Constructions of the Religious Self. Moravian Conversion and Transatlantic Communication

Abstract

Abstract Within Pietism the concept of "conversion" played an important role in the life of the individual believer. The author studies the way Moravians spoke and wrote about conversion, and what this meant for the constitution of their personality, as well as the community. The main source form thousands of memoirs (Lebensläufe), written by individual Moravians and preserved as manuscripts in various Moravian archives; hundreds were published in Moravian periodicals. The Moravian understanding of conversion was expressly oriented against every notion of "sanctification". The author argues that conversion was both an individual as well as a communal experience. Individual Moravians were shaped by the vocabulary and framework established by previously published memoirs; on the other hand, individuals also affected the development of memoir-writing with their own, personal interpretations of religious life. For Moravians conversion was a lifelong pilgrimage on precarious terrain. The journey did not lead toward personal perfection, but, as the author explains, toward a radical acknowledgement of human imperfection.