USA > Pennsylvania > Lehigh County > Bethlehem > A history of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1741-1892, with some account of its founders and their early activity in America > Part 11
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86
He fondly hoped to put this high-soaring idea to practical experi- ment in Pennsylvania with less difficulty than in Germany, because of the absence of a state church and even of any general denominational organization ; because of the crude and unsettled state of things, the woeful scarcity of gospel ministry and the supposed readiness of churchless thousands to welcome any provisions for their needs. He had no thought of trying to outwardly weld denominations. While his plan required a federal system of supervision and direction, it had in view emphatically the conservation of the general confessional distinctions. He classified the religious bodies represented in Penn- sylvania as the "Religions" and the "Sects." He sometimes applied the first of these terms to all the bodies that had a historic origin in general ecclesiastical epochs and movements and had a distinct system with defined principles. In this sense not only the Anglican communion and the Presbyterian and Baptist bodies, but also the Quakers among English-speaking people; and not only the Lutheran and Reformed divisions, but also the Mennonites and even the old Tunkers among the Germans, Swedes and Hollanders, were occa- sionally spoken of as religions. Generally, however, he used the word in a narrower and more sharply defined sense, as applied only to national church-establishments and to the historic Protestant confessions. Thus, commonly, when speaking of the Germans of Pennsylvania, the masses who simply adhered to the traditions of
83
I742.
Lutheran and Reformed Protestantism of the several schools and branches, were had in mind by him as representatives of the religions -the German Protestant churchmen of the two main classes.
All who repudiated these confessions, separated themselves and associated on the basis of any specialty were the sects. As regards the religions, he wished to see them maintained and fostered on their original foundations, where more stress would be laid on their common evangelical tenets than on the extreme divergencies of their later theological developments; so that they might stand in closer touch on essentials and in better co-operation for the common good, while those distinctions which deserved to be mutually tolerated and respected were left unimpaired. As to the sects, he proposed to approach them in such special ways as would best appeal to their idiosyncrasies and, by winning them to a truer conception of essentials, draw them away from their extreme separatism, overestimation of non-essential specialties and occasional fundamental errors, to again recognize something in common with the general religions from which they had withdrawn and were alienated. He believed that the power of the newly "enthroned Lamb of God" would not only soften asperities and reduce friction, but gradually dissolve those sectarian formations that were radically pernicious more effectually than making war upon them would. His plan was that, wherever his good offices were accepted, he would supply the people of these various Protestant connections with preaching and pastoral care by men of their respective traditional affinities who had joined the composite organization which had grown out of the Moravian beginning at Herrnhut, with the different elements duly represented in conference and management under the general system of operation to be established. This system would thus embrace departments ; a Lutheran, a Reformed, a general Baptist department; one for free evangelization where none of these traditional lines needed to be followed; another for the missionary work among the Indians. To the minds of those who were unable or unwilling to find his peculiar stand-point ; who could not conceive of religious effort on any basis but that of doctrinal contrarieties or in any quality but that of denominational rivalry and propagandism, this elaborate, somewhat intricate and certainly novel scheme was incomprehensible. The few individuals who then assumed to represent the regular Protestant clergy among the multitudes of Pennsylvania, were by nature and training incapable of understanding the lofty idea, the disinterested
84
A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
purpose and the benevolent motive back of it. Some had reason enough too for sensitive and jealous uneasiness about their dubious position among the people, even in such a field, large enough to fully engage twenty times their number; and, with hardly an exception, these were persons who could not be expected to know a better way of trying to maintain their standing than to coarsely attack the reputation and recklessly impugn the motives of every other man undertaking religious work in the Province, whom they regarded as a competitor. Preferring to think evil of the Count, they naturally adopted and circulated the easy conclusion which any ill-disposed mind would find suggested, that his plan was only a deceitful stratagem to make proselytes for his own particular association which they called Herrnhuters and Zinzendorfians, while those who spoke English included all of its members under the name Moravians.
