Moravian Anniversary

Martin Luther had not been born when John Hus, Roman Catholic priest and rector of the University of Prague, thundered against the corruption of the church under the antipope John XXIII--simony, sale of indulgences, etc.--and cried out for reform. Tried for heresy, condemned and bound to the stake in 1415. he cried: "I shall die with joy in the faith of the Gospel I have preached!" Then the flames flared up, and their light has not yet died. Last week John Hus's followers, known now as the Moravian Church, celebrated their 500th anniversary.

After years of persecution, in 1457 the peasant Hussites formed their own group and called it Unitas Fratrum--Unity of the Brethren--the official title of the Moravian Church today. By the end of the 16th century, the Brethren were the dominant Protestant church in Bohemia. But after the Thirty Years' War broke out, the Bohemian Protestants were routed by the Catholics; on June 21, 1621, no fewer than 15 leaders of the Brethren were beheaded. The group went underground and stayed there for 100 years. Moravians know this as the time of "The Hidden Seed."

Patron and patriarch of this period was a Saxon count, Nicholas von Zinzendorf, on whose estate a group of Moravian refugees settled in 1722. They established a community called Herrnhut--the place God will guard--and here developed some of the customs that are peculiar to the Moravians today, such as reviving the early Christian agape, or love feast, which, unlike Communion, is a real meal shared in mutual devotion.

Long before the great wave of Protestant missionary activity in the late igth century, the Moravians had established missions all over the world; today there are three times as many Moravians in the foreign mission churches as there are in the home churches. Moravians founded a city in Pennsylvania and called it Bethlehem (1740). Winston-Salem, N.C. was started by the Moravians in 1766. All such Moravian settlements were patterned after Herrnhut--all land and commercial enterprise was owned by the church; single men, single women and widows were housed apart. Last week the 55,000 U.S. Moravians (world membership: 300,000) celebrated in decorum and hope, gathered to commemorate their long history with long speeches, their Protestant fervor with prayer. President Eisenhower sent a message ("a vigorous spirit expressed in the sound and good work of the Moravian Church"). So did Dr. Albert Schweitzer from the jungles of Africa. Communicants poured into churches (standing instead of kneeling to receive their bread and wine, chiefly because the Catholics do it the other way). Of all the words uttered to mark the anniversary, none were more Moravian than those spoken by 17th century Moravian Bishop John Amos Comenius:

In essentials, unity;

In nonessentials, liberty;

In all things, charity.

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