scholarly journals Interchangeable Bodies: International Marriage and Migration in the Eighteenth-Century Moravian Church

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 348-366
Author(s):  
Kelly Douma-Kaelin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Geographic Mobility ◽  
International Partnerships ◽  
Moravian Church ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family Based ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Global Church ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Church

This article investigates the extent to which the theology and structure of marriage within the German Moravian Church functioned to connect and grow the Church as an international network across the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century. Specifically, it argues that Moravian conceptions of marriage facilitated intentional international partnerships that led to the relocation and migration of many European women as Moravian missionaries throughout the eighteenth century. In some instances, early Moravians lived in sex-segregated communal housing and viewed sexual intercourse as a sacred unification with Christ, free of human desire. Part of the Moravian impetus to be “everywhere at home” required preventing individual congregational differences in order to create a larger international community. If the Church aimed to view all brothers and sisters as productive bodies to serve the growth of the community, then these bodies needed to be interchangeable and unrooted to a specific space. The premeditated practice of intermarriage between congregations meant that there were not individual groups that practiced the Moravian faith, but rather a singular global church family. Based on an analysis of Moravian missionary women's memoirs, this article begins to delve into the social and geographic mobility available to these eighteenth-century women through a nonnormative marital structure.

The Mother of God's People: The Adoration of the Holy Spirit in the Eighteenth-Century Brüdergemeine

1999 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 886-909 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Atwood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Time Range ◽  
Essential Point ◽  
The Past ◽  
Moravian Church ◽  
God's People ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Church

“Lord God, now we praise you, you worthy Holy Spirit! The church in unity honors you, the mother of Christendom. All the angels and the host of heaven and whoever serves the honor of the Son; also the cherubim and seraphim, sing with a clear voice: ‘Divine majesty, who proceeds from the Father, who praises the Son as the creator and points to his suffering.’ … Daily O Mother! whoever knows you and the Savior glorifies you because you bring the gospel to all the world.” These lines are from the Te Matrem, a prayer to the Holy Spirit that for nearly thirty years was a regular part of worship for a German Protestant group known as the Brüdergemeine. The Brüdergemeine, commonly called the Moravian Church today, was an international religious community that developed an elaborate and creative liturgical life for its carefully regulated communities. The Brethren's intense devotion to the suffering of Christ is the most famous aspect of their worship, but in the mid-eighteenth century their leader, Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, actively encouraged the Brüdergemeine to worship the Holy Spirit as the mother of the church. Surprisingly, though, this aspect of Zinzendorf's theology has been largely overlooked or downplayed by historians and theologians in the past two hundred years. When it has been discussed, it has been dismissed as a brief aberration or experiment that was discarded after the so-called Sifting Time (Sichtungzeit.) The Sifting Time was a period of liturgical and social excess in the community, the details of which remain quite obscure. The Brethren used the word Sichtungzeit to refer to a time when the community was in danger of becoming a fanatical sect. Dates for the Sifting Time range from a high of 1736–52 to a low of 1746–49, but the most common dating is 1743–50. This article will show that the use of maternal imagery for the Holy Spirit was not a tangential or quixotic aspect of Zinzendorf's theology, but thrived for more than thirty years and was, in Zinzendorf's words, “an extremely important and essential point … and all our Gemeine and praxis hangs on this point.”

scholarly journals Network and Migration in Early Renaissance Florence, 1378-1433

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katalin Prajda
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Renaissance Florence ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Church

This book explores the co-development of political, social, economic, and artistic networks of Florentines in the Kingdom of Hungary during the reign of Sigismund of Luxembourg. Analyzing the social network of these politicians, merchants, artisans, royal officers, dignitaries of the Church, and noblemen is the primary objective of this book. The study addresses both descriptively the patterns of connectivity and causally the impacts of this complex network on cultural exchanges of various types, among these migration, commerce, diplomacy, and artistic exchange. In the setting of a case study, this monograph should best be thought of as an attempt to cross the boundaries that divide political, economic, social, and art history so that they simultaneously figure into a single integrated story of Florentine history and development.

Clandestine marriages in London: an examination of a neglected urban variable

Urban History ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Boulton
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Parental Control ◽  
Disposable Income ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Social Scale ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wedding Ceremony ◽  
The Church ◽  
Parish Registers

This article sets out the incidence of clandestine marriage in Restoration London. Analysis of parish registers of large suburban parishes suggests that such private unions peaked twice in the capital's history, immediately after the Restoration and again in the first half of the eighteenth century. Understanding the phenomenon is important since the increase in private weddings on the scale encountered was unique to London. Historians have failed to explain the growth in such unions satisfactorily. The practice is unlikely to be explained by the growth of religious dissent, by a desire to save money or to circumvent parish or parental control over choice of spouse. The custom's popularity can be explained more convincingly by reference to wealthier Londoners′ traditional predilection for private weddings, which was sanctioned by the church, and to emulation of the habit by those lower in the social scale. Adoption of the practice was further facilitated by increasing levels of disposable income and by the commercialization of the wedding ceremony after the Restoration.

