Moravian Women's Memoirs: Related Lives, 1750-1820 (Women and Gender in Religion)

This volume is made up of the autobiographical writings of thirty of the women who lived in the major North American Moravian settlement of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, at varying points in the eighteenth century. What follows are their memoirs, fascinating documents that contain insights into the lives of the women and men who lived in the Moravian communities in North America.... These Moravian women's memoirs reveal the intersection of the private and the public spheres of their lives. They are records of their spiritual paths in a world that in most cases challenged the bounds of knowledge inherited from their parents. However, whatever private insights these memoirs afforded the writers they were written to be shared with the congregation as a public relation of the author's spiritual and secular path through life. These memoirs formed part of the discourse of faith within the Moravian church.