The Hinge: International Theological Dialog for the Moravian Church
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Americans attended these synods) put together a spiritual handbook for all the choirs: the Instructions. The Instructions constitute fascinating and illuminating reading. They are a singular example of the praxis of eighteenth-century pastoral care.25 In detail quite breathtaking in its simplicity and honesty, the Instructions offered guidelines to the choir helpers on how to understand the workings of Christ within what would seem to be the most practical of corporeal concerns. The pervading tone of the Instructions was not one of stern self-castigation, but rather love and compassion. All of human existence, all worries, pains, aches, illnesses, imagined and real, could be understood within a framework of the contemplation of Jesus’ suffering and sacrifice. All pain, physical or emotional, was compared to that of Jesus on the cross; all anguish could be alleviated by Jesus, all physicality understood in the context of service to God. These documents, the contents of which were highly confidential and passed on only by permission of the Unity Elders of the Church in Herrnhut, contained explicit and detailed instructions on how to apply Moravian theology to the spiritual and physical growth of men, women, and children. The Instructions themselves constituted what today might be called a manual for spiritual counselors on how to guide men, women, adolescents, and children through the speakings. In these sessions, the choir helper was to ascertain the condition of the individual’s soul and his or her readiness for communion. In the Instructions we see that the helpers were not expected to give prepared answers to commonly posed questions or situations, but rather to provide a theological context in which to redirect the concerns of the individual to a focus on Christ. The next lecture will focus on the substance of the Instructions, the frank and surprising detail in which spiritual conversations were to go into the physical and spiritual state of the subject, perhaps most clearly delineated in the discussion of sexuality. This, for the married choirs, became the greatest bone of contention, not least within the mission field. For, in addition to opening up the discourse of the choirs, the Instructions also help to reveal the substance and nature of the speakings between the Moravian missionaries (brothers and sisters) and, for example, Native Americans. Whereas the extant diaries of these missionaries (almost exclusively written by men) do include mention of speakings and visits among the native peoples, without the Instructions one could not begin to reconstruct what was actually discussed. However, the difficulties inherent in administering the speakings in the North American context and their perceived intrusion into the structures of authority within the patriarchal family led the North American congregations, in 1818, to ask that the General Synod abolish the speakings in North America.26 The request was refused.27
Lecture 2
I ended the first lecture by discussing the demise of the speakings in the early 19th century, a demise that was directly linked to the perceived intrusion of the Moravian Church, and specifically the married choir helpers, into the most intimate