Noting that the New Testament does not advocate retaining the elaborate rites and liturgical spaces of Old Testament Judaism, the Brethren tradition emphasizes simplicity in its design of the worship space. The Table, with its bread and cup, are the only symbols present.
The Moravians were never ambitious to become a great church, but in proportion to their numbers they surpassed all other Protestant bodies in foreign missions. At a time when missionary work was scarcely conceived by other Christian denominations, they were undertaking the most heroic tasks in such difficult countries as Greenland, Lapland, and the West Indies, though they had small resources and their missionaries were mostly untrained. The time came when they had more than twice as many members on their foreign mission fields as in their home churches. America proved an asylum for the Moravians, as it did for so many other religious refugees. They mostly settled in Pennsylvania, where Zinzendorf visited and organized them with churches, schools, and industries.
Count Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf, the founder of the religious community of Herrnhut and the apostle of the United Brethren, was born in Dresden in1700. It is not often that noble blood and worldly wealth are allied with true piety and missionary zeal. Such, however, was the case with Count Zinzendorf. In 1731 Zinzendorf resigned from all public duties and devoted himself to missionary work.