had “greatly degenerated” and that he himself had “probably occasioned it,” Zinzendorf was able to put that “brief but fearful”5 period behind him and to steer his following back on course again.
Other problems were soon to surface, however. By 1750 the Moravian church was deeply in debt due to Zinzendorf ’s lack of financial management. “Its expansion,” writes J. C. S. Mason, “its land purchases, its great buildings and other initiatives—in which the cost of missions was no more than a fraction of a much greater problem—was funded mainly by loans.”6
In Britain and on the Continent there was an “avalanche of books and pamphlets,” the effect of which was “nearly ruinous.” The mystical theology of previous years was not forgotten as critics took aim at the now financially strapped movement. “Herrnhutism,” wrote Henry Rimius, “has debased Christianity by connecting with it the most detestable absurdities, and expresses doctrines which it has grossly corrupted.” Such derision did not fade quickly. “As late as 1808 the evangelical Christian Observer reminded readers that Moravians, like the ‘Anabaptists’ in an earlier period, had more recently ‘exhibited a deplorable licentiousness of practice.’”7
Despite his flaws and failures and his marred reputation, Zinzendorf left a legacy that continued on long after his death. Indeed, his contribution to missions is perhaps best seen in the lives of the men and women who left behind family and homeland for the cause of world missions.
Christian David and Hans Egede
Apart from Count Zinzendorf, the individual most involved in the founding of the Moravian church was Christian David, who was largely responsible for bringing refugees from all over Europe to Zinzendorf ’s estate. David was born in Moravia in 1690 into a Roman Catholic family. As a youth he was a devout Catholic, zealous in his observance of rituals, holidays, and in his adoration of the Virgin Mary. Later he recalled that his heart burned like a stove with religious devotion—a devotion that took the form of evangelical enthusiasm while he was serving as an apprentice and living with his master’s family. But even then his exposure to Christian teachings was limited. He was twenty before he acquired a Bible, a book that he had never before laid eyes on.
In 1717, at the age of twenty-seven, David experienced an evangelical conversion, and soon after that, through the encouragement of his wife, Anna, he became a traveling lay preacher. During his travels he met hundreds of disheartened, persecuted Christians who longed for a refuge where they could worship freely. Against that backdrop David met Zinzendorf in 1722, which led to their joint efforts to establish Herrnhut. During the years that followed, David represented Herrnhut as he traveled around Europe recruiting settlers.
Although he was a carpenter by trade and had been effective in recruiting settlers, Christian David was eager to become involved more directly in evangelism, and in 1733 his opportunity came. Along with two other Moravians, he was commissioned as a missionary to Greenland to revitalize the mission work there. Two years before their departure for Greenland, Zinzendorf had heard a rumor that Lutheran missionary Hans Egede was about to abandon his work there, and it was this erroneous information that prompted Zinzendorf to come to the rescue. He immediately called for volunteers among his Moravian following to fill the gap, and David was chosen to be the leader.
The arrival of Moravian missionaries came as a surprise to Egede. He welcomed them, but almost immediately problems and misunderstandings arose. Both Egede and David were strong willed, and a language barrier further complicated matters. Egede, a native of Norway, had difficulty understanding the German spoken by the Moravian newcomers, and they could not comprehend his Norwegian tongue at all. David and his companions, however, quickly realized that Egede had no intention of forsaking his mission.
Hans Egede and his family had been in Greenland for more than a decade when the Moravians arrived, and despite setbacks, they remained wholly dedicated to the mission. Born in Norway in 1686 (four years before Christian David), Egede grew up in a devout Lutheran family and was deeply influenced by a warm spirit of pietism that had penetrated the Scandinavian countries. He studied for the ministry and then spent a stormy ten years in the pastorate. Conflict with another minister in his diocese over money matters resulted in his being fined more than once by an ecclesiastical court. He charged that he was not receiving enough money to cover even the basic needs of his family, but his manner was considered by the court to be disrespectful of authority.
Christian David, Moravian missionary to Greenland.
Since his childhood Egede had heard tales of Greenland and of the Christians who centuries before had migrated there from Scandinavia—Christians whose descendants had not been heard from for more than two hundred years. He had learned from his Norwegian tradition that the gospel had been carried to Greenland hundreds of years before by Leif the Lucky. Leif, accompanied by a priest, propagated Christianity among the Greenlanders, and by the twelfth century the church there had grown to the point where it could have its own bishop. But over time, the church fell back into the ways of paganism.
