What Did the Separatists Believe?

Since the beginning of time, humans have tried to make sense of their world. Why did people sicken and die? What caused the crops to fail?

The Society of Separatists, who escaped to America in 1817, rejected the established church in their native Germany. For that, they were brutally punished. (See blog post "Who Were the Separatists?"). But then of course as soon as they came here and started setting up their own society, it soon became just as rigid and just as authoritarian and just as restrictive as the religion they had run away from.   

The Separatists believed that salvation was between an individual and God and that no intercession by the church was necessary. Thus, their meeting house, a log cabin, had plain plaster walls, no altar, or any symbols from their hated religion from home.

Zoar Meeting House

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each Sunday the Separatists would gather in the meeting house to sing hymns, pray silently, and listen to a discourse by Josef Bimeler, who was both their secular and religious leader. He delivered his discourses extemporaneously without notes or papers. And he continued for several hours! (I wonder if anyone had to leave to use the privvy?)

Here are some words from one of his discourses transcribed by a Separatist at the time he spoke them!

"As many of you know, I turned onto the broad road of destruction and remained there until God himself stopped me. I saw myself obliged to take another way, for I recognized that the road on which I had turned was the broad road, which would without a doubt lead me to ruin. Sought God but he kept Himself aloof from me. He acted as if He did not want to hear my anxious sigh and my urgent cry. And no wonder, for I had very much offended Him."

How had he sinned?

In uncovering my ancestry, I discovered one. Josef married his first wife, Barbara, in August of 1803. Their daughter was born in January, 1804. Do the math!

FYI, Barbara died before Josef brought his son, Peter, with him to America. Of the early-born daughter, we have no information.

Yet.