Aaron Spencer Fogleman

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Aaron Spencer Fogleman | Jesus Is Female: The Moravian Challenge in the German Communities of British North America | The William and Mary Quarterly, 60.2 | The History Cooperative

Jesus Is Female: The Moravian Challenge in the German Communities of British North America

The true church of Jesus Christ has had no more destructive, dangerous and crafty enemies since the time of the apostles than the Zinzendorfian (Moravian) sect.

— Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg, Lutheran pastor in Pennsylvania, 1751

Any rational person can clearly see what the Devil has drilled into the head ... of the Herrnhuter (Moravian) sect and what kind of power they plan to attain here in Pennsylvania!

—Johann Philipp Boehm, German Reformed pastor in Pennsylvania, 1742

ON Sunday, July 18, 1742, in Philadelphia, Pastor Johann Christoph Pyrlaeus was scheduled to preach in a rented meeting-house on Mulberry Street shared by German Lutheran and Reformed inhabitants of the city. Pyrlaeus was a Lutheran from Vogtland-Sachsen, a territory in Germany, who had recently joined the Moravians and received spiritual and practical training in their community of Herrnhaag, just north of Frankfurt am Main. In late 1741 he was one of the first Moravians sent to their new settlement in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and the following year he began preaching to the Lutherans in Philadelphia. Like more than a hundred other Moravian men and women in the colonial era, he preached to whomever would listen, regardless of their denominational affiliation. As Pyrlaeus and his followers approached the building that Sunday in July, they discovered it locked. Someone broke the lock, and they filed in to have their service. Soon after they had begun singing, a crowd of German Calvinists began to gather outside. One of them asked Pyrlaeus to leave the building, but he refused. The crowd then surrounded the church, and four of them broke in, cried "Strike the dog dead!" ("Schlagt den Hund todt!"), and rushed toward Pyrlaeus in the pulpit. ¹ The worshipers stood shocked, motionless, as Pyrlaeus was dragged from the pulpit into the street and beaten by the crowd.

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