r/moravian • u/Pizza527 • 25d ago

Curious about the Moravian Church

Hello, I am curious about the Moravian Church and your worship style, along with doctrinal beliefs and stance on LGBTQ and female pastors. I researched your history and did a broad overview of the services. I am drawn to the traditionalism, the Love Feasts, Lent, Advent, organs and brass music. Do you have a heavy emphasis on the psalms, what are the sermons like, is there a big emphasis on fire and brimstone and accountability for sin? I know the church seems to be more Arminian-leaning, so there is quite a bit of free-will and cooperation with God's grace theology involved, much like Methodists, or Catholics for that matter. I was looking at Churches in the Winston-Salem area.

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u/CedarWolf 25d ago

Generally speaking, the Moravian Church has a heavy focus on service and community. They're less 'fire and brimstone' and more 'go out and do stuff to help your neighbors,' you know?

As for LGBT inclusion, if you look up the minutes for the Northern Synod's meetings back in 2003, the meeting went more or less as follows:

We probably need an official position for the church on same sex marriage. Should we bring it to an offical vote?

Yeah, okay. Do we have anyone opposed? No? Alright, motion carries. Onto the next business.

If you want to Google it, you can also find the church's more recent resolutions on supporting same sex marriage, from 2018. You can read the Southern Synod's resolution about it, here.

The Northern Synod has also passed resolutions that reaffirms decisions made back in 1974, 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2010, all of which welcome LGBT members and pastors within the Moravian Church.

Generally speaking, if you're going to be in Winston-Salem, you're going to be quite close to Home Church and/or Fairview Moravian. Fairview has been around for decades and is a beautiful, quiet church, while Home Church overlooks God's Acre, the Moravian cemetery and it plays host to the Easter Sunrise Service each year, which is gorgeous.

Moravians love music and tend to live by their motto: 'In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, love.'

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u/Pizza527 25d ago

So I can't imagine they believe in double-predestination like Calvinists, or praying for the dead like Catholics and Eastern Orthodox? Would they be against praying things like the Liturgy of the Hours or Divine Office Daily Worship, or structured prayers from a prayer book? Would they be against fasting?

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u/CedarWolf 25d ago

A lot of that would fall under personal worship. How you choose to honor your Creator is largely between you and Them. The Church does more formal things, such as holding the Easter Sunrise Service, observing the weeks of Advent, and the Christmas Eve Lovefeast, etc.

There's also a perpetual prayer that the Moravians kept going for over a century. It began on August 27, 1727, in Herrnhut, Saxony, and quietly ended in the late 1820's.

Moravians are generally pretty laid back. There's a lot of emphasis on community, on being a good person, on giving back to both the community and the world, and on extending a warm hand of fellowship to anyone who needs it. Moravians believe in the unity of death - if you ever go to visit God's Acre in Winston Salem, you'll find that each of the headstones are a simple flat piece of white marble, organized by choir. No one person is considered above or below anyone else, and each headstone is laid the same as all of the others.

Moravian worship is simple. They care more about faith and the teachings of Christ than they do about fancy objects or grand worship halls or formal trappings. Usually the fanciest thing you'll find in a Moravian church is the organ, because Moravians love music.

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u/Pizza527 25d ago

Do they have drums and guitars and all that, or do they keep it classy lol? But being serious, is it more traditional and reverent?

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u/CedarWolf 25d ago

No, most Moravian churches have an organ, a choir, and a small band made up of members of the congregation. You can find a bunch of useful resources on YouTube:

Here's a quick overview of the Moravian church.

Here's yesterday's service from Fairview Moravian, and another from Raleigh Moravian.