Be Fruitful

Be Fruitful… Commentary by Johann Hinrich Claussen Cite Share Show Bible Passage Read by Ben Quash The first Protestant missionaries to set out from Germany commissioned an astonishing painting. It may not be a masterpiece of art, but it is nevertheless of epochal significance. The Moravian Church was founded in Saxony in 1722. Just ten years later, in 1732, the first of the Bohemian Brethren travelled overseas. They meant their mission to be free of imperialist interests or racial prejudices. However, it was impracticable without the help of the colonialist system of the time, on which it necessarily relied. In 1747, in order to present their missionary project at a great synod, Johann Valentin Haidt, a painter and minister, created a group portrait that perhaps for the first time depicted people from overseas as individuals—and not wholly as ‘exotic’ types or racist clichés. The painter knew all of them by name and many even personally. The picture shows the twenty-one ‘first fruits’, that is, the first to have died in the new faith. They are gathered around Christ in heaven, carrying palm branches as a sign of their victory over death. An angel to the left of Christ brings more branches for those who are yet to come. An angel above Christ holds a verse from Revelation in his left hand: ‘these have been redeemed from mankind as first fruits’ (14:4). Missionaries are not represented in the picture. Light-skinned figures are also absent, apart from Christ and the angels. This painting proclaims the belief of the Moravians that all human beings have the same dignity before God—that is, that God makes no distinctions according to origin, skin colour, gender, age, or social status (free or enslaved). It tries to imagine a global Christianity in which those who were not generally considered worthy of being painted by the Western colonialist societies of the eighteenth century are invited to join Christ and his angels in a celestial group portrait. However, there is also something disturbing about this painting—apart from the conspicuous whiteness of Christ and the angels. After all, these children, women, and men were brought to Germany from South and North America, Africa, and Asia without much consideration for their welfare or personal wishes—and thus put in extreme danger. Most of them died within a year or two of their arrival in Europe, mainly from infectious diseases. This gives the words ‘first fruits’ a bitter ambivalence. References Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, Pa. 2007. ‘Haidt’s Painting of the First Fruits,1747, March 2007’, This Month in Moravian History 17 Kröger, Rüdiger. 2012. ‘Die Erstlingsbilder in der Brüdergemeine’, in Unitas Fratrum. Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Gegenwartsfragen der Brüdergemeine, 67/68, Herrnhut: 135–163. Tasche, Andreas. 2021. Durchdringt die Welt mit meiner Liebe. Wie die Herrnhuter Mission den ‘Missionsbefehl Jesu’ verstanden hat und ihm nachgekommen ist, (Dresden-Wilschdorf)