sacral rule and the Christian Church: An ... - ResearchSpace

Danish Missionary Society and the Dutch Missionary Society. In Germany, on the
other hand, they were established on a city basis: Leipzig Mission, Berlin Mission,
Bremen Mission, Basel Mission and others.
"Until the time of Francke, the work of missions was considered to be the
responsibility ofthe government on which depended the welfare ofthe souls of
the subjects. Therefore the call to mission was thought of as coming to a man
. "" h . h'ty ,,351
from without, lrom t ose m aut on .
In Herrnhut, under the leadership of Count Nikolaus Ludwig Graf von
Zinzendorf,352 Pietism took yet another form. The call to Christian mission overseas
was presented in a way which would be independent of both church and state
interference. In this, Zinzendorf created a missionary movement which differed both
from the British denominationalism and from the German city dependence on the State.
These two principles were foundational for the Basel Mission. Born at the royal court
of Dresden where Spener 353 was ministering as chaplain, and educated at Halle school
under Francke, Zinzendorf studied law at Wuerttemberg from 1716 to 1719. He was
then aware ofthe various forms ofPietism in different cities. In 1715, in Halle, after the
visit of Ziegenbalg who came from the West Indies, he started worrying that "all the
351 Grau, Eugene, "The Gennan Protestant Heritage of the Church in Ghana", in, The Ghana Bulletin of
Theology, Accra, Presbyterian Press, Vol. 3, no 4, June 1968, p. 20.
352 Zinzendorf, the founder of the Moravian Mission, was born in Dresden to an Austrian noble family.
He was raised by his maternal grandmother, a Pietist and close friend of Spener and Francke. He became
interested in foreign missions after meeting the Danish-Halle missionaries in India, but his family
pressurised him into a government career. After entering the Saxon civil service in 1721, he sponsored
religious assemblies in his Dresden home and purchased an estate at Berthelsdorf to fonn a Christian
community called Hermhut. While travelling in Western Europe (1719-20), he came into contact with
Refonned theology, non-church groups and Roman Catholicism which further broadened his
understanding of Christianity. He studied law in Wuerttemberg (1716-19) and later on theology in
Tubingen and was ordained Lutheran bishop in Berlin in 1737. In, Pierard, Richard V. "Zinzendorf' in
Douglas (ed) The New International Dictionary ofthe Christian Church, p. 1071.
353 "In 1704, he (Spener) consecrated little Zinzendorfby the laying on ofhands for the furtherance ofthe
kingdom of Jesus. Throughout life, Zinzendorf kept a deep respect for Spener, and occasionally describe
his own task as reawakening Spener's seed." In, Grau, Eugene, "The Gennan Protestant Heritage of the
Church in Ghana", p. 14.
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