Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Women and Christian Practice in a Mahican Village

2003; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 13; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1525/rac.2003.13.1.27

1533-8568

Rachel Wheeler,

Mormonism, Religion, and History

In August 1742, a little-known scene of the Great Awakening was unfolding in the Mahican villages that dotted the Housatonic Valley region of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. On August 10, the colorful Moravian leader, Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf, arrived in the village of Shekomeko to check on the progress of the newly founded mission. Six months earlier, he had overseen the baptism of the first three villagers. Their baptized names—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—expressed the Moravians’ grand hopes that the men would be patriarchs to a new nation of believers. Zinzendorf was now in Shekomeko to witness as these three men assumed the Christian offices of elder, teacher, and exhorter. Twenty miles away and two days later, melancholic missionary David Brainerd preached the Presbyterian gospel of salvation in hopes of saving the residents of Pachgatgoch from Moravian heresy.