In this article, I will focus on the Moravians’ economic practices in three different locations; namely, in relation to their early mission to Greenland in 1733, to their beginnings in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (1741), and in the foundation of one of their later settlements in Christiansfeld, Denmark in 1772. As the title indicates, a change takes place in Moravian economic practice, which I argue is connected to their respective local contexts. The change, or development, is thus both slow and experimental, which is a process that is sometimes lost in summaries of Moravian entrepreneurship, as in the following quote from Gisela Mettele’s important work on the global nature of Moravian Protestantism:

1 This article is based on a conference paper at the conference ‘What Would Jesus Fund?: Financing Religious Enterprises in the Long Eighteenth Century ‘, organized by Renate Dürr and Lionel Laborie, and held at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, 9-10 February 2017. The paper has been revised for this journal issue. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer and the journal editors for constructive criticism which helped improve a rather untidy argument.