The Moravians Who Sang Through the Atlantic Storm

On January 25, 1736, a violent storm struck the ship carrying John Wesley across the Atlantic toward the colony of Georgia. Waves crashed over the deck, splitting the mainsail. English passengers screamed and clutched one another as water poured below deck. Wesley, an ordained Anglican minister, felt his own faith buckle under the weight of genuine terror.

But in the middle of the chaos, he noticed something that changed his life. A group of Moravian Christians, twenty-six men, women, and children huddled together in the hold, were singing psalms. Not shouting prayers of desperation. Singing. Their voices rose steady and unhurried beneath the shrieking wind, as though the storm were accompaniment rather than threat.

Wesley pushed through the lurching corridor and asked one of them afterward, "Were you not afraid?" The man looked puzzled. "I thank God, no," he replied. "Our women and children are not afraid to die."

Wesley wrote in his journal that night a devastating confession: "I went to America to convert the Indians, but oh, who shall convert me?"