These stories, combined with pietistic missionary fervor, challenged the young Norwegian pastor to pursue the possibility of opening a mission to Greenland to these “poor people, who in former times had been Christians and enlightened in the Christian faith, but who now for lack of teachers and instruction had again fallen into heathen blindness and savagery.”8 With no mission board to sponsor him, he sent a proposal “for the conversion and enlightenment of the Greenlanders”9 to the king of the joint kingdom of Denmark and Norway and to church authorities. A war being waged with Sweden, however, delayed action on his request for several years.
In the meantime, Egede confronted strong personal opposition to his plans. His mother-in-law was deeply distressed when she heard the news, and his wife, Giertrud (thirteen years his senior), was so taken aback that she confessed that she regretted ever marrying him. But eventually, after she and her husband talked and prayed together about the matter, she became his most faithful supporter, and they moved forward together in what would become a joint calling. When others pressured him to abandon his plans, she held firm in her support: “My dear wife gave a proof of her great faith and constancy by representing to me that it was now too late to repent of what had been done. I cannot say how much she encouraged me by speaking in this way and by the fact that she, a frail woman, showed greater faith and manliness than I.”10
In the summer of 1718, Egede, along with his wife and four children, left his parish in the north and sailed south to the seaport at Bergen, where he hoped to secure passage to Greenland. This first leg of the journey, along the treacherous Norwegian coast, turned out to be a perilous nightmare that might have crushed a weaker commitment. At one point he fell overboard and would have perished but for a daring rescue by a fisherman. Rather than discouraging him, the mishap buoyed his faith and convinced him that his rescue was a clear sign from God that he had been spared for a divine purpose.
Finally, after more than two years of delays and uncertainty in Bergen, the Egedes obtained passage through the Bergen Company and arrived in Greenland in the summer of 1721. After hastily building a dwelling to shelter his family during the cold months ahead, Egede settled down to the very unromantic life of being a foreign missionary. The pleasant summer weather was spoiled by swarms of ever-present gnats. But even more troublesome than the gnats was the language barrier. Egede had hoped to find a language similar to his own, brought to Greenland centuries before by his own people, but his hopes were dashed. Trying to communicate even the simplest phrases turned into a lengthy ordeal, and to make matters worse, Egede failed to detect even a trace of Christian beliefs that he had hoped might have been passed down through the centuries.
Communication was not the only cultural barrier that Egede had to overcome. The lifestyle of the Eskimos was vastly different from his own. They lived in primitive dwellings four to six feet high, often overcrowded with several families in one dwelling and torturously overheated in the winter. The sickening stench of spoiled meat and fish, combined with the repugnant odor of the urine tubs (for soaking hides), made the atmosphere almost unbearable for the Norwegian preacher; but home visitation was his only effective means of contact with the Eskimos during the long winter months.
Egede’s ministry to the Eskimos got off to a slow start. While his young sons, Paul and Niels, quickly picked up the difficult language as they played with their native friends, Egede struggled for years with the complexities of the grammar, and even then he found it very difficult to communicate spiritual values. He depended heavily on Paul and Niels, and they proved to be an enormous asset in his ministry. His most effective method of winning the friendship and the audience of the Eskimos during his early years in Greenland was through music. According to his biographer, Louis Bobé, “He won their hearts by singing to them.”11
Nevertheless, the progress of evangelism was painfully slow. Egede demanded that the Eskimos forsake their pagan practices—insisting there could be no compromise between Christianity and paganism. He demanded that they abolish their sacred protective charms, their superstitious drum dances and songs, and their “devilish jugglery.” With little understanding of their beliefs, he was unable to establish any common ground between their religious tradition and Christianity. This impasse prompted him to concentrate his efforts on children, who were not as enmeshed in native superstitions. With their parents’ permission, he baptized them and began teaching them Christian doctrine as soon as he believed they could grasp the meaning.
Egede never abandoned his dream of finding Greenlanders whose heritage could be traced back to his own native land. Through his searching he discovered remnants of European architecture, including the foundation of a church preserved from Norse ruins, but he never was able to detect beliefs passed down from the earlier generations of Christians.
The slow progress of his mission work and the lack of commercial success of the Bergen Company combined to dim the early enthusiasm there had been for the Greenland venture back home. Then in 1730, King Frederick IV, a strong supporter of the Greenland missionary venture, died, and his successor, King Christian VI, came to power. The following year Christian VI decided to abandon the Greenland commercial enterprise, and the company officials and workers were recalled. Egede himself was permitted to stay, but even his residence there was in question. This situation led to the rumor that he was giving up his missionary work and prompted Zinzendorf to commission Christian David and his Moravian colleagues to continue the work that Egede had begun.
