HISTORY - continued

Moravians

He was the rich, young ruler who said yes. So characterized is Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Born heir of one of Europe’s leading families, he bore the title “Count” as did all males in the Zinzendorf family. Born May 26, 1700, Karl Barth called him “perhaps the only genuine Christocentric of the modern age.” He was a pietist in an age of rationality. At the age of fifteen he could read the New Testament in Greek, was fluent in Latin, and French was as natural to him as his native German. He is considered father of Moravians, but was a Lutheran all sixty years of his life. He is, perhaps, the first person to use the term “ecumenism” in speaking of the church.

Count Zinzendorf may be the spiritual father of the Moravians but Moravian thought began long before him. The roots of the Moravian church go back as early as the ninth century and the beginning of Christian work in what is the present day Czech Republic. In the age of the Reformation John Hus was the foremost of Czech reformers. Although Hus was burned at the stake in 1415 and did not live to see the birth of the Protestant Church, from his ashes rose the Moravian Church.

The Moravian Church was almost exterminated in the Thirty Years War (1618 - 1648), but a small remnant survived. One hundred years later, in 1722, the exiled followers found permanent refuge in Saxony at the estate of Nicholas Ludwig, Count of Zinzendorf. The Count called the people Moravians because they had come from northern Moravia.

As much as anything else, the Moravians are characterized by their mission work. It can rightly be said that the Moravians were the first mission-oriented church. Individual Roman Catholic missionaries had been sent out prior to the Moravians, but the Moravians were the first to consider the mission task the duty of the whole church. It was in August of 1732, in a service rich in vision and inspiration, that two men were commissioned to take the Gospel to the Danish West Indies. They were the first missionaries commissioned by a church. It was an unforgettable service where, it is reported; so intense was the feeling a hundred hymns were sung.