Paper short abstract:

Amidst heritagization of its townscape, a Protestant congregation in Denmark, tackles its own and others' engagement with its past, present and future. This paper examines how Moravians of Christiansfeld produces and authorizes its religious practices and knowledge of its past as heritage.

Paper long abstract:

In the summer of 2015, Moravian Christiansfeld in Denmark was inscribed to UNESCO's World Heritage List. The prestigious recognition meant that not only did the historic environment of the village become an object of outside attention from state agencies, cultural experts and tourists, so did the religious practices and values of the local Moravian congregation. Based on ethnography from Christiansfeld, the paper examines how heritagization affects religious practices and knowledge production about the Moravian Brethren's past. By showing how Moravians reject the idea of re-enactment, the paper reflects that Moravians constituents in Christiansfeld distinguish between performances of "enactment" and "re-enactment" where they affirm a more general attitude towards religious engagements with the past. This distinction is made by the community in the face of actual and potential expectations of tourists and heritage professionals. These are attitudes and arguments which stem from a general Pietist privilege of religious experiences posited in Christiansfeld against staged experiences as sources of knowledge about Moravian identity and pasts. Here the paper considers that the rejection of re-enactment may be read as a rejection or resistance by Moravians against being seen as objects of heritage and tourist gazes.

As a matter of control and affirmation of identity, these claims against re-enactment engage increasingly challenged conceptions of time, knowledge and religious practices of the community. In the end, the paper suggests that by rejecting re-enactment, during processes of heritagization, the community demarcates a "sacred remit of practices and relations" that belong only to itself.