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 marri...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inChurch history Vol. 90; no. 2; pp. 348 - 366
Main Author Douma-Kaelin, Kelly
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.06.2021
Subjects
18th century
Archives & records
Autobiographical literature
Autobiographies
Early modern period
Marriage
Missionaries
Mysticism
Religion
Religious history
Sexuality
Theology
Transnationalism
Women
England
United Kingdom > UK
Europe
Germany
Moravian History
Missionary Activity
Early Modern Migration
Marriage
Women in the Atlantic World
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary: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.
ISSN:0009-6407
1755-2613
DOI:10.1017/S000964072100144X