UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Religion on the Margins: Transatlantic Moravian Identities and Early American Religious Radicalism Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/91g204tv Author Pietrenka, Benjamin Michael Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ RELIGION ON THE MARGINS: TRANSATLANTIC MORAVIAN IDENTITIES AND EARLY AMERICAN RELIGIOUS RADICALISM A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY by Benjamin M. Pietrenka September 2017 The Dissertation of Benjamin M. Pietrenka is approved: ________________________________ Professor Marilyn J. Westerkamp, chair ________________________________ Assoc. Professor Gregory E. O’Malley ________________________________ Professor Susan Harding ________________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Benjamin M. Pietrenka 2017 Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………… iv Dedication…………………………………………………………… v Acknowledgements…………………………………………….…… vi Introduction…………………………………………………………. 1 1. Ecclesiastical Intrusions and the Politics of Vagueness….……..…… 42 2. Bringing the New World Home………..……………………………. 86 3. Bloody Bodies………………………………………………………. 129 4. New Moravian Bodies………………………………………………. 199 5. Dangerous Corporealities…………………………………………… 274 Conclusion……………………………………………….……..…… 350 Bibliography………………………………………………………… 368 !iii Abstract Religion on the Margins: Transatlantic Moravian Identities and Early American Religious Radicalism by Benjamin M. Pietrenka This dissertation traces transatlantic processes of German religious and social identity formation in eighteenth-century North America through the lens of an expansive correspondence network established by the pastoral missionaries and common believers of the Moravian Church, a small group of radical German Protestants who migrated to all four Atlantic world continents and built community outposts and mission settlements in diverse religious, political, and social environments. Common Moravian believers, I argue, fashioned this pioneering correspondence network into a critical element of their lived religious experience and practice, and it became fundamental to both the construction and maturation of their personal and collective identities. In addition, this correspondence network functioned as a medium for ordinary believers to articulate nonconformist spiritualities, communicate new standards of moral conduct, and advocate alternative gender and racial hierarchies. British American society worked to construct and then deconstruct Moravian radicalism in the public sphere by attacking and then respecting the embodied piety, religious practices, and spiritual authority of common Moravian believers. !iv To common believers everywhere who animate the world with meaning. !v Acknowledgements I have accrued many debts during my graduate career, many of which I fear I will never be able to fully repay. First and foremost, I thank my dissertation advisor Professor Marilyn J. Westerkamp for her endless historical knowledge, her patience as I stumbled through the process of learning how to function as an academic, and most of all her candid guidance and unyielding support over the course of so many years. My dissertation, my career as a historian, and my passion for history would not exist without her. Associate Professor Gregory O’Malley has also been a wonderful mentor, critic, role model, and friend. I also thank the enthusiastic and dedicated staff in the history department at the University of California Santa Cruz. In my travels for research on both sides of the Atlantic, I have had the benefit of meeting and working with incredibly talented and knowledgeable archivists, archive assistants, and research staff who have pointed me toward new and interesting documents and primary material. Dr. Rüdiger Kröger, director of the Unity Archives in Herrnhut, Germany (UAH), and Dr. Paul Peucker, director of the Moravian Archives Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (MAB), have both guided my thinking about Moravian history and taught me to read early modern Gothic German script. The late- afternoon cappuccinos and conversations with Dr. Kröger in the ‘Zinzendorf Zimmer’ at the UAH always brought my scattered thinking about Moravian missionaries into focus. I also thank the assistant archivists and research staff at the UAH, MAB, the !vi Moravian Archives Winston Salem, North Carolina, the Franke Foundation Archive in Halle, Germany, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, especially Olaf Nippe, Tom McCullough, and Lanie Graf, for their assistance with documents, finding reading space, and informing me about archive resources. None of