Problems between the newly arrived Moravians and the veteran missionary Hans Egede were virtually inevitable. Egede, with his domineering and harsh personality, offended the Moravians, who believed in a softer approach to evangelism. “What followed,” according to historian Stephen Neill, “is typical of what almost always happens when a second mission enters a territory where an older mission is already established. The newcomers pick on the weaknesses of the old, with little regard for what the pioneers have endured.”12
The conflict between the two groups focused largely on the method of evangelism. To the Moravians, Egede was a rigid and doctrinaire Lutheran who was more concerned with teaching his cold orthodoxy than with saving souls. How, they asked, could the Eskimos ever be expected to understand complex doctrine until God had given them the light of salvation? Egede, on the other hand, viewed the Moravians as preaching a deplorably sentimental religion, with little concern for Christian doctrine and the eradication of religious superstitions. Their one-sided gospel of the love of Christ, with little reference to a holy, righteous, almighty God, he maintained, failed to present Christianity as it really was.
Despite the differences, Egede and the Moravians worked side by side, at times maintaining a reasonably warm relationship. Egede shared all of his linguistic notes and material with the Moravians as they struggled to come to grips with the language (though the language barrier between them made the notes of little value); and when they were ill with scurvy, he visited them often, doing what he could to relieve their suffering. His wife, Giertrud, also showed kindness to them and was loved and respected by them. Nevertheless, the conflict was ever present, causing a contemporary observer to comment that the Greenlanders “are apt to doubt the whole of the Christian faith and to say: ‘How can it be truth, which you yourselves are quarreling about?’”13
The first real breakthrough for Egede in his ministry to the Eskimos came in 1733, around the time of the arrival of Christian David and his coworkers. Good news arrived from Denmark that their new king had decided to continue the Greenland mission work. But with this good news came a converted Greenlander returning from a visit to Denmark, who had become a carrier of the smallpox virus. On his return he traveled from village to village, ministering with Egede and unknowingly spreading the deadly disease wherever he went. Soon the Eskimos were ravaged with sickness and fighting for their lives, and only then were the warmth and sacrificial love of this otherwise stern churchman clearly demonstrated to them. What could not be transmitted in words was shown through weeks and months of selfless service as the disease continued to rage. He was on continual call, and when he was not out in the villages nursing the sick, he was besieged at his own home. Hearing of his generosity, Eskimos came from miles around for treatment, and the sickest among them were brought into his own home, where he and his wife gave them beds and cared for them.
After the danger had passed and a calm had returned to the region, Egede noticed a greater interest in spiritual things among the people. He had endeared himself to them, and the Eskimos were now seeking him out for spiritual counsel. A dying Greenlander who had ignored the teaching of Egede when he was in good health expressed the feelings of many of his people toward their Norwegian missionary: “You have been more kind to us than we have been to one another; you have fed us, when we were famished; you have buried our dead … you have told us of God … so that we may now die gladly, in expectation of a better life hereafter.”14 The terrible epidemic of 1733 lasted less than a year, but the scars were permanent. Egede never fully regained his health, and his wife remained ill until her death in 1736.
In the meantime, the Moravians had become established in their missionary work and soon began seeing a response to their preaching. In 1738 a revival broke out, and in the years that followed hundreds of Eskimos made professions of faith. Egede angrily accused Christian David of having “reaped what I have ploughed.”15 His charge had an element of truth, but the Moravians’ simple message and method of evangelism were more suited to the Eskimos than were Egede’s. Their presentation of the gospel, filled with emotional sentimentality, appealed to people whose mystical superstitions were in some ways not so far removed from the mysticism of the Moravians. Soon the little chapel at New Herrnhut was overcrowded, and a new church was constructed by the missionary-carpenter Christian David.
After the death of his wife, Hans Egede returned to Copenhagen and remarried. From there he supervised the mission work in Greenland and trained young men for missionary service, but he saw very little fruit from his labors. His greatest joy was seeing his sons continue in the work of the mission. His son Paul, in particular, carried out a very effective ministry in the area of Disko Bay, where religious revival broke out and people came from great distances to hear him preach. His ministry, though, was cut short due to failing eyesight. He returned to Copenhagen, where he continued his Bible translation work and collaborated with his father in developing a doctrinal guide for the Greenlanders. Hans Egede died in 1758 at the age of seventy-two. His son Paul lived another thirty years, supporting the cause of missions in Greenland to the very end.
