In 1722 a community was founded by Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf at Fulneck in what is now the Czech Republic. The community was formed according to primitive Christian principles, and drew on the doctrines of the original Moravian sect founded by John Hus in the fourteenth century.
In 1743 the Count came to Britain and founded a colony in Yorkshire at Pudsey; it too was called Fulneck.
The first social enterprises
This community included a clothing business, a worsted and glove factory, a farm, a tailor’s shop, a shoemaker’s, a bakery, an inn, and a general store. They introduced the craft of marbled paper making to England. Each trade was called a diacony and conducted business for the benefit of the whole congregation. The workers received a small salary but all the trading profits went to augment the funds of the congregation.
In 1752 financial disaster struck.The diaconies had invested £67,000 with a Portuguese financier who suddenly stopped payment.Despite this setback, the sect went on to establish further communities, at Ockbrook in Derby, Gracehill in Ireland, and Dukinfield (later Fairfield) near Manchester.
Wesley was impressed with the economic success of Fulneck, and when he visited he discovered:
Above a hundred young men, above fifty young women, many widows, and above a hundred married persons, all of whom are employed from morning to night, without any intermission, in various kinds of manufactures, not for journeymen’s wages, but for no wages at all, save a little very plain food and raiment.
The random voice of God
Within these communities a rigid moral law was in operation.For example, a single brother could not court a single sister without permission of the elders.
Difficult matters were decided by ‘lot’, an old custom of the Moravians dating back to 1467. For example, Zinzendorf carried a little green book with detachable leaves, each inscribed with a biblical text, and in a dilemma he would pull out a leaf at random for guidance. This system was regarded as the means of revealing the authentic voice of God, and was only abolished in 1857.
For the commonweal
In 1851 Charles Kingsley pointed to a reason why these communities had prospered while so many others had failed – the Moravians had ‘acted up to their own creed, that they were brothers and sisters, members of one body, bound not to care for themselves but for the Commonweal’. The movement continues to exist and Moravian churches and communities are found in many countries worldwide: the largest concentration of Moravians today is in Tanzania.
Sources
W H G Armytage, Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England 1560-1960, 1961, pp 47-57.
Chris Coates, Utopia Britannica, 2001, pp 37-42.
