When visitors come to our unique and historic town, they see within the town stone buildings unlike any others in New Jersey.  Hope owes its existence and characteristic stone architure to the Moravian Church which established one of their religious settlements here in 1769.  The structure of these exclusive communities (you had to be a church member to live in them) lasted for nearly a century. They have been described as ‘Protestant married monastic communities’ – all your needs, physical and spiritual were addressed and your primary focus was on the mission of the church.  However, because of economic hardship, the Moravian community in Hope was ended on Easter Sunday, April 17, 1808.  On that Sunday the residents gathered for their last service at their church (now the First Hope Bank)and the congregation followed their pastor to the cemetery, now next to St. John’s United Methodist Church, where they offered a final prayer over the graves of 62 persons who had died during the days of Moravian Hope.

 

On May 6, 2007 The Moravian Unitas Chorale of the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania performed at St. Luke's Church.  Prior to the concert The Rev. Dr. David A. Schattschneider, Dean and Vice President Emeritus of the Moravian Theological Seminary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania gave a talk about the history of the Moravian Church and the the settlement they established here. For a copy of his informative talk, please click on the map.