The Moravian Church is among the very oldest of the Protestant churches, preceding the Reformation of Luther by a number of decades. Except for the Waldensians and some small pre-Reformation groups that were never really classed as churches, the Moravian Church can be said to be the oldest of the Protestant churches.
The story of our church begins in ancient Bohemia and Moravia. These lands, in the central part of Europe, had originally been won for Christ by missionaries of the Eastern or Orthodox branch of the Christian Church, but after a time they came under the control of the Western or Roman branch of the ancient church. In spite of the attempts of the Roman Church to make them adhere to Roman practices, the churches in Bohemia and Moravia continued to treasure much of the heritage that had come down to them from the Eastern Church and this gave them a spirit of independence. Consequently, they were quick to react against the corruption that marked the Roman Church of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
John Hus, a member of the faculty of the University of Prague, helped to give voice to this reaction against the worldliness of the Roman Church. He had read some of the writings of John Wycliff, the English scholar, and came to see that the Bible, not the rulings of the Pope and the hierarchy, constitutes the true standard of Christian belief and practice.
John Hus was burned at the stake in 1415 as a heretic, but he had pointed his followers to one of the cardinal foundation-stones of the Reformation: The authority of the Holy Scriptures over the church and the leadership of the church. If what the Pope said did not correspond with the Bible, said Hus, then the Pope was wrong. Like Martin Luther, Hus broke with the Roman Church over this central issue. He paid for it with his life but his followers carried on.
During the next forty years the followers of Hus found themselves unable to agree on many points and no single leader emerged who could keep the various factions together. Finally a small group broke away and in 1457 established a fellowship which they called “The Unity of the Brethren” (or Unitas Fratrum, as it is in Latin). They wanted no more of the conflict that had marked the various Hussite groups. They only desired to live in peace, following as nearly as they could the example of the New Testament Church. It is to this group that the modern Moravian Church traces its origin and that is why 1957 was known as the 500th Anniversary Year of the Moravian Church.
