The title of this episode is Moravians and Wesley.We took a look at Pietism in an earlier episode. Pietism was a reaction to the dry dogmatism of Protestant Scholasticism and the reductionist rationalism of Enlightenment philosophers. It aimed to renew a living faith in a living Christ.As a movement, it was led in the 17th C by Philip Jakob Spener and August Francke.Spener’s godson was a German Count named Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, who even as a child bore a deep devotion to God.  His parents were devout Pietists and sent him to the University of Halle, where he studied under the Pietist leader Francke. Later he went to Wittenberg, a center of Lutheran orthodoxy, where he repeatedly clashed with his teachers. After travel and study at law, he married and entered the service of the Court of Dresden. There Zinzendorf first met a group of Moravians who changed the course of his life.Moravia lies in the southeast of what today is the Czech Republic. Moravians were Hussites; long-time adherents to the renewal begun by Jan Hus. They were forced by persecution to forsake their native lands. Zinzendorf offered them asylum. There they founded the community of Herrnhut. It so appealed to Zinzendorf he resigned his cushy post in Dresden and joined it. Under his direction, the Moravians became part of the local Lutheran parish. But the Lutherans were unwilling to trust foreigners who were also Pietists.In 1731, while visiting Denmark, Zinzendorf met a group of Inuit believers brought to faith in Christ by the Lutheran missionary Hans Egede.  This kindled in the Count an interest in missions that would dominate the rest of his life. Soon the community at Herrnhut was on fire with the same zeal, and in 1732 its first missionaries left for the Caribbean. A few years later there were Moravian missionaries in Africa, India, and the Americas. They founded the communities of Bethlehem and Nazareth in Pennsylvania, and Salem, North Carolina. In just twenty years a movement that began with two hundred refugees had more missionaries overseas than had been sent out by all Protestant churches since the Protestant Reformation a couple of centuries earlier.In the meantime, conflicts with Lutherans back home in Germany grew. Zinzendorf was banned from Saxony and traveled to North America, where in 1741 he was present at the founding of the Bethlehem township. Shortly after his return to home, peace was hammered out between Lutherans and Moravians. It failed to last. Zinzendorf agreed to become a bishop for the Moravians, from a spiritual line of ecclesiastical authority reaching back to Jan Hus. Lutherans didn’t recognize Hus; they wanted the Count’s authority to link to Luther. This is odd since Luther honored Hus as an influence in the development of his own ideas.A personal aside. What silly things Christians bicker over. Doesn’t a person’s spiritual authority rest in their being called by God, not man? What matter is it that it comes through this or that one-time leader? It’s the original source that matters.Zinzendorf died at Herrnhut in 1760, and shortly after, his followers broke with Lutheranism. Although the Moravian church never had a large membership and was unable to continue sending so many missionaries, its example contributed to the great missionary awakening of the 19th C. Perhaps the greatest significance of the movement was its impact on John Wesley and, through him, the Methodist tradition.In late 1735, early ‘36, a group of Moravians sailed to North America hoping to preach to the Indians of Georgia. Onboard was a young Anglican priest, named John Wesley, whom the Georgia Governor Oglethorpe had invited to serve as a pastor in Savannah. The young Wesley accepted the offer and hoped to preach to Indians. The early part of the voyage was calm and Wesley learned enough German to communicate with the Moravians. Then the weather turned and the ship was soon in real danger. The mainmast split, and