At the very time that Christianity was being planted in Greenland, it was also being introduced in other remote areas of the world by dedicated Moravian missionaries. In South Africa, George Schmidt, an unmarried Moravian brother, was struggling against almost overwhelming odds to bring the gospel to the native population there. Born in Moravia in 1709, Schmidt was converted at the age of sixteen during a revival among the Moravian brethren. Soon after that he journeyed to Herrnhut and was there at the time of the great revival on August 13, 1727.
At Herrnhut, Schmidt was commissioned to go back to his homeland of Moravia with two other “brethren.” It was a region of deep religious animosity, where the Protestant minority faced severe persecution from Catholic authorities. Soon after they arrived, their meetings were detected, and he and his companions were imprisoned. After their release, the three young Moravians returned to Herrnhut, but soon Schmidt was again sent out to preach—this time to Austria, an even harsher environment. Once again he and his traveling companion sought to elude the authorities and conduct secret religious meetings, and once again arrests were made and he found himself in prison.
For three years he languished in a dungeon cell. Conditions were deplorable, and after less than a year his comrade died, leaving him to suffer alone. Had his suffering been only physical, Schmidt’s trials would not have been so unbearable, but he also suffered mental anguish. Daily he was pressured to recant by the Jesuits who were holding him, but he steadfastly refused. After three years of misery and torment, he was sentenced to hard labor, which lasted for another three years until finally he broke down and signed a revocation of his beliefs to satisfy the authorities.
Having endured so much suffering and humiliation, Schmidt returned to Herrnhut, expecting to be warmly embraced by the community. Instead, he was met with a cool reception and was treated as an apostate because of his “weakness.” He was devastated, and to prove he was not a deserter he left the security of Herrnhut once again and went back into Roman Catholic strongholds to preach. But he was not happy, and he gratefully welcomed a change in 1736 when he was sent to Holland to learn the Dutch language and then dispatched to South Africa in 1737 to work among the Hottentots. Zinzendorf had heard the reports of Ziegenbalg and Plütschau who, on their way to India, had become burdened for these oppressed Africans.
South Africa was a very harsh environment during the early eighteenth century. The Dutch colonists did not look favorably on missionary endeavors that might raise the social status of the Africans, and Schmidt’s arrival among them was viewed with antagonism. Moreover, the Calvinistic Dutch Reformed ministers who were in the Cape Colony deplored the emotional and sentimental pietism of the Moravians. Schmidt himself did little to endear himself to them. According to one account, he was “a hypocrite and a sham, sometimes climbing on the low roof of the house…. There he knelt so that all … could see him, and pretended to pray.”16
After residing at a military post for a time, Schmidt traveled inland to work among the Hottentots, who were regarded as “black cattle” by the colonists and were hunted down like animals in their effort to enslave them. They cautiously welcomed Schmidt, and, with the help of a Hottentot interpreter, he began preaching to them. In a very short time he had established a school with some fifty students.
As with other Moravian missionaries, Schmidt’s ministry was not financed by supporters back home. All Moravians were expected to be evangelists, and there was little differentiation between those who ministered on the home field and those who went abroad. Schmidt worked among the people, and personal evangelism was simply conducted during his daily contacts with them. For a time he worked as a day-laborer, butchering, tanning hides, threshing wheat, pruning fruit trees, and doing other farm chores; and after a time he acquired livestock of his own as well as his own garden.
Life was not easy for Schmidt in South Africa. The winter of 1740 was particularly severe, and he and his neighbors survived a food shortage only by shooting a hippopotamus, an animal not normally used for sustenance. But to Schmidt, matters of day-to-day living were secondary. His sole purpose for being in Africa was evangelism. But in this area, too, he faced hard times and setbacks. His little flock of believers was unstable and given to backsliding. Even Africo, his interpreter and one of his most promising converts, fell back into his old ways. He went on drinking binges with his friends and nearly destroyed the fledgling church. Schmidt reacted harshly, and the men involved repented; but spiritual lethargy persisted. So discouraged was Schmidt that he wrote to Zinzendorf that he intended to return home.
Schmidt’s problems in building a stable community of Christians were not only with the Africans but also with the Dutch residents and colonial authorities. Local farmers sought to ruin his reputation, some charging that he was living with a Hottentot woman, others claiming that he was a spy. And the colonial authorities, both religious and secular, deeply resented his continuing presence—the presence of an unordained laborer who had the audacity of assuming a position of spiritual leadership.
