Pious Pursuits

Michele Gillespie is Kahle Associate Professor of History at Wake Forest University. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University, and is the author of numerous publications including Free Labor in a Free World: White Artisans in Slaveholding Georgia, 1790-1860.

• List of abbreviationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPART I: THE BIRTH OF MORAVIANISM: CONFESSION AND CULTUREChapter 1. Imperial communitiesMack WalkerChapter 2. Manuscript missions in the age of print: Moravian community in the Atlantic worldRobert BeachyChapter 3. Deep in the side of Jesus: The persistence of Zinzendorfian piety in colonial AmericaCraig D. AtwoodChapter 4. Moravian physicians and their medicine in colonial North America: European models and colonial realityRenate WilsonPART II: MORAVIAN CULTURE AND SOCIETY: IDENTITY AND ASSIMILATIONChapter 5. Fashion passion: The rhetoric of dress within the eighteenth-century Moravian brethrenElisabeth SommerChapter 6. New birth in a new land: evangelical culture and the creation of an American identityS. Scott RohrerChapter 7. "Commerce that the Lord could sanctify and bless": Moravian participation in transatlantic trade, 1740–1760Katherine Carté EngelChapter 8. Piety and profit: Moravians in the North Carolina backcountry market, 1770–1810Emily Conrad BeaverChapter 9. Moravians, the market and a new order in SalemMichael ShirleyPART III: RACE AND GENDER IN THE MORAVIAN CHURCH: A PROTESTANT EXCEPTIONALISM?Chapter 10. "No one should lust for power... women least of all.": Dismantling female leadership among eighteenth-century MoraviansBeverly P. SmabyChapter 11. The role of the pastor’s wife in the pioneering generation of protestant German-speaking clergy in the American coloniesMarianne S. WokeckChapter 12. Unlikely sisters: Cherokee and Moravian women in the early nineteenth-centuryAnna SmithChapter 13. Moravian missions in times of emancipation: Conversion of slaves in Surinam during the nineteenth-centuryEllen KlinkersChapter 14. Slavery, race, and the global fellowship: Religious radicals confront the modern ageJon SensbachChapter 15. Conclusion: Moravians and the challenge of writing global history of Diasporic ChristianityA. G. RoeberContributorsSelected BibliographyIndex

“In bringing these essays together into an argument for diasporic tensions, Pious Pursuits juxtaposes different scholarship on Moravians to expose the contrary nature of trying to synthesize a group of people who lived all over the world over multiple centuries. However, it is that range that makes this collection so good; it is hard to imagine any reader not finding at least a few essays relevant, new, and thought-provoking. And by systematically examining Moravians in the Atlantic world, Pious Pursuits provides a framework for future scholarship on other diasporic communities.”  ·  Journal of American Ethnic History “This collection will be a valuable resource for scholars of the Atlantic world, the eighteenth century, and the history of religion.”  ·  German-Canadian Studies"The present volume, with some highly original research, well written and widely focused, adds an important intercultural perspective to the Atlantic evangelicalism of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and is a very good starting point for further investigations."  ·  H-Atlantic"The reader who takes time to enjoy these essays will no doubt not only learn a lot about Moravians but also about the important role relatively small religious German communities played in a predominantly Anglo-American environment."  ·  H-Soz-u-Kult"... an excellent introduction to key themes of Moravian history and a good basis for further explorations."  ·  German Historical Institute London Bulletin