Some modern denominational writers, burdened with a supposed duty to make out an anti-Zinzendorf case, permit themselves to reproduce this shallow, unworthy imputation, and follow the mere libeler's short course to an explanation of his complicated experiment ; intimating that his real purpose was to proselyte and "make Moravians" of the people. Some treat the situation in this particular, not as it was, but as it would have been if modern conditions had existed-the country full of well-organized churches, ministers enough to adequately serve all places and complete systems of administration existing among all denominations. Broadly evangelical efforts to meet crying need among the great mixed multitude of a new country, in a condition of deplorable ecclesiastical neglect, with fewer than a dozen very crudely organized and for the most part yet more crudely served congregations among more than a hundred thousand German Protestants scattered over an area of more than two thousand square miles, were a legitimate undertaking on the part of any evangelists more concerned with trying to benefit the people than with contending for one scholastic system against another. Even if Zinzendorf had proposed to operate in such a field on a distinctly Moravian Church basis, modern charges of proselyting, under that kind of circumstances, would be captious and frivolous. But everyone who is properly acquainted with the history of the Moravian Church in Pennsylvania knows that his strong opposition to organizing congregations in this character and under this name, even where the services of the Brethren were most acceptable, accounts for the fact that so little,
85
1742.
in a denominational form, resulted from theirextensive and influential early activity.
It might indeed be said that the Moravian Church eventually became established as a distinct denomination in Pennsylvania in spite of, rather than in consequence of Zinzendorf's policy and method.
The most indistinct feature of the Count's Pennsylvania plan-next to his individual status, that perpetual crux criticorum-was just the part to be borne in it by the Moravian Church. The name Moravians, loosely applied, then and now, to the whole composite association of that time which he had formed out of the Herrnhut beginning, is inaccurate and misleading. Clearness can only be found by taking the terms Moravians and Moravian Church at that time as he used them and in his point of view. Such clearness is necessary in order, not only to rightly discern this feature of his plan, but to understand many of the movements which emanated from Bethlehem during the first years.
The association, composed of various ecclesiastical elements, which had arisen at Herrnhut and was extending elsewhere, was the Brüder- gemeine-Community of Brethren, or Association of Brethren. Their common appellation was simply the Brethren. Its pre-eminent purpose was, to be a missionary or evangelistic body. Bethlehem was to be its American center. There, as at Herrnhut, there would be persons of different general confessional, and ecclesiastical con- nections. Their services were to be utilized, as far as possible, among their ecclesiastical kindred respectively, for their general spiritual improvement and their organization into well-ordered congregations with reliable ministers. The people thus served were not to be gathered to the membership even of the composite Association of Brethren, much less of the Moravian Church as a distinct ecclesi- astical body, but in the lines of their several "religions." In accordance with this idea, the desire of large numbers of people later to be received at Bethlehem, or even to enter into full connection with the Association-Gemeine-was not encouraged, whatever to the contrary has been declared by the assailants of the Brethren. The number of persons who were thus received, either to be utilized in the general working force or for special reasons existing in individual cases, was really very small compared to the number that sought admission.
