Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The Moravians, Tennent's Viewpoint

Gilbert Tennant, a Calvinist minister->



Sometimes when you hear a person's opinion about a group of people, you learn something not only about that group, but also about the source of that opinion, by that I mean the biases of the person, and sometimes also the biases of the group they belong to. Such it was with Gilbert Tennent, an Anglo-American Calvinist (or we might call him a Puritan) minister, whose observations about the Moravian Christians speak volumes.

Tennent observed that the Moravian way had great appeal to "young persons, Females, and ignorant People who are full of affection"(quoted in Wheeler, 2000, 275). What a mouthful!

As Patrick Frazier put it, Moravianism was "a religion more of the heart than of the head."

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