Zinzendorf & the Moravians Issue 1 | 1982

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“For some years, William Carey, the leader of the famous Serampore Three, had … read the Moravian ‘Periodical Accounts.’ He referred expressly to their work in his pamphlet, Enquiry into the obligations of Christians to use Means for the conversion of the Heathen … and (at Kettering) appealed to their example—See what these Moravians have done. Can we not follow their example, and in obedience to our Heavenly Master, go out into the world and preach the Gospel to the heathen?

“His word meant more than most readers generally suppose. He was referring when he said Moravians, not only to Germans, but to Englishmen. According to one modern writer of mission history, William Carey, the founder with other ministers of the Baptist Missionary Society, was the ’first Englishman who was a Foreign Missionary.’ The statement is incorrect. For several years before Carey was heard of, a large number of British Moravians had been toiling in the foreign field… In Antigua had worked Samuel Isles, Joseph Newby and Samuel Watson; in Jamaica, George Caries, David Taylor, Samuel Church … in St. Kitts and St. Croix, James Birkby; in Barbados, Benjamin Brookshaw and John Fozzard; in Tobago …”

“The first Protestants influenced by the Herrnhut Brethren were the Methodists. In their case, however, the influence, as far as foreign missions were concerned, was only indirect. As John Wesley met several Moravian missionaries—David Nitschmann on the Simmonds (sailing for Georgia), Spangenburg in Georgia and Boehler in England—he must have admired their zeal for the ...