Latest in a series of posts on the Arts in Bethlehem 
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It’s back!
“The Hidden Seed” premiered at Touchstone Theatre’s Festival UnBound in 2019.
“We mustn’t abandon the promise of unity. We mustn’t abandon the promise of the hidden seed . . . The hidden seed is planted in every generation because those who want justice keep it alive . . . We did it . . . and now we are here to pass it on.”
Three 18th century female Bethlehem ghosts — a formerly enslaved West African woman, a Native American woman, and one of the original Moravian immigrants from Europe — agree to tell everything, the whole story of the Moravian settlement of Bethlehem not just the happy parts, without lying.
Yes, everything . . . the whole story . . . not just the happy parts . . . without lying.
“They [we in the audience] will only understand if you tell them the whole story, the whole truth.”
Like about Gnadenhutten, the Moravian Massacre.
Do you know Gnadenhutten?
96 Christian Native Americans killed at the Moravian Mission of Gnadenhutten, skulls crushed with mallets to save bullets.
This anguished cry of a distraught Native American teller cracks the smooth surface of pious Moravian history.
So, everything . . . the whole story . . . not just the happy parts . . . without lying.
Did you know there was slavery in Bethlehem?
Our rather matter-of-fact African American teller bluntly pierces the “miracle” of good treatment rationalized by the European with the hypocrisy of “You believed you could own us.”
“The seeds of our failure were sown side-by-side with our dreams.”
So much for Utopia. Maybe best that it be forgotten.
Or is the hidden seed of equality and unity still available to us?
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