Abstract
The Moravian Church in America was a frontier church. Their authorities placed settlements in the backcountry so Moravians would not need to live alongside non-Moravians, and Moravian itinerants roamed the Pennsylvania frontier. These itinerants preached a kind of piety, a “heart religion,” similar to that offered by more familiar frontier denominations: Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians. Yet unlike these other frontier churches, the Moravian Church did not experience substantial growth on the American frontier. This lack of growth was deliberate. Moravian authorities expected congregations to remain small, populated only by the truly devout, and so prevented most hearers from becoming church members. They disdained the premier frontier religious practice, the large out-of-doors meetings or revival. While the small size of Moravian congregations was not a concern for eighteenth-century Moravian authorities, it has led historians to ignore the Moravian Church in studies of frontier religion.
