Moravian Mission Education in the Nineteenth Century: Global Patterns and Local Manifestations at New Fairfield, Upper Canada

Abstract

The renewed Moravian Church has placed great emphasis upon education, both for members of European background and members of the global Moravian mission. However, the research that has been undertaken on Moravian education has tended to focus upon eighteenth-century education at the expense of the nineteenth century, and European education at the expense of that in the mission field. This paper provides an overview of nineteenth-century missionary education and charts some similarities and differences both within the mission field and between these fields and European situations. It then examines the re-establishment of the New Fairfield mission school in Canada under the guidance of Adolf Hartmann in light of general patterns of Moravian schooling. Schooling on the New Fairfield reserve was a source of tension between missionaries, mission inhabitants, governmental agents, and other religious denominations. The Lenape amongst whom the Moravians worked were not passive recipients of missionary education, rather they took an active role in providing an alternative to the Moravian mission school, much to the chagrin of the missionaries involved. The re-establishment of a mission school was therefore a difficult task. This paper concludes that although education was a universally important aspect of the Moravian Church, the provision of education was not a simple process, rather it was contingent upon numerous factors that missionaries in the field were not always able to control.