The Moravians were specifically the refugees from Moravia whom the Count had received at Herrnhut, who composed the main body
86
A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
of the first missionaries and, with a few exceptions, the pioneer band in Pennsylvania. Some refugees not strictly from Moravia, but from adjacent parts of Bohemia, were classed with them. The Moravian Church, as Zinzendorf then used the term, meant, not the whole composite Association or Community of the Brethren then existing, but specifically the historic Unitas Fratrum of Bohemia, Moravia and Poland, in its suppressed Moravian survival, with its episcopate passed on, "in spem contra spem," from Comenius, its last Moravian bishop, through a succession of conservers, to Jablonsky, his grandson. It was represented in that Association of Brethren in the persons of those refugees of its Moravian "hidden seed," who desired its resuscitation ; in certain rudiments of organization and principles of discipline and order introduced by him in the spirit of its ancient Ratio Disciplinae which they wished to see restored; in some features of ritual and general cult concordant with the inner genius of the old Church ; in the traditions those Moravians yet cherished of its simple, essential evangelicalism, which easily assimilated with both of the general Protestant "religions" on their more approachable sides; and in its preserved episcopate which, in the matter» of ecclesiastical continuity, was the most tangible link, and which had been transferred by its last two depositaries to the Brethren at Herrnhut.1
Zinzendorf looked upon what thus survived of the existence of the Brethren's Church of Moravia as a venerable ecclesiastical remnant, worthy and capable of being rehabilitated and also of being utilized in the promotion of his wider plans. Therefore, it was, for the time being, built in, as a piece in his structure; or rather incorporated as an element of the Association in such a quality that there was a possibility of its emerging eventually in a more distinct and dominant character, where this would seem easier and more desirable than in Saxony. But the impress of Zinzendorf's ideas and an overmastering German influence averse to such development, not only in Germany and England but also in America, where it could have been effected most easily and would have been, not only in accordance with the desires of the pioneer Moravians, but the most readily understood and practical course, kept the Church imbedded in the Association. It asserted itself, however, sufficiently to establish an ecclesiastical individuality, preserve a defined frame-work and perpetuate the historic orders inherited. After many years, this individuality became
I See on the above points, Chapter II. note I, also Zinzendorf's words on reading the Ratio Disciplinae and history with dedication by Comenius, and passage on Jablonsky.
87
1742.
sufficiently fixed that in modern times the Association of the Brethren -or Unity of the Brethren-and the Moravian Church may be spoken of as identical, and the term Moravians applied to its members as a general denomination name equivalent to the term the Brethren.
In Zinzendorf's Pennsylvania plan, the function of the Moravian Church, in the strict sense of that time, was then a three-fold one. First, it would constitute the proper ecclesiastical footing for his department of free evangelization, which was not to be directed into either Lutheran or Reformed lines, when prosecuted among English- speaking churchless people, or among miscellaneous German sectarians, so that on this basis the evangelists would not seem to be merely gathering the people out of one sect into another; the proper footing also for the missionary work among the Indians who were heathen, standing in no kind of relation to any existing Christian body, so that not even the most captious railer could call Moravian work among them proselyting, even if men who had been members of one of the "religions," and joined the Brethren, engaged in it with them.
In the second place, it was to stand among the religions and sects as a living witness for an evangelical harmony above those points of difference at which creeds diverged and denominations drew apart. Merged in an association which enveloped its identity, its ardently loyal sons would count themselves as but one of the tribes of that general family. As such, they would seek touch with the two great Protestant religions, even doctrinally, at the point of closest approach ; a Christ-centered point which Zinzendorf conceived to lie back of all divergent scholastic systems in the primitive genius of Protestantism, as promulgated, 1530-1533; the Augsburg Confession, 1530, the articles, doctrinal and pastoral, of the Reformed Synod of Berne, 1532, the German reissue of the confession of the Brethren of Bohemia and Moravia, published under the direction of Luther and with his preface in 1533. In the third place the Moravian Church was to be the special handmaiden of the two great religions-Lutheran and Reformed-in gathering, organizing and nurturing their scattered and demoralized hosts in Pennsylvania; among other things, in serving them for the time-being through its episcopate, by conferring a proper ordination upon the men found and called, under the Count's general plan, as suitable and worthy to labor among them in the ministry, in default of ministers sent by their authorities in Europe. Handlanger dienst he also called this service, like that of men carrying stone and
88
A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
mortar to the builders. In one of his utterances on this subject, anticipating a well-ordered situation finally resulting, he said: "If these two religions will go hand in hand and use the treasures of their respective churches for the common good, they can constitute a complete apostolic church and bring all the small sects back into accord with them; and then the Moravian Church would see her two beloved brothers in one house, and would be their faithful sister." He contemplated an ideal reproduction in Pennsylvania of what had in theory been attained in the Sendomir Consensus of 1570.
