The Moravian Book of Worship is the current hymnal and liturgy book of the Moravian Church in America, published in 1995 by the Interprovincial Board of Publications and Communications, a 954 page volume of liturgies, hymns and indexes for congregational use. It stands in a hymnal lineage the Moravian Church (Unitas Fratrum) traces back to the early sixteenth century, when the Bohemian Brethren published what is widely credited as the first Protestant hymnal; the eighteenth century Herrnhut renewal under Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, who is credited with more than two thousand hymns of his own, gave Moravian worship its lasting emphasis on hymn singing, including the Singstunde, a service built entirely from stanzas selected from different hymns to develop a single theme. The 1995 book's Easter Morning liturgy is directly descended from the version printed in the 1778 German and 1789 English Moravian hymnals.
Facts
Subject Matter
Religious Subject MatterMoravian hymnody and liturgy standing in an unbroken tradition from the earliest Bohemian Brethren hymnals through the Herrnhut renewal's hymn centered worship. 1 Documented Liturgical UseThe current standard hymnal and liturgy book of Moravian Church in America congregations, including the Easter Morning liturgy and the Singstunde, a service assembled entirely from selected hymn stanzas. 1 Scholarly ReceptionDescribed by the Moravian Church's own music archive as joining "its predecessors in extending the heritage" of a hymnal tradition dating to the first Protestant hymnal, published by the Unitas Fratrum at the start of the sixteenth century. 1 Production
Release Year Primary Artist / ComposerMoravian Church in America, Interprovincial Board of Publications and Communications 1 Place of Origin Learn More
A Service Built Entirely From Other Hymns
Most worship services are built around a sermon, with hymns arranged to support it. The Moravian Singstunde reverses that structure entirely. Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, the eighteenth century nobleman whose estate at Herrnhut became the refuge and organizing center for the persecuted Bohemian Brethren, is credited with originating the practice: a service assembled by carefully selecting individual stanzas from many different hymns and arranging them in sequence so that, sung one after another, they develop a single Christian theme on their own, with no sermon required to connect them.
Zinzendorf himself wrote more than two thousand hymns across his lifetime, and under his influence Herrnhut cultivated hymn singing as something closer to theology conducted in real time than to mere musical accompaniment. The Moravian Book of Worship carries that inheritance forward into the present, its own Easter Morning liturgy directly descended from the version printed in the 1778 German and 1789 English Moravian hymnals. A Singstunde built today from this 1995 volume is, in a real sense, still Zinzendorf's own method of teaching, unbroken across nearly three centuries.
The method also depends on a congregation that already knows its hymnal well, since a Singstunde only communicates a coherent theme if the listeners recognize where each borrowed stanza originally comes from and what larger hymn it is quietly drawing on. That familiarity was easier to assume in Zinzendorf's own tightly knit Herrnhut community than it is in a modern, more dispersed congregation, which is part of why the practice survives today as a distinctive, deliberately preserved feature of Moravian worship rather than as an ordinary, unremarked habit.
The First Protestant Hymnal, Five Centuries of Descendants
The Moravian Church's claim to the first Protestant hymnal ever printed sits at the start of a publishing lineage most denominations cannot trace anywhere near as far back. At the opening of the sixteenth century, the Unitas Fratrum, the Bohemian Brethren who are the direct ancestors of today's Moravian Church, produced a hymnal of their own even as the wider Protestant Reformation was still taking shape around them. The Czech reformer and educator Jan Amos Comenius later edited what would be the Brethren's last Czech language hymnal, in 1659, before persecution scattered the community and very nearly ended it.
That community's eighteenth century revival at Herrnhut did not start a new hymn tradition so much as reactivate an old one, and the editorial thread runs continuously from there to the present: Christian Gregor's 1784 Choralbuch established the musical style still recognizable in Moravian hymn singing today, and each subsequent hymnal, through to the 1995 Moravian Book of Worship now in current use, has been produced as an extension of that same unbroken project rather than a fresh start. Few worship books in active use anywhere can point to a documented publishing lineage stretching back roughly five hundred years.
Cross-Tradition Connections
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This source names Americas directly: "The Moravian Book of Worship is the current hymnal and liturgy book of the Moravian Church in America, published in 1995 by the Interprovincial Board of Publications and Communications, a 954 page..."
This source names Herrnhut directly: "hymnal; the eighteenth century Herrnhut renewal under Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, who is credited with more than two thousand hymns of his own, gave Moravian worship its lasting emphasis..."
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