Paul Peucker – författare

At the end of the 1740s, the Moravians, a young and rapidly expanding radical-Pietist movement, experienced a crisis soon labeled the Sifting Time. As Moravian leaders attempted to lead the church away from the abuses of the crisis, they also tried to erase the memory of this controversial and embarrassing period. Archival records were systematically destroyed, and official histories of the church only dealt with this period in general terms. It is not surprising that the Sifting Time became both a taboo and an enigma in Moravian historiography. In A Time of Sifting, Paul Peucker provides the first book-length, in-depth look at the Sifting Time and argues that it did not consist of an extreme form of blood-and-wounds devotion, as is often assumed. Rather, the Sifting Time occurred when Moravians began to believe that the union with Christ could be experienced not only during marital intercourse but during extramarital sex as well. Peucker shows how these events were the logical consequence of Moravian teachings from previous years. As the nature of the crisis became evident, church leaders urged the members to revert to their earlier devotion of the blood and wounds of Christ. By returning to this earlier phase, the Moravians lost their dynamic character and became more conservative. It was at this moment that the radical-Pietist Moravians of the first half of the eighteenth century reinvented themselves as a noncontroversial evangelical denomination.

In 1722, Count Zinzendorf allowed a group of Moravian exiles to settle on his Upper Lusatian estate. This was the beginning of Herrnhut, an awakened community that within a few years became the centre of a transatlantic religious movement. The rapid spread of the Moravian Brethren is all the more remarkable since it did not belong to any of the three denominations recognized in the Holy Roman Empire. With a successful defence narrative that made them more acceptable to those in power by concealing their true identity, the Moravians managed to survive as a religious community. Herrnhut was a Philadelphian denomination that hid its separatism behind an alleged membership of the Lutheran Church and a chosen historical identity of the renewed Brethren Unity. As a Philadelphian congregation, Herrnhut wanted to unite true Christians from all denominations, regardless of their religious origin, in one apostolic congregation. This book examines the beginnings of Herrnhut in the period between 1722 and 1732 based on new archival research in holdings in Germany and the United States.

Nikolaus Ludwig Reichsgraf von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf (1700-1760) ist als Begrunder der Herrnhuter Brudergemeine eine der zentralen Figuren des europaischen Pietismus. Im Zentrum der internationalen Beitrage dieses Bandes stehen aktuelle Forschungen zur kirchen-, theologie- und literaturgeschichtlichen Einordnung Zinzendorfs sowie Untersuchungen zu wichtigen Vorgangen aus seinem Leben und Wirken. Daneben wird der Blick auf die wesentlichen Auaenbeziehungen Zinzendorfs zu den Bohmen und Schwenckfeldern, zu den Englandern und den lutherischen Kritikern bis hin zu Goethe und Karl Barth gerichtet. Gemeinsam ist allen Beitragen die Frage nach der Wirkungsgeschichte und der in die Gegenwart reichenden Aktualitat Zinzendorfs.