Slavery and the Moravian Church

Moravian involvement with slavery in North Carolina began in 1769.

It began when a given African man asked the Moravian Church in North Carolina to buy him. They did. Not only so but they offered him responsibility, education, and membership in the Moravian Church. He even was permitted to purchase his freedom.

There are buildings in Old Salem standing today which were places where slaves resided or worked such as the Single Brothers House, Miksh House, Volger House, and Salem Tavern. 

Salem is also remarkable for schools and other institutions that featured integrated settings. God’s Acre, the cemetery, in the 1770’s buried enslaved Moravians with Moravians of European descent and Salem Academy and College admitted its first African American female in 1785. This is extraordinary for the South. 

As the decades wore on into the 19th century the relationship between slaves and the church became more and more similar to their non-Moravian neighbors. Alas.

To the credit of the Moravian Church an apology has been offered for the Church’s role in slavery in 2006. Daniel Crews the Moravian archivist said: “The acceptance of slavery and the adoption of more ‘American’ ideas about African Americans is the low point in the story of the Moravians in the South.”