Early devotees of the Lutheran apostate turned ‘Spiritualist’ Casper Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1489–1561) were able to live out their faith in the rural seclusion of Silesia. Schwenckfeld's heterodox beliefs were rarely adopted systematically by his followers, but they bound themselves together as coreligionists nevertheless. Initially the conventicle served as a singular locus of culture formation for would-be Schwenkfelders; however, greater forces of religious politics soon came into play. Lutheran anti-Schwenkfelderism was piecemeal, although far from insignificant. Catholic anti-Schwenkfelderism had become a feature of diocesan policy by 1590. Schwenkfelder responses to such phenomena mixed practical resistance with bouts of polemical defiance shot through with eschatological prophecy. Over the course of the seventeenth century these experiences were a factor in driving the Schwenkfelders to constructive interactions with other heterodox groups. By the 1690s at least two Schwenkfelder envoys were acquainted with the Halle Pietist Phillip Jacob Spener (1635–1705). This did little to ingratiate the Schwenkfelders with the Lutheran Church, which continued a line in ad hoc anti-Schwenkfelder persecutions. In 1717 Catholic authorities decided that the Schwenkfelders were not actually covered by the terms of religious toleration established by the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). It was then decreed that the Schwenkfelders had to either to succumb to the forces of Jesuit mission, or face being eradicated.

Having had a request for asylum refused by the Mennonites of Amsterdam, a slender tradition of Schwenkfelderism in the towns of Görlitz and Vicinity combined with the offer of protection from Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–60) to allow a few hundred Schwenkfelders temporary refuge in Upper Lusatia, Saxony. Here, the Schwenkfelders prospered for a time without persecution; yet, it soon became clear that they were the subject of a battle for converts between the Lutheran Church and the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine, of which Zinzendorf was a formative agent. Public toleration of the Schwenkfelders proved a bridge too far and when Fredrick August ii succeeded his father as Elector of Saxony in 1733 measures were put in place to banish the group. Feelers were put out to gain a sense of where the Schwenkfelders might next find sanctuary. Zinzendorf had contacts with Moravians in the British colony of Georgia and some Dutch Mennonites now appeared willing to be more accommodating; however, the most enticing option was to join the small group of Schwenkfelders who had already relocated to Pennsylvania. By 1737 a preponderance of Schwenkfelder exiles, comprising assorted family groups and totalling around two hundred individuals, had crossed the Atlantic to take part in ‘the holy experiment’.

The Schwenkfelders welcomed the freedoms that Pennsylvania had to offer but were troubled by religious pluralism. Participation in the rural economy ensured that material needs were met with relative ease, although meaningful wealth remained largely out of reach for the time being. Circumstances dictated that the Schwenkfelders struggled to settle close to one another in a single area and this meant that they were left to sustain their faith within the context of the household. George Weiss (d. 1740?) was elected head of the Schwenkfelders and busied himself by travelling to different families to catechise and enforce discipline. However, the Schwenkfelders remained susceptible to Moravian missionaries now stationed at the Bethlehem settlement at Pennsylvania, co-founded by one Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf. When these challenges were set against the upheavals of the Seven Years War (1754–63), the Schwenkfelders responded by making a more concerted effort to organise themselves into a meaningful society. In both civil and religious matters the Schwenkfelders became more enterprising. Affable and affluent figures such as Christopher Schultz (1718–1789) and Christopher Kriebel (1724–1800) took a lead and found respect amongst not just their fellow Schwenkfelders but members of local Quaker, Mennonite and Pietist communities too. The events of war then helped to crystallise bonds of solidarity and engender identity-affirming activism within and between these groups. An increased sense of communality amongst Schwenkfelders was then institutionalised through the first General Conference of 1762 which paved the way to a formal constitution for the Society of Schwenkfelders, Pennsylvania, in 1782 (later formalised as the Schwenkfelder Church in 1909).

As Horst Weigelt's long and fruitful career has been crafted through German-language publications, it is exciting to see how Von Schlesien nach Amerika: die Geschichte des Schwenckfeldertums (2007) has been followed by Migration and faith. In this regard, anglophone scholars who have not been able to engage with Weigelt's earlier work will certainly be appreciative of this monograph. The book itself is ‘old-school’ church history: driven by an interest in the causes and consequences of historical change, it is tightly focused on the religious politics that gave life to the transitional and translocational development of Schwenkfelders between the early sixteenth and the late eighteenth century. Here, the historical narrative is capped by a more analytical consideration of how ‘the traditional faith of most of the Schwenkfelders who immigrated to colonial Pennsylvania experienced a deepening and strengthening through their migrations’ whilst also exhibiting a closer relationship ‘with other religious beliefs and forms of piety’ (p. 185). Despite working with a narrowly defined method, a tight thematic focus and some slightly outmoded evaluative paradigms, Migration and faith chimes with recent scholarly advances and challenges informed readers to ask daring questions. Reformation processes and dialectics were seemingly alive and kicking in the eighteenth century and patterns of migration translated these phenomena to Colonial Pennsylvania, arguably as part of a history of transatlantic and global Protestantisms. Following the intervention of Bridget Heal and Anorthe Kremers (eds), Radicalism and dissent in the world of Protestant reform (2017), scholars can and should do more to establish lines of research that are not beholden to the division between ‘radical’ and ‘magisterial’ expressions of ‘evangelical reform’. It is also time to question whether the historiographical construct of ‘Spiritualism’ is still fit for purpose. Notwithstanding these points, Migration and faith is surely limited by a scholarly approach that largely avoids the social, cultural, theological and literary complexities of identity formation. The historical contingencies at play in defining the designation ‘Schwenkfelder’ prior to 1762/82 are such that plotting a sense of a ‘traditional’ – albeit evolving – faith and piety is not necessarily as straightforward as Weigelt makes out. It should also be noted that Weigelt's study shows remarkably little interest in engaging with vast swathes of secondary literature on numerous and various topics of import (for example, reformation refugees, transatlantic Protestantism and eighteenth-century patterns of religious association – works such as Philip Lockley [ed.], Protestant communalism in the trans-Atlantic world, 1650–1850 [London 2016] offer something of a formative contrast). That said, Migration and faith is unquestionably an accessible, well-researched book that offers a sensitive and informative history of the Schwenkfelders.