Welcome to the Lehigh Valley Landmarks with Leon podcast series, celebrating 250 years of independence. I'm your host, Rachel Leon. Since being elected in 2022 and serving as Vice President of Bethlehem City Council, I'm humbled by the opportunity to serve the diverse communities that make up our great city. But to understand where we're going, we need to understand our past. Each week, I'll share a short feature with a big story about the 250 years that made the Lehigh Valley and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, known as the Christmas City, as we explore historic landmarks.
Founded in 1745, the Moravian Book Shop on Main Street in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is the oldest bookstore in America, and the oldest continuously operating bookstore in the world. With literacy central to the Moravian culture, that should come as no surprise. The Moravian commitment to literacy profoundly shaped their mission, communal life and educational philosophy.
The Moravian Church traces its origins to the 15th century reformer Jan Hus and the Hussite movement. Jan was born in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, and later studied in Prague. The main point of the Jan teachings was to reform the Catholic Church by emphasizing scripture, challenging clerical corruption and abuse of powers, and the right of all Christians to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. His rejection of an ignorant clergy and the selling of indulgences placed biblical literacy at the core of the movement's identity. In 1415, Jan was arrested and accused of heresy and burned at the stake. His death caused outrage, and it was viewed as an injustice that led to the Hussite movement. A group of Jan's followers fled Moravia and settled in Saxony, Germany, in the village of Herrnhut. They would become known as Moravians.
In 1735, the first Moravian missionaries arrived in North America to minister to various groups of people. Among the first key figures who would establish a Moravian settlement in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was David Nitschman, Wendell Neisser, Count von Zinzendorf, and August Gutlib Spangenberg. The Reverend Spangenberg was known among the Moravians as brother Joseph.
The Moravian settlement was established as a general economy that operated as a communal economy. In exchange for individual labor, the church would provide food, clothing, shelter and medical care. The importance of religious devotion and economic success were not conflicting forces, but were were inextricably linked and mutually reinforcing. It was Brother Joseph's idea to sell religious books to reiterate the proper Christian spirit. He tasked Samuel Powell, who was the innkeeper at the Crown Inn, to open the bookshop. Bucher, in German, means books, and in 1745, the first bucher shop opened and operated as a general store and also sold essentials along with stationery and cloth.
In 1822, the Moravian Book Shop began printing a quarterly Moravian Church publication called The Missionary Intelligencer. By 1856, it was printing a weekly newspaper called The Moravian. That same year, the Moravian Book Shop briefly moved to Arch Street in Philadelphia, where it served as a bookseller and printer. In 1871, the bookstore moved to the church's publishing facility near the Central Moravian Church on Main Street in Bethlehem. At this location, there was a print shop and lending library. In 2015, The Moravian Book Shop opened a second location in Center City, Allentown, only to see it close in 2017.
In 2018, The Moravian Church, Northern Province, handed over control of the bookshop to the Moravian University. The day-to-day operations are handled by Barnes and Noble College Booksellers. The Moravian Book Shop is located at 428 main street in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Information for this episode was provided by the Moravian Church Archives.