Further obscurities in the peculiar individual status of Zinzendorf, when he came to Pennsylvania, have occasioned confusion and error in sundry publications, commonly taken as authoritative sources, and even disposed some writers, who have treated the subject without sufficient information, or with a hostile bias, to indulge in disrespectful and injurious comments. Therefore some statements, with a view to rendering this matter clearer, may be added to the foregoing elucidations.
He was not only "the banished Count," and the promoter of the Association of the Brethren with its growing evangelistic work, but was a bona fide evangelical minister of the Augsburg Confession and the Lutheran order, prior to and apart from the relations he bore to the Moravian Church, strictly speaking. Naturally, historians of the Lutheran Church do not usually regard him as such at any period of his career, because his views and methods are not held to have been conformable to Lutheran standards; because his work never bore a distinctly denominational character under consistorial direction ; and because-particularly from the denominational standpoint in America, where there is nowhere a general Lutheran state church admitting the existence of special bodies with distinct systems and names within its pale-his connection with the Moravian Brethren, and even with the general Association of the Brethren, is viewed as connection with another church and therefore necessarily a severance of all Lutheran connection. Some writers have made shorter work in disposing of his claim, by discrediting or ignoring the facts on which he based it, and calling it all a pretense. This, however, is the method of the mere combatant, not of the candid investigator and honorable historian. Some of the steps by which he made his way into the ministry would appear needlessly indirect; would even seem shifty and eccentric, when the complications and peculiar impediments with which his rank and station and the active opposition of his family
89
1742.
embarrassed his course, are not duly considered-circumstances which are not easily understood and appreciated now. His deter- mination to attain this desire; his undiminished attachment, under later circumstances, to that "religion" in which he was reared-the original genius and system of which he esteemed above every other, as appears repeatedly in his recorded utterances; his unremitting efforts to make himself understood in it and to keep in adjustment to it with his unique institutions, which he was profoundly convinced were not inconsistent with its genuine spirit, were pathetic, in view of the attitude then. so generally taken towards him by its eminent clergy of both the orthodox and pietist schools, and the indefensible assaults of many of the lesser and baser sort. The chief points of his course into the Lutheran ministry were the following: In 1732, measures to transfer his Berthelsdorf domain to the Countess, in anticipation of the approaching troubles, by which he extricated himself from the trammels of his position as lord of the manor; and the relinquishment of his seat at the court of Dresden cleared his way somewhat. In 1733, a favorable ex cathedra opinion from Tuebingen, in response to his inquiry, settled in his mind the question whether he could, as a Lutheran and within general Lutheran lines, foster the Herrnhut association on the proposed basis, and indulge the wishes of the Moravians to the extent had in view. From the standpoint of this opinion, he considered his entire subsequent work a special one in which he engaged as primarily a Lutheran and remaining such.
In April, 1734, after some particular theological study, in addition to that of his university years, he went to Stralsund to seek a theological examination. To avoid the embarrassments of con- ventional etiquette and prevent the name Zinzendorf from figuring in the position into which he there stepped as a candidate, that of a private tutor, he used as an incognito one of his minor titles, Von Freydeck-a common practice among the nobility under peculiar circumstances-but did not, of course, expect that his identity would really remain concealed, any more than any other conspicuous noble- man traveling incognito would expect this. The result was a testi- monial to his Lutheran orthodoxy as a theologian, issued by the Stralsund divines, dated April 26, 1734.
