Stress and its Impacts among Pastors in the Moravian Church of Tanzania

This study sought to establish stress and its potential impacts among pastors in the Moravian Church of Tanzania. The study adopted the mixed methods research approach whereby interview schedule and closed-ended questionnaire gathered data from respondents. The study comprised of 41 out of 120 population of pastors selected through simple random sampling, including one Bishop, four provincial and district leaders and thirty-six church pastors. Disagreement between church members and pastors was found to be one of stressors to pastors. It is therefore high time to intervene with strong means and alternatives so that pastors work in supportive environments. In order to enhance working morale among pastors it is essential to keep them motivated. Furthermore, the Moravian Church of Tanzania needs to review policies on working conditions so that pastors will work comfortably. The church should also establish regular seminars and trainings to educate pastors on essential skills, such as leadership and financial management in order to reduce unnecessary conflicts with church members and leadership as the conflicts are the causatives of stress.

Pravěké osídlení v okolí velkomoravského kostela ve Starém Městě – „Špitálkách“

A rescue excavation was carried out in the Staré Město – “Špitálky” location in 1949–1950 by J. Poulík who examined an enclosed sacral area with the remnants of a Great Moravian church and a smaller inhumation cemetery containing more than 40 graves. The church and the immediate surroundings later became part of a national cultural monument. A new evaluation excavation took place there in 2020 in connection with its complex revitalisation and focused on the area north of the church’s foundations. The survey proved that although neither the ecclesiastical area nor the cemetery continued in this direction, it did document intensive prehistoric occupation. Besides the settlement features (Moravian Painted Ware culture – MPWC, Urnfield culture – UFC), two graves were also discovered. Based on the inventory and funeral rite, one grave can be dated to the final phase of the Corded Ware culture while the other is represented probably by a UFC pit cremation burial. The study assesses the newly uncovered archaeological situations set in the context of the settlement structure in the Staré Město area in the individual prehistoric periods.

Interchangeable Bodies: International Marriage and Migration in the Eighteenth-Century Moravian 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.

Ethical concepts in Russian religious-didactic literature of the 17th century

The article offers an analysis of ethical concepts in Russian religious-didactic literature of the 17th century. The main sources are alphabets published in Moscow. There were two alphabets printed by Vasily Burtsov, and an alphabet by Karion Istomin, as well as “Azbuka s oratsiey” (Alphabet with Didactics), and the manuscript “Alfavititsy didaskala” (Small Alphabet of a Teacher). These alphabets can be considered as religious-didactic literature because in addition to grammar, these manuals included the narration “On the Letters” by Chernorizets Hrabar (Hrabar, the Black Robe Wearer), extensive religious-anthropological reasoning, prayers, the Credo, Decalogue (in the Alphabet by Karion Istomin only), the Beatitudes, and other texts which were presented in Catholic catechisms of that time, as well as in the “Profession of Faith” by Peter Mogila (he used the Catholic catechism in his “Profession”). The influence of Reformation ideas is obvious, too. Several works by Karion Istomin, the alphabet primarily, were written and illustrated under the influence of “Orbis sensualium pictus” by John Amos Comenius, the last bishop of the Unity of Brethen (Bohemian or Moravian Church). The content of these manuals (including visual content) allows us to conclude that their mass publication was induced by the disciplinary revolution that began after the end of the Smuta (the Time of Troubles) in Russia, which is associated with the House of the Romanovs coming to power. The creation of a new tsardom was impossible without new people whose education was based on religious ideas and regulations. Ethical concepts in these books were almost inseparable from religious regulations, which is explained by the doctrinal aims of primary education in Russia of the 17th century.

„Stručná historie Literatury české“. K osudu nevydané učebnice rajhradského benediktina Bedy Dudíka k dějinám české literatury z roku 1847

In the years 1841–1854 the Benedictine Beda Dudík (1815–1890) worked as a teacher at the Episcopal Institute of Philosophy in Brno and then at the Higher Grammar School in Brno. As a teacher and a supporter of a development of the Czech national movement in Moravia he strove for the introduction of teaching of the Czech language and literature in the Moravian church education. He succeeded in his efforts and the Court study commission and the Episcopal ordinariate in Brno permitted teaching of the Czech language within the school curriculum of the Institute of Philosophy. For the successful completion of the teaching, Dudik compiled a textbook for his students about history of the Czech language and book writing and he intended to publish it in print at “Matice česká” in Prague. The textbook was approved successfully in a censorship procedure; however, it was not finally published in print due to disagreements with the authors of the compiled works. Nevertheless, it was significant for the development of national efforts in Moravia and it, first and foremost, revealed the young Beda Dudík as a great supporter of the then minority Czech national movement in Moravia, which changed later when he left his pedagogical experience in favour of his better-known historiographical, official and diplomatic practice.

Alone in the Country of the Catholics: Labrador Inuit in Prague (1880)

The ethnographic shows of the end of the 19th century responded to an increased hunger for the exotic, especially among the bourgeois classes in Europe and North America, and to the establishment of both physical and cultural anthropology as scientific disciplines with a need for study material. At the same time they served as a manifestation of European superiority in the time of the last phase of colonialist thrust to other continents. “Scientific colonialism” reached also to regions without actual colonial or imperial ambitions, as the story of Labrador Inuit who visited Prague during their tour of Europe in November 1880 will prove. The reactions of local intellectuals and the general public to the performances of the “savages” will be examined in the context of the Czech and German nationalist competition and the atmosphere of colonial complicity. Thanks to the testimony of a member of the group, Abraham Ulrikab, supplemented by newspaper articles and other sources, it is possible to explore the miscommunication arising from the fact that the Inuit were members of the Moravian Church, professing allegiance to old Protestant tradition in the Czech Lands and cultivating a fragmented knowledge of Czech history and culture.

„Commercium nach dem Sinn Jesu“

This paper analyses the market behaviour of the Moravian Church around 1800 as illustrated by the transatlantic trade with Labrador. The pietistic religious community, which originated in Herrnhut/Saxony, founded numerous missionary stations and settlements in the Atlantic world after 1732. In the course of this expansion, a broad range of trade opportunities opened up to the Moravians, which they utilised to finance their exceedingly expensive missionary activities. As this paper sets out, they founded their own Ship’s Company in London in 1770, which imported sought-after raw materials to Great Britain, such as whalebone or fur from Labrador. However, the leadership committee, known as the Unity Elders Conference, imposed strict regulations on the market activities of all Moravians. All trade activities had tobe consistent with biblical standards. This was intended to ensure that the individual merchant or missionary remained free of sin. The Unity Elders considered fair prices tobe of particular importance. This belief also served to distinguish the community from the large number of non-pietistic merchants and their trading practices.

Clandestine Lutheranism in the eighteenth-century Dutch Cape Colony*

This article examines the survival strategies of Lutheran dissenters in the eighteenth-century Dutch Cape Colony. The Cape Colony was officially a Reformed settlement during the rule of the Dutch East India Company (V.O.C.) but also had a significant Lutheran community. Until the Lutherans received recognition in 1780, part of the community chose to uphold their faith in secret. The survival of Lutheranism in the Cape Colony was due to the efforts of a group of Cape Lutheran activists and the support network they established with ministers of the Danish-Halle Mission, the Francke Foundations, the Moravian Church and the Lutheran Church in Amsterdam.