Religion on the Margins

In the eighteenth century, missionaries of the radical, Pietist Moravian Church wandered from Germanic Europe to the edges of the known world in search of tolerance and a closer relationship to God. This open-minded, cosmopolitan undertaking led to unintended consequences, however, both for the Moravians and for the other persecuted peoples—European, African, and Indigenous—they sought to convert.

Religion on the Margins examines the complexities of early modern Moravians as a cosmopolitan community focused on an eschatological global vision while having to negotiate diverse cultures and, most importantly, the institution of slavery. Drawing on a transatlantic archive of letters, diaries, teachings, and mission histories, Benjamin M. Pietrenka sheds light on how a professedly anti-colonial cast of characters became entangled in the complex realities of European colonialism in the Atlantic world. Ultimately, Pietrenka shows how the Moravians, operating from within the constraints of mission work, became complicit in the European imperial project in spite of their stated values and their own experience of marginalization.

For scholars of early modern religion, empire, and politics, Pietrenka’s book challenges tendencies in the field to equate modernity with secularization and invites us to consider how nonelite actors understood religion and ethnicity through each other, in ways that contributed to the emergence of modern scientific racism and white supremacy.

“This is a monumental study that has cohesively woven together the complexities of eighteenth-century Moravian evangelization to the missionized communities of enslaved Africans and Indigenous groups. . . . The work exposes the racial biases and prejudices that starkly contradict the valued spiritual equality of Moravianism and instead reveal a proto-racist mission.”—Winelle Kirton-Roberts, author of Created in Their Image: Evangelical Protestantism in Antigua and Barbados, 1834–1914

“Religion on the Margins challenges our understanding of the Moravians. With a focus on missionary workers rather than leaders, Benjamin M. Pietrenka provides a new perspective on the spread of the Moravian faith and its shift away from some elements of its early radicalism. Based on a vast bibliography, including many German language sources, this book represents a major contribution.”—Carla Pestana, author of The World of Plymouth Plantation

Benjamin M. Pietrenka is Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Theology and Church History at Ruprecht Karls Universität Heidelberg and a Lecturer at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies. His work has appeared in Religion and American Culture and Journal of Early Modern History as well as in the edited volumes Bodies in Early Modern Religious Dissent and The Bible in Early Transatlantic Pietism and Evangelicalism.

Preface

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Note on Translations and Citations

Introduction

1. Bringing the New World Home

2. Bloody Bodies in Moravian Travel Diaries

3. Heightened Supernaturalism in Mission Pedagogies

4. Engaging the Indigenous Supernatural

5. Embodied Lexicons of Race

6. Raced Bodies in the Mission Field

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

History

           Early Modern

           Eighteenth-century

           History of Religion

Religious Studies & Religion

           History of Religion

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

           Early Modern History

           Early Modern Religion