these research trips to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, or Germany would have been possible without the fellowships and financial support from the United States Fulbright Commission, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), the University of California, the Institute for Humanities Research, the German Historical Institute, and the Institute of European History Mainz. I am eternally grateful for their generosity and the opportunities to advance as an academic that their support has afforded. Finally, I thank my parents Michael and Kim Pietrenka, my sister Bethany Bohn, and my lovely wife Zita Pietrenka, who I met on my first research trip to Herrnhut, for believing in me and providing inspiration, encouragement, and support when I needed it most. I work as hard as I can every day to make you proud. !vii Introduction In anticipation of her journey across the Atlantic Ocean, Johanna Rosina Mickschin composed a letter to the “Honorable and Dear Congregation of the Cross and Blood” in Marienborn, Germany because she wanted to be sure that her Moravian co-religionists had a clear sense of her “whole mind” and understood “the whole meaning with which I go to Pennsylvania.” She asked for their “constant thoughts before the Lamb” because she would be in perpetual need of spiritual support. Johanna believed that the expedition to the New World would strengthen her personal relationship with God and her connection to Moravians everywhere. “The Savior has made [his grace] clear to me” and “I bow in the dust before Him when I think of everything that I have been [up until now]. I cannot but thank him and his congregation [for such grace].” Johanna took up this mission in order to “to live for [Jesus] and his blood alone.” The Heiland (Savior) would “give [her] strength and [anything that was] necessary from his bloody wounds.” Christ’s blood and wounds became the primary drivers of her spiritual and worldly life. “Nothing can be known without the Heiland,” she wrote, “and I do not ask for anything else than what our !1 slaughtered Lamb will teach me. The doctrine of the Cross and the death of the Lamb are the elements by which my spirit lives and finds rest.”1 Johanna’s words read like a sprawling and convoluted stream of consciousness, as if she was grasping to articulate something that could not really be captured in words. The complexity of divine grace, after all, lay beyond the ability of mere humans to fully comprehend. She acknowledged the influence of Moravian doctrine, but this letter presented Johanna with an opportunity to demonstrate piety and devotion to Christ in her own words and ascribe various spiritual meanings to her impending trip to Pennsylvania. She wrote to the congregation in Marienborn using the same language of gratitude, petition, supplication, discipleship, and praise that she would use to speak to God in prayer. The act of composing this letter allowed Johanna to express and, most importantly, practice her faith. Correspondence, in other 1 Unity Archives Herrnhut (hereafter “UAH”) R.14.A.8, Letter, Pennsylvania, exact date unknown (though probably sometime in the mid-1740s), Johanna Rosina Mickschin to the Moravian Congregation in Marienborn, Germany; Theuere und Liebe Creutz und Blut Gemeine, Die Gnade die ich dir genosen ist mir sehr groß und wichtig und ich dankte demütigt vor alle treue und Pflege die ich bei dir theuren Creutz Gemeine genossen da sie mich als ein armes Kind getragen und erzogen hat und so viele mühe an mich gewendet die ich nicht wert bin und auch manchmahl nicht so erkennet und eingesehen der Heyland hat mir es aber jetzt klar und groß und wichtig gemacht in meinen Hertzen daß es mich in staub vor ihm beugt wenn ich an alles daß Dencke waß ich gewesen hab und auch nicht anders kan als ihm und seiner Gemeine davor Dancken ich gehe jetzt nach Pensylvanien nach den Sinn und willen unsers theurem Aeltesten zu was er mich da brauchen wird weiß ich nicht mein Sinn und gantzes Hertz gehet aber da hin da zu stehen zu seinen gebrauch zu waß und wie er will mir selbst und meiner allen Nathur zu sterben und ihm gantz allein zu leben und von seinen Blut zu zeigen wo ich Gelegenheit dazu habe wo zu er mir selbst Kraft und was mir nötig ist aus seinen Blutigen Wunden geben wolle und noch selbst Täglich lehren was ich noch nicht verstehe und weiß den ich bin ein armes Kind daß nichts kan noch weiß ohne den Heyland und ich verlange auch sonst nicht zu wissen als was mich unser geschlachtes Lam lehren wird und die Lehre von Creutz und Tod des Lammes ist mein richtig Element wo mein Geist Lebt und ruhe findet ich will von nichts mehr wissen als Daß ich gantz zerrissen