A Different Way

For years my friend Fred Prudek has been telling me about the Moravians, an early Protestant missionary community that he much admired. I more or less rolled my eyes. Then, in the providence of God, our daughter moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which was and is the American center for Moravians, and since I am the kind of person who finds history fascinating, I’ve had little choice but to learn about the Moravians.

They established Bethlehem in 1741, coming from Germany to preach the good news to native Americans and to colonists. They lived communally and earned the respect of their fellow Europeans through their skill in various trades, as did other pietist groups that came to the new world with a distinctive religious point of view. What stands out today, however–and did in the 18th century as well–was their respectful treatment of the native Americans.

You can read it in their letters and written accounts, but where it shows most is in  their cemetery. Very recently I walked through that acre of green land in downtown Bethlehem. Leaves had covered the ground, and Popie and I had to use our feet to scrape off each gravestone to read who had died there. They have small gravestones set flat in the ground, all about the same size and all level with each other. Most remarkably, the races are buried together quite promiscuously–Indians, Europeans and Africans. Here is Andrew, a Mohican, here David, one of the first missionaries, here Thomas, an African. Among the 18th century graves there are many native Americans and quite a few Africans. They are all treated the same, and all mixed up together. That may seem trivial, but show me another graveyard like it. (Fred tells me that at another Moravian colony in North Carolina, the local settlers forced the Moravians to dig up all the Africans and move them in the 1830s.)

Through the Revolutionary War the Moravians had extensive, positive interactions with tribes living nearby. Moravian missionaries were welcomed to live in Indian villages, and quite a number of Indians chose to follow the Christian way the Moravians offered and exemplified. (When they did so, they usually moved to a new, separate quarter. There was clear choice involved.)

These hopeful beginnings were all blown away by the ferocious, violent, acquisitive colonists. War waged against them drove the native Americans away, and spoiled any possibility of a different kind of relationship–the kind exemplified today in the Moravian cemetery.