He placed the small sword worn on occasions according to custom by men of his rank at court, in the hands of the Lutheran Super- intendent at Stralsund, in token of his renunciation of civil for
90
A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
ecclesiastical station and his first step into the ministry. Upon his return to Herrnhut he notified the Queen of Denmark of this, in view of the Danebrog order he had received from the Danish King, which was mentioned among his dignities in the Stralsund testimonial. This distinguished order he eventually returned. At the same time he informed the Lutheran Superintendent at Dresden, Dr. Valentine Ernst Loescher, of his intentions, citing the case of Prince George of Anhalt, in the days of the Reformation, as a precedent for such a step on the part of one of his rank and connections. Then, feeling the increasing weight of disapproval on the part of relatives and associate noblemen, he planned a course which he thought would bear some similarity to that of the Anhalt prince, and would be tolerated by royalty and nobility, under the rigid ideas of that time, as consistent with his station. Deciding to pass into the ministry under the church of Wuertemberg, where the way seemed to open more readily than elsewhere; he proposed to restore, at his own cost, the ruined abbey of St. George which, with its ancient benefits, had passed under the control of the Lutheran Church; to fit it up as a theological seminary to furnish the settlements and missions of the Brethren with a trained ministry; and himself assume the direction under the old prerogatives of the seat. The Duke of Wuer- temberg, fearing difficulties to himself by reviving that obsolete prelacy, declined to favor the proposition, and nothing came of it. A few weeks after the Duke's reply, November 8, 1734, the Count formally notified the Lutheran Directory at Stuttgart of his purpose to enter the ministry in that realm, and received, in response, their cordial approval; Chancellor, Dr. Christopher Matthew Pfaff, of Tuebingen University having, shortly before, delivered an elaborate favorable opinion on the question of the tokens of an inner call and of qualification, submitted in a document by Zinzendorf through Spangenberg, who had also conducted the negotiations in reference to St. George.
December 19, 1734, the theological faculty of Tuebingen passed upon his final, formal declaration submitted in print. The Stralsund testimonial was confirmed and, notwithstanding some misgivings on the part of one or two, he was regularly received into holy orders after the manner in vogue, his official position in view being that of assistant to his Berthelsdorf minister. December 19 and 21, he preached at Tuebingen in the quality of an accredited theologian and minister of the Lutheran Church.
91
1742.
Two years later, and after his banishment from Saxony, he was strongly persuaded by Frederick William I, King of Prussia, who was interested in his work and favored the development of the Moravian Church on a more distinct basis, to not remain simply a Lutheran minister, but to receive consecration as a bishop of that Church. Zinzendorf, after carefully considering the matter and taking counsel with the aged Bishop Jablonsky at Berlin and with the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, concluded to follow this suggestion, and was so consecrated by Jablonsky and David Nitschmann with the written concurrence of Sitkovius, on May 20, 1737, with the understanding that he assumed this episcopate of an ancient suppressed church as a Lutheran divine, just as Jablonsky had borne it, holding position as a clergyman of the Reformed Church; David Nitschmann, the missionary bishop, representing the actual Moravian Brethren. Thus his scheme of having the several general religions figure as tropes in his Association of Brethren would be represented in the episcopate which had been introduced to furnish ordination to all departments ; and the manifest demands of the situation that he-then at the head of the whole work-should be a bearer of this digity before all civil and ecclesiastical authorities, would be met. He intended how- ever that his active representation and exercise of it before the public should be an ad interim function under the exigencies of the time ; for, as he said, he did not consider himself the proper person to be a bishop. Therefore, when he formed his plans for Pennsylvania, where he wished to appear ecclesiastically as simply a Tuebin- gen theologian and minister of the Lutheran order as pre- viously, he, in July, 1741, before starting for America, retired from this episcopacy. He then called himself, so far as his relation specifically to the Moravian Church was concerned, Ancien Eveque des Freres-a retired senior, or bishop of the Brethren. After his return to Europe, he never used the title of a bishop in any communications or negotiations, but used that of Ordinarius. He did not, however, regard this as debarring or disqualifying him in the matter of pariticipating in ordinations. Therefore, first and last, he considered himself a Lutheran divine, so far as general ecclesiastical status in connection with one of the religions was concerned, and looked upon his other offices and duties in connection with the Brethren, to whom he devoted himself, as special.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.