August Gottlieb Spangenberg

August Gottlieb Spangenberg (15 July 1704 – 18 September 1792) was a German theologian and minister, and a bishop of the Moravian Brethren. As successor of Count Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf, he helped develop international missions, as well as stabilize the theology and organization of the German Moravian Church.

Spangenberg was born in Klettenberg, now a part of Hohenstein, Thuringia, where his father, Georg Spangenberg, was the pastor and ecclesiastical inspector. Left an orphan at the early age of thirteen, the young Spangenberg attended the gymnasium (secondary school) at Ilefeld. In 1722 he went on to the University of Jena to study law. Prof. J. F. Buddeus took him into his family, and arranged a scholarship. Spangenberg soon abandoned law for theology, took his degree in 1726, and began to give free lectures on theology.

He also took an active part in a religious union of students, in supporting free schools for poor children which they established in the suburbs of Jena, and in training teachers. In 1728 Count Zinzendorf visited Jena, and Spangenberg met him. In 1730 he visited the Moravian colony at Herrnhut. He founded a "collegium pastorale practicum" for the care of the sick and poor at Jena, which the authorities broke up as a "Zinzendorfian institution", seen as a challenge to the state. Spangenberg visited the Moravian colony, whose approach appealed to him.

Meanwhile, his free lectures in Jena were widely accepted. Gotthilf Francke offered him the post of assistant professor of theology and superintendent of schools connected with his orphanage at Halle. He accepted the offer in September 1732. But differences between the Pietists of Halle and him became apparent. He found their religious life too formal, external and worldly. They could not sanction his comparative indifference to doctrine and his tendency to separatism in church life.

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