In an effort to stabilize the situation, Zinzendorf intervened. In a letter to Schmidt, he gave advice, outlined mission policy, and at the same time ordained him in absentia—hoping to quell the criticism:
Why don’t you baptize the children of the Hottentots who die in infancy? He who comes with water and blood, has died for them too. I ordain you for the case of a baptism or a communion … a minister of our church in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen…. I am very pleased with you. But, my dear, you aim too much at the skin of the Hottentots and too little at the heart…. You must tell the Hottentots, especially their children, the story of the Son of God. If they feel something, pray with them, if not, pray for them. If feeling persists, baptize them where you shot your hippo.17
Receiving ordination was a great encouragement to Schmidt, and he immediately exercised his right to administer the sacraments by baptizing Wilhelm, who had been his first Hottentot convert. Soon others were baptized, and word spread to Dutch officials of what was happening. Rather than calming the situation, his ordination only intensified the animosity of the Dutch officials toward him. Reformed ministers at Cape Town insisted that the baptisms were invalid. They summoned two of the converts to come before them to undergo the standard catechism instruction and were surprised to find them as knowledgeable of doctrine as some of their own candidates for baptism. Nevertheless, Schmidt was ordered to leave South Africa and face officials back in Holland. Thus, in the spring of 1744 he sailed for Europe to argue the validity of his ministry before the Dutch authorities there.
Despite the efforts of Schmidt and other Moravian leaders, permission to return was never granted, and the little church among the Hottentots remained without pastoral leadership for nearly half a century until 1792. That year some Moravians returned to the valley. To their amazement, they found an old woman whom Schmidt had baptized more than fifty years before still cherishing the New Testament he had given her.
The second missionary endeavor in the Cape Colony by the Moravians was more successful than the first. Under the capable direction of Hans Hallbeck, the mission work thrived, and by the mid-twentieth century there were thirty-eight stations and nearly fifty thousand professing Christians under Moravian jurisdiction.
The success of Moravian mission work around the world was significant in its own right, but more than that, it served as a model for Protestant mission agencies that paved the way for the modern missionary movement. In 1800, as this movement was being launched, there was no other model that Protestants could easily envision as their own. Catholic religious orders were involved in mission enterprises throughout the world, but they were seen as extensions of a powerful religious bureaucracy headquartered in Rome. The Moravians, on the other hand, were more like an independent agency, and the missionaries sent out were sometimes married couples with families. The Moravians, with their mission posts scattered around the world, set an example through trial and error of how actual mission work could be carried out, and their writings were invaluable sources for new agencies that were emerging.
“The Moravian Church showed English Protestants the way forward,” writes Mason. The founders of the Baptist Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, and the Church Missionary Society found “the very necessary evidence with which to convince their followers that they too could maintain foreign missions, and be successful overseas.”18 William Carey regarded the Moravians as the best contemporary example of worldwide missions, strengthening his case against those who insisted that the time of world evangelism had either long since passed or had not yet come.
August Spangenberg was the premier Moravian missiologist whose writings became required reading for many early missionary candidates. His mission theology was taken primarily from the apostle Paul, whose tent-making vocation was particularly applicable to Moravian methodology. But it was Paul’s defense of the gospel and his all-consuming passion for evangelism that Spangenberg emphasized as the foundation for any missionary venture. The early evangelists brought a simple gospel message that was easily transmitted across cultures, and that, he argued, was the model for all times.
Moravian missionary outreach would continue in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, though it was often overshadowed by the burgeoning denominational and independent mission societies that were rapidly emerging. As time passed, too, the evangelical fervor of the early generations gradually receded.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bobé, Louis. Hans Egede: Colonizer and Missionary of Greenland. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1952.
Hamilton, J. Taylor, and Kenneth G. Hamilton. History of the Moravian Church: The Renewed Unitas Fratrum, 1722–1957. Winston-Salem, NC: Moravian Church in America, 1967.
Hutton, J. E. A History of Moravian Missions. London: Moravian Publication Office, 1923.
Kruger, Bernhard. The Pear Tree Blossoms: A History of the Moravian Mission Stations in South Africa, 1737–1869. South Africa: Genadendal Printing Works, 1967.
Langton, Edward. History of the Moravian Church. London: Allen & Unwin, 1956.
Mason, J. C. S. The Moravian Church and the Missionary Awakening in England, 1760—1800. United Kingdom: Boydell Press, 2001.
Weinlick, John R. Count Zinzendorf. Nashville: Abingdon, 1956.