A BRIEF HISTORY OF MEMORIAL MORAVIAN CHURCH

          In 1882, the one hundred and fiftieth (150^th) anniversary of the beginning of mission of the Moravian Church to the Danish West Indies, the Church decided to build a new sanctuary in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, to mark the occasion.  Thus emerged the Memorial Moravian Church .  (Its actual name is Moravian Memorial Church which is inscribed over the entrance to the sanctuary.)  It stands as a monument to the one hundred fifty (150) years of devoted service to the people of the Danish West Indies in the name of Jesus Christ.

          On April 2, 1883, the work began on the Memorial Church building with the members giving a great deal of volunteer labor.  Men, women, and children, old and young, volunteered to carry sand, bricks and stones to the site.  Most of this volunteer labor was done after a hard day’s work and on moonlit nights.  The building was completed in April 1884, with the dedication taking place on May 16, 1884.

          The baroque style church with rusticated quoins, windows and doors are surrounded with heavy overhanging cornices.  The hipped roof is accented by a small framed bell tower and cupola over the large arcaded center entrance.  Fan-like flanking windows in the upper story are framed with rusticated stone and triangular pediments, while flanking doors on the first story have the flat post and lintel openings.  

          The lower walls of the church are built of blue granite.  The building has an outside measurement of 90 feet in length and 60 feet in width.  The height to the ridge of the roof is 45 feet.

          The church bell was presented to the congregation by the members of the Moravian Church in Germany on the occasion of the laying of the cornerstone.  The pillars in the church, which represent the Corinthian style of architecture, were imported from Scotland.  The organ was built at Stuttgart in Germany by Carl Wegle.

          One of the last churches to be built in the town of Charlotte Amalie, the Memorial Moravian Church represented an effort on behalf of the Moravians to establish a more visible presence in Charlotte Amalie to mark the 150^th anniversary of the beginning of the Moravian Mission to the Danish West Indies.  

          The name “Memorial” commemorates the position which the Unitas Fratrum holds in church history as “The Pioneer Church of Christian Mission.”

            History assigns to the Moravian Church the position of Standard Bearer of Protestantism.  Not only is the Moravian Church one of the many denominations which compose the Protestant Christian Church, it is, in point of time, the first and oldest of them all. 

            The historical records show that those who composed its first members were the forerunners of the great movement known as the Reformation.  They were followers of the great pre-Reformation preacher, educator, and martyr John Hus of Bohemia.  He was burned at the stake in Constance, Switzerland, in 1415, one hundred and two years before Martin Luther began the great Reformation work in Germany. 

            John Hus was executed because he refused to give up his belief that the doctrines set forth in the Bible should be followed by Christians.  This brought him into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church, whose leaders claimed authority to interpret the Bible as they pleased and were determined to force obedience to their rulings even when their laws were in direct opposition to the Bible.

            Although the Church and civil rulers of that day killed John Hus, they could not kill his teachings.  He had been a great and much beloved preacher, and there were many who remembered what he had written.  For sixteen years the followers of Hus tried to establish his doctrines by force of arms in the great Hussite Wars that shook the whole of Europe, but they gained only one point, the right to give the Cup or the Chalice to the congregation in the Holy Communion.

            When the Hussite Wars ended, men began to ask themselves whether there might be a better way to carry out their purpose.  A group withdrew from Prague to the Estate of Lititz, on the border of Bohemia, where they planned to live Christian lives according to the Bible, as John Hus had explained it.  That was on March 1, 1457. 

            Ten years later the Hussites found it necessary to form their own independent Church organization, so the Unitas Fratrum, the Unity of the Brethren, was firmly established sixty years before the Reformation led by Martin Luther began.

            History assigns to the Moravian Church also the position of The Pioneer Church of Christian Missions.  The beginning of Moravian Missions was in 1732, when on December 13^th, Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann landed on St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, to bring the Gospel to the slaves.  This was sixty years before the missionary movement started in England under William Carey.  Before 1732 there had been a few brave men of other churches who had attempted to carry the Gospel to the heathen, but the Moravians were the first Protestants to undertake missions as a church enterprise.