ABSTRACT
The first early modern Protestant mission outreach across the Atlantic was started by German Pietists of the Moravian Church under the leadership of Count Ludwig Nikolaus von Zinzendorf. This chapter considers aristocratic manhood, the basis of its power, and its cultural representations and governance within the Moravian Church in Europe and in its missions to indigenous people across the Atlantic. He also instigated significant theological changes. Zinzendorf's political governance of the Moravian Church was created and sustained through close male aristocratic networks which enabled him to govern the Church and his household by creating important bonds of exclusive aristocratic male homosocial association and later fictive kinship ties to enact his authority as pater familiars over both. This section argues that Zinzendorf's notion of governing masculinity was supported by his theology of Christocentric worship, the humanity of Christ's body and his sexuality.
