The Moravian Church

For about twenty years I sat beside Tony at a dealing desk in the City.

He has an English mother and a Czech father; part of the latter’s story is told in this 2017 post. I can add a little today. His grandfather was a station master near Brno in the Austro-Hungarian empire. (Today it is part of the Czech Republic.) He was required to wear different uniforms depending on the  different status of the trains. Small copies of these uniforms were made for Tony’s father as a child and he would stand proudly beside his father on the platform imitating him. If you have heard of Brno it may be because Leoš Janáček was educated and lived there. The city is the historical capital of Moravia that with Bohemia and Silesia today are part of the Czech Republic. The Margraviate of Moravia existed from 1182 until 1918.

We know about Martin Luther and the Reformation. What I didn’t know was that sixty years earlier in the 15th century, a Protestant sect was established in Moravia and Bohemia by John Hus. They were called Hussites; the movement is now the Moravian Church. Why did John Hus protest against the Roman Catholic Church?

“Hus objected to some of the practices and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Specifically, he wanted the liturgy to be celebrated in Czech, married priests, and eliminating indulgences and the idea of Purgatory. Since these actions predate the Protestant Reformation by a century, some historians claim the Moravian Church was the first Protestant church.” (Wikipedia)

To begin with the Moravian church was in the ascendancy, so much so there were schisms, but by the 17th century they were being persecuted and driven underground. Two important elements of the church were education and proselytism. In the 18th century “the (Moravian) church sent hundreds of Christian missionaries to many parts of the world, including the Caribbean, North and South America, the Arctic, Africa, and the Far East. They were the first to send lay people as missionaries, the first Protestant denomination to minister to slaves, though some communities also owned slaves, and the first Protestant presence in many countries” (Wikipedia).

“The modern Moravian Church, with about 750,000 members worldwide, continues to draw on traditions established during the 18th-century renewal. In many places it observes the convention of the lovefeast*, originally started in 1727. It uses older and traditional music in worship. Brass music, congregational singing and choral music continue to be very important in Moravian congregations”. (Wikipedia) *A lovefeast is the Moravian term for a communal meal shared among Christians.

The motto of the Moravian Church is: “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love”.

(To be continued)