August Gottlieb Spangenberg

[1] Spangenberg took an active part in a religious union of students, supporting free schools for poor children established in the suburbs of Jena and in training teachers.

In 1730, Spangenberg visited the Moravian colony at Herrnhut and 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.

[1] At first Spangenberg went to Jena, but Zinzendorf sought to secure him as a fellow labourer, though the count wished to obtain from him a declaration which would remove from the Pietists of Halle all blame with regard to the disruption.

Spangenberg went to Herrnhut and found his life work with the Moravian Church, becoming its primary theologian, apologist, statesman, and corrector over a lengthy 60-year career.

[citation needed] For the first thirty years of his career, from 1733 to 1762, his work was mainly devoted to the supervision and organization of the extensive missions in Germany, England, Denmark, the Netherlands, Suriname, and elsewhere.

One of Spangenberg's special endeavors was in the Province of Pennsylvania in what was then colonial-era British America, where he brought the scattered followers of Caspar Schwenckfeld into the Moravian faith.

He helped raise money to defend the Thirteen Colonies during the Seven Years' War, and wrote as an apologist of the Moravian Church against criticism from Lutherans and Pietism.

In 1777, Spangenberg was commissioned to draw up the Idea Fidei Fratrum, a compendium of the Christian faith of the United Brethren, which became the accepted declaration of the Moravian belief.

"He provided several texts to justify this position, writing that Jesus suffered the loss of glory and the pains of human life and death in order to save all people.