Since this collection of essays is obviously addressed to an American audience, I will write this review in English. This is the more appropriate because the sudden excitement in Moravianism, the Moravian Church or, to properly use its international name, the Unitas Fratrum is largely restricted to Moravians in North America and the West Indies. True, Zinzendorf and his theology has always attracted some attention in Europe.1 But the rush of exciting and new work on the Unitas Fratrum in the last fifteen years about both their role in Europe2, in the Atlantic World3, in North America4 as well as in the global mission field5 is astounding. Both in the essays in this volume as well as in the earlier studies a number of issues were addressed: What did and how was the Unitas Fratrum constructed and constituted as one of the truly Atlantic Protestant churches of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Craig Atwood ("Deep in the Side of Jesus: The Persistance of Zinzendorfian Piety in Colonial America", p. 50-64) and S. Scott Rohrer ("New Birth in a New Land: Evangelical Culture and the Creation of an American Identity", p. 97-112) suggested the particular Christ-centered theology and the conversion experience as key elements in this process. Gisela Mettele in her Habilitationsschrift6 and in this collection of essays Robert Beachy ("Manuscript Missions in the Age of Print: Moravian Community in the Atlantic World", p. 33-49) added as another key element the tight-knit communication system within the Moravian Church. It consisted not only of the Gemein Nachrichten, that were circulated in manuscripts throughout all congregations and mission stations but too of the missionary diaries composed in all mission stations around the world, that were read aloud to the congregations in their daily and weekly gatherings. Whether, as Beachy maintains, the fact that the Moravians continued to circulate the Gemein Nachrichten in Manuscript "represented an implicit critique of that print culture" and that this "scribal production […] fostered a communal identity" (p. 46), sounds to me, however, totally overblown. In Bethlehem as well as in Herrnhut the church maintained a fairly large group of scriveners who had to be kept occupied; besides, in the light of chronic financial strains scriveners were cheaper than printing the Gemein Nachrichten. Despite remarkable differences in interpretation both Aaron Fogleman in his "Jesus is Female"7 and Beverly P. Smaby in her contribution in this collection ("'No one should lust for power … women least of all': Dismantling Female Leadership among Eighteenth-Century Moravians", p. 159-175) suggest that equality of women within Moravian society constituted another important element that defined the Moravians as a distinct Atlantic religious community. While Fogleman includes Jesus into this gender matrix – erroneously I believe –, Smaby suggests that Moravian men strove in the second half of the eighteenth century to lower the status of Moravian women and exclude them from liturgical functions. Marianne S. Wokeck in her characteristically restrained fashion tends to agree in her essay "The Role of the Pastor’s Wife in the Pioneering Generation of Protestant German-Speaking Clergy in the American Colonies" (p. 176-190). In her essay "Unlikely Sisters: Cherokee and Moravian Women in the Early Nineteenth Century" (p. 190-206), Anna Smith suggests, that Cherokee and Moravian Women considered themselves on the same level – a suggestion that is based essentially on social contacts, tokens of appreciation, and parallel female spheres. From my own reading of the Zeisberger diaries I entertain doubts: The function of the wives of Missionaries was, to listen to and share concerns with the wives of Indian converts in the same way the missionaries were expected to do with male Indian converts. But David Zeisberger would have rejected the notion that this type of social relationship would have entailed a measure of equality. For him the problem lay in another aspect of gender relations: He was not too happy about the equality between men and women within Indian society. For this resulted, so he remarked more than once, in a cocky behaviour of Indian women.

One of the concepts addressed in almost every article is that of adaptation or acculturation. Despite some misgivings about a tendency in some authors to interpret everything Moravians did or refrained from doing as proof for acculturation, the general interpretative trend of these essays is clear and convincing: Towards the end of the eighteenth and certainly in the first half of the nineteenth century the Moravian church realized that sticking too strictly to old Moravian ways would isolate the settlements in North Carolina both economically as well as ethnically. In this context the articles by Katherine Carté Engel, "'Commerce that the Lord could Sanctify and Bless': Moravian Participation in Transatlantic Trade, 1740-1760" (p. 113-126), make an impressive contribution as does the second piece on economic activities by Michael Shirley, "Moravians, the Market and a New Order in Salem" (p. 142-155), although I suspect that they gradually loosened restrictions and opened closed Moravian settlements to the outside world.

The reader who takes time to enjoy these essays will no doubt not only learn a lot about Moravians but, too, about the important role relatively small religious German communities played in a predominantly Anglo-American environment.

Anmerkungen:
1 Martin Brecht / Paul Peucker (Hrsg.), Neue Aspekte der Zinzendorf-Forschung. Tagung zum 300. Geburtstag des Grafen Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Göttingen 2006, is the latest example.
2 J. C. S. Mason, The Moravian Church and the Missionary Awakening in England, 1760-1800, Woodbridge 2001; Otto Teigeler, Die Herrnhuter in Russland. Ziel, Umfang und Ertrag ihrer Aktivitäten, Göttingen 2006; Rüdiger Kröger (Hrsg.), Johann Leonard Dober und der Beginn der Herrnhuter Mission, Herrnhut 2006.
3 Elisabeth W. Sommer, Serving two Masters. Moravian Brethren in Germany and North America 1727-1801, Lexington, KY 2000; Jon F. Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival. Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World, Cambridge, MA 2005; Gisela Mettele, Weltbürgertum oder Gottesreich? Die Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine als transnationale Gemeinschaft, 1760-1857, Göttingen 2008.
4 Jon F. Sensbach, A Separate Canaan. The Making of an Afro-Moravian World in North Carolina, 1763-1840, Chapel Hill, NC 1998; Craig D. Atwood, Community of the Cross. Communal Piety in Colonial Bethlehem, University Park, PA 2004; Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Jesus is Female. Moravians and Radical Religion in Early America, Philadelphia, PA 2007.
5 Hermann Wellenreuther / Carola Wessel (Hrsg.), The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger, 1772-1781, University Park, PA, 2005; Stefan Hertrampf, "Unsere Indianer-Geschwister waren lichte und vergnügt". Die Herrnhuter als Missionare bei den Indianern Pennsylvanias, 1745-1765, Frankfurt am Main 1997; Carola Wessel, Delaware-Indianer und Herrnhuter Missionare im Upper Ohio Valley, Tübingen 1999; Günter Pakendorf, "Hier und nirgends ist Herrnhut". Evangelische Mission und utopische Wunschträume im 18. Jahrhundert, Berlin 2004; Theodora Olsthoorn, Kommunikation mit Menschen einer nichtschriftlichen Kultur. Die Rekognoszierungsreisen der Herrnhuter Labrador-Mission 1752-1770, Diss. Phil. Dresden 2007.
6 Compare annotation 3.
7 Compare annotation 4.