Edward Rondthaler was an American bishop of the Moravian Church.
In 1928 he also published The Memorabilia of Fifty Years, a series of papers he had issued at the close of each year, in which he discussed local and international affairs from 1877 to 1927.
Background
Edward Rondthaler was born at Schoeneck near Nazareth, Pennsylvania, United States, the great-grandson of Emanuel Rondthaler who had been a Moravian pastor in Sarepta, Russia, emigrated, and then became pastor at York, Pennsylvania. The boy's father was Edward Rondthaler, also a Moravian pastor. His mother was Sarah Elizabeth (Rice) Rondthaler of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania .
Education
In early childhood his parents were sent in succession to take charge of the churches at Graceham, Malyland. , and at Philadelphia, and his elementary education was acquired in private schools in the latter city.
In 1853 he was sent to Nazareth Hall for five years and then entered the Moravian College and Theological Seminary, at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania , of which his father had been president at the time of his death in 1855.
Edward received his bachelor's degree in divinity in 1862.
For a year after graduation he studied theology and philosophy at the University of Erlangen, Bavaria, and returned to America in 1864 to become a teacher at Nazareth Hall.
Career
In 1865 he was ordained a deacon and given his first charge at Brooklyn, New York, United States, where a burned church edifice had very nearly extinguished the life of a small congregation.
In six years his sympathetic and forceful attitude had reunited the congregation and rebuilt the church, and when he left Brooklyn in 1873 he was considered one of the most promising young men in the Moravian group. He remained in Philadelphia for four years and was then called to Salem, North Carolina to the pastorate of the mother congregation of the southern province, where for the rest of his long life he devoted himself to the revival of the physical and spiritual forces that had been sadly weakened by the Civil War and the later Reconstruction. From 1884 to 1888 he was the head of the Salem Academy and, after that, president of the provincial governing board for thirty-five years. During this time he continued his increasingly arduous duties as pastor of what he called the "Home Church. " Through his administrative genius a group of half a dozen disunited and struggling churches was changed into a closely knit federation of four times the number of members, practically dominating the life, both social and spiritual, of the Wachovia region. On April 12, 1891, he was consecrated a bishop, the ceremony being conducted by three bishops, Van Vleck, Levering, and Bachman. His strength lay in his ability to control and to inspire those who came into contact with him. His devotion to spiritual ideals and his uncanny ability to sense the potentialities of an economic situation were combined with an infinite tact and patience. He used these gifts at a critical time in the development of Winston-Salem to reorganize and direct social forces that otherwise might have worked themselves out in futile cross-purposes. When Winston-Salem, the largest industrial city in North Carolina, had grown out of the little village of Salem, his directing share in the unusual development of the community was recognized at a great civic assembly, at which with the presentation of a loving cup he was proclaimed the "first citizen. " Yet what he prized above all social honors was scholarship; and when he had passed the usual span of life he still laid aside knotty administrative problems to find rest in the plays of Aristophanes or in the solution of problems in calculus. In 1928 he published The Memorabilia of Fifty Years, a series of papers he had issued at the close of each year, in which he discussed local and international affairs from 1877 to 1927. After his death there was published an Appendix to the Memorabilia of Fifty Years (1931).
His strength lay in his ability to control and to inspire those who came into contact with him. His devotion to spiritual ideals and his uncanny ability to sense the potentialities of an economic situation were combined with an infinite tact and patience. He used these gifts at a critical time in the development of Winston-Salem to reorganize and direct social forces that otherwise might have worked themselves out in futile cross-purposes. Moreover, he possessed a magnificent voice of great range and power, which enlarged his audience and widened his circle of influence.
Connections
He was married on October 1, 1867, to Mary E. Jacobson of Bethlehem, who with a son survived him.