Global Protestant Missions and the role of Emotions

In the eighteenth century, Protestant missions became more global, and one of the earliest and fastest growing of these was the Moravian Church. The Moravians had built up an impressive geographical presence around the Atlantic rim, spanning from Greenland to South Africa by the mid-eighteenth century. Religious conversion on these missions was a drawn-out process encompassing religious, social, and emotional changes, and the performance of "appropriate" emotions was taken by missionaries as a reliable external indicator of successful internal conversion or, at least, as a readiness for baptism. This contribution explores the vital role that the emotional practices of missionaries and indigenous converts played in the establishment of new communities as part of the practices linked to Protestant missions and their connected histories in the early modern colonial world. A focus on the power relations formed in emotional practices and in emotional communities, allows us to better understand the complex interconnected histories that emerged as part of Moravian proselytization.