The Christian Munsee are a group of Lenape (also known as Delaware), an Indigenous people in the United States, that primarily speak Munsee and have converted to Christianity, following the teachings of Moravian missionaries. The Christian Munsee are also known as the Moravian Munsee or the Moravian Indians, the Moravian Christian Indians or, in context, simply the Christian Indians. As the Moravian Church transferred some of their missions to other Christian denominations, such as the Methodists, Christian Munsee today belong to the Moravian Church, Methodist Church, United Church of Canada, among other Christian denominations.[1]
The Christian Munsee tribe has produced several people who have become notable figures in Christianity and the Delaware Nation as a whole, such as Gelelemend (a Lenape chief), John Henry Kilbuck (a Moravian Christian missionary to the Native peoples in Alaska), Papunhank (a Moravian Lenape diplomat and preacher), Glikhikan (Munsee chief, Moravian elder, and Christian martyr), and Washington Jacobs (a chief of the Moravian of the Thames reservation).[2]
Present-day Christian Munsee communities include Moravian of the Thames, the Christian Munsee tribe in Kansas, and the Stockbridge–Munsee Community.[3][4]
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
St-Denis2005was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Ricky, Donald (1 January 2009). Native Peoples A to Z: A Reference Guide to Native Peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Native American Book Publishers. p. 1211. ISBN 978-1-878592-73-6.
- ^ "The History of the Kansas Munsee". The Kansas Munsee. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
- ^ Obermeyer, Brice (2009). Delaware Tribe in a Cherokee Nation. U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-2683-8.