The Church of England in the eighteenth century

2002 ◽  
Vol 75 (187) ◽  
pp. 47-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viviane Barrie
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
The South ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Church

Abstract This article is an attempt to study the position of the Church of England in one particular region – the diocese of London in the south-east of England – throughout the eighteenth century. It considers three problems which the author came across when first researching the subject several years ago: firstly, the social and economic status of parishes; secondly, clerical recruitment and the careers of the clergy; and finally, the pastoral life and work of the Church, especially through the corpus of episcopal visitations.

Poverty

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Forrest
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Social Medicine ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Church

Poverty was an endemic condition across Europe from the later middle ages until the end of the eighteenth century. It was the most intractable of the social problems which beset Europeans and offered a constant rebuke to monarchs and church leaders alike, proving almost as difficult to define as it was impossible to cure. This was an age before social science or social medicine, when there were still no agreed definitions of what constituted poverty, no clear sense of who was and was not poor; and there was little understanding of basic levels of subsistence in terms of protein or diet. Nor were there serious attempts before the eighteenth century to count the poor, or to assess the extent and pervasiveness of poverty. This is partly a question of social and religious attitudes. Poor relief was seen as a matter for the church and for clerical charity. The assumption that poverty was a problem for governments to legislate on still lay in the future, while the almost obsessive concern with statistics which characterizes modern government began only during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic period.

Ethnicity and Migration in Canada

1983 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Trovato ◽  
S.S. Halli
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Demographic Characteristics ◽  
Geographic Mobility ◽  
Social Demography ◽  
The Social ◽  
Competing Hypotheses ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Social Demographic ◽  
The Relationship

This study focuses on the relationship between ethnicity and geographic mobility in Canada by examining 1971 census data. Several competing hypotheses are extracted from the literature on the social demography of ethnic and minority groups and evaluated for their efficacy in explaining the observed differences in geographic mobility. The results from a multivariate analysis suggest that the causal mechanisms involving ethnic, characteristic factors and the propensity to move are varied and interconnected; hence, both ethnic and social demographic characteristics are important sources of migration differentials. The article concludes by providing a theoretical model for further examination of ethnicity and migration.

Review of periodical articles

Urban History ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTIAN LIDDY ◽  
PAUL ELLIOTT ◽  
LOUISE MISKELL
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
Urban Decline ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

This year's publications address seven broad themes: urban growth and migration; the social structure of late medieval towns; women and gender; political communication and the circulation of news; the church in the city; urban decline; and writing about the city.

scholarly journals Church’s response to migrants’ quest for identity formation

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Klaasen
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
South African Society ◽  
Societal Factors ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Locations ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Church

Migration has received diverse responses from the dominant powers in the political, social and religious spheres. Assimilation, domination and cohesion are some of the responses to the integration of people who cross regional and national borders and reside within their new locations for a considerable period of time. These responses include both positives, which are largely short-term solutions, with a lot of losses and trauma for the migrants. The reasons for these kinds of responses lie in the factors that cause and influence migration. Political and religious conflict, economics, societal factors such as language and culture, health issues such HIV or AIDS and other pandemics and environmental factors are some of the causes of migration.Contribution: This research will contribute to determining the relationship between the church and migration for identity formation. The question I wish to explore is how the church can respond to the quest for identity which shapes the social welfare and cultural co-existence of the South African society and migrants in post-apartheid South Africa. Because of the complexity of identity and the effect that migration has (had) on shaping identity, I will first provide a description of migration and identity. The article will then address the factors that cause migration and the possible ways in which migration can shape identity. A brief discussion of a theology of migration will be introduced. This will be followed by a critical discussion of how the church as a pilgrim community can contribute to identity formation and the peaceful co-existence of differentiated people.

Early Modern Moravianism

2014 ◽  
pp. 450-464
Author(s):  
Craig Atwood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Friedrich Schleiermacher ◽  
Sermon On The Mount ◽  
Religious Wars ◽  
Moravian Church ◽  
Educational Theorist ◽  
Radical Expression ◽  
The Church

The Moravian Church or Unitas Fratrum was founded in 1457 as a radical expression of the Czech Reformation’s attempt to revive the apostolic church. It was the first Western church to endorse the idea of the church as a voluntary body of believers who covenant to live according to the Sermon on the Mount, which they considered the Law of God. Moravian bishop and educational theorist John Amos Comenius was one of the leading advocates for ecumenism and pacifism in Europe during the seventeenth century. The Unitas Fratrum was almost completely destroyed during the religious wars of the seventeenth century but was revived as part of the German Pietist movement in the eighteenth century under the leadership of Count Zinzendorf. Zinzendorf placed greater emphasis on religious experience than doctrinal precision in the life of the church. The most prominent theologian influenced by Moravianism was Friedrich Schleiermacher.

The Ideological Alliance of Political Economy and Christian Theology, 1798–1833

1983 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. C. Waterman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Church

It has been maintained by E. R. Norman that:…the social attitudes of the Church have derived from the surrounding intellectual and political culture, and not, as Christians themselves always seem to assume, from theological learning. The theologians have always managed to reinterpret their sources in ways which have somehow made their version of Christianity correspond almost exactly to the values of their class and generation. Thus theological scholarship justified the structural social obligations of the eighteenth century world; thus it provided a Christian basis for Political Economy… [my italics]

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