The Moravians Who Sold Themselves Into Slavery

In 1732, two young Moravian men named Johann Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann stood on the docks of Copenhagen with a radical plan. They had learned that enslaved Africans on the island of St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies had no access to the Gospel — plantation owners forbade outside preachers from speaking to their workers. So Dober and Nitschmann resolved to sell themselves into slavery to reach them.…