Bruderhof Communities
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The Bruderhof Communities (German: place of brothers) are Christian religious communities with branches in New York and Pennsylvania in the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia. They have previously been called The Society of Brothers and The Hutterian Brethren. The name was recently changed to Church Communities International.
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[edit] Beliefs and spiritual roots
The Bruderhof's foundation is faith in Jesus. His teachings are central to Bruderhof life - particularly the command "Love your neighbor as yourself," the Sermon on the Mount, and His teachings concerning nonviolence, faithfulness in marriage, and compassion for the poor. Bruderhof members share the beliefs as recorded in the Apostles' Creed and the Didache.
The Bruderhof follows the practices of the first church in Jerusalem, whose members were (according to the Book of Acts) of "one heart and mind, and shared all things in common." Bruderhof members do not hold private property, but rather share everything. No Bruderhof member receives a salary or has a bank account. Income from all businesses is pooled and used for the care for all members, and for various communal outreach efforts.
The Bruderhof is a peace church whose members do not serve in the armed forces of any country. Rather, they model a way of life that removes the social and economic divisions that bring about war. The goal of the Bruderhof is to create a new society where self-interest is yielded for the sake of the common good.
The Bruderhof movement draws inspiration and guidance from a number of historical streams including the early Christians, the Anabaptists, the Blumhardts, and the German Youth Movement.
[edit] The Importance of Jesus
The wishes of Eberhard Arnold, founder of the Bruderhof communities was to bring back to true meaning of Jesus and the spirit of the Kingdom of God. It was Arnold’s concern and belief that people were becoming overly satisfied with personal salvation and healing alone, in his eyes taking away the true radiation that poured out of the word Jesus.
A strong believer in the words of God, states ‘For Jesus says we must be born again in order to be received into the Kingdom of God.’ He shows what the kingdom of God means. It is at this point the concern for ones own person does away.
Arnold believed ‘This personal experience is given to me so that I may seek clarity about the whole of Christ and God’s Kingdom, a clarity which places my life into that life which is lived for the Kingdom of God’ a life which corresponds to the historical life of Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the same yesterday, today and in all eternity (Heb. 13:8) and we must become one with him and his future; we must live today as in the way Gods Kingdom will appear in the future. A firm believer in the Apostle says that the Kingdom of God is justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom. 14:17) Therefore I) it exists now; 2) it exists in Holy spirit, not in our good will and deeds; 3) it exists today in the same in which it will exist in the future: as justice, peace and joy.
A meaning which within the Bruderhof should not only be limited to the soul and its salvation, this justice is seen as an inward one, and the same is true of peace and joy. It should be a justice which reveals itself outwardly as brotherliness and as peace and love that become revealed to all men.
A lot of enthuses was placed on the passage “Enter by the narrow gate” (Matt. 7:13, NEB) meaning, ‘always treat others as you would like them to treat you’ (Matt. 7:13, NEB) It was Arnolds firm belief that this is generally overlooked and even on occasion mocked. This passage was at the forefront of all Bruderhof beliefs.
It’s these various passages that Eberhard Arnold wanted to encourage the members of his communities to live by; to be submerged into the wind of the Holy Spirit. In theory turn it will then embrace the whole world and show them the way to the Kingdom of God.
[edit] History
The Bruderhof was founded in Germany in 1920 by Eberhard Arnold, a philosophy student and an intellectual speaker inspired by the German Youth Movement in post-World War I. In 1920 he rented a house in Sannerz, Germany, and founded a religious community.
When the group outgrew the house at Sannerz, they moved to the nearby Rhön Mountains. While there, Arnold discovered that the Hutterites (a body he had studied with great interest) were still in existence in North America. In 1930 he traveled to meet the Hutterites and was ordained as a Hutterian minister.
With the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, the Rhön community moved its draft-age men and children to Liechtenstein around 1934 because of their conscientious refusal to serve in the armed forces and to accept Nazi teachers. This community became known as the Alm Bruderhof. Continuing pressure from the Nazi government caused others to move to England and found the Cotswold Bruderhof in 1936. On April 14, 1937, secret police surrounded the Rhön Bruderhof, confiscated the property, and gave the remaining community members forty-eight hours to flee the country. By 1938, all the Bruderhof members had reassembled in England.
While in England, the population grew to over 350 members, largely through the addition of young English members seeking an alternative to war. Even before the outbreak of World War II, the community’s German members and its pacifist stance attracted deep suspicion locally resulting in economic boycotts. When confronted with the option of either having all German members interned, or leaving England as a group, the Bruderhof choose the latter, and began to look for refuge abroad. Soon after England entered the war, the Bruderhof emigrated to Paraguay — the only country that would accept a pacifist community of mixed nationalities.
During the first years in the Paraguayan Chaco, Bruderhof members founded three settlements as well as a hospital for community members and local Paraguayans. The only clinic in the area, it served tens of thousands for the next two decades. By the early 1960s, the community in Paraguay had grown to about 700 members.
In 1954, the Bruderhof started a settlement known as the Woodcrest Bruderhof in the United States near Rifton, New York, in response to a dramatic increase in the number of American guests. Hundreds of new members joined, many from other communal groups across the country. Around this time, under the leadership of Heinrich Arnold, the Bruderhof reestablished the teachings of Jesus as the basis and foundation of the communal movement. He also revived the writings of his father, Eberhard Arnold, and those of Johann and Christoph Blumhardt.
New communities were also founded in Pennsylvania (1957) and Connecticut (1958). At the same time, although the Paraguayan communities were thriving, a tension between the American Bruderhofs who followed Heinrich Arnold's leadership and the Paraguayan communitarian movements resulted in the disbanding of Bruderhof presence in Paraguay. There was a shunning of many Paraguayan members due to doctrinal, theological, and ideological differences with Heinrich Arnold. By 1962, all members had relocated from Paraguay to the northeastern United States, or to England.
The Forest River colony of Schmiedeleut Hutterites in North Dakota invited the Bruderhof to join them, and about 36 members moved to North Dakota. In 1955, the Schmiedeleut group excluded the Bruderhof and placed the Forest River colony under probation. In 1973, the Bruderhof leadership apologized for the problems among the Forest River colony and in 1974 was reunited with all branches of the Hutterian Church. However, in 1990 the more conservative Dariusleut and Lehrerleut Hutterites excommunicated the Bruderhof, refusing to recognize them as Hutterites because of practices that did not conform to standard Hutterite order including sending children to public schools, the use of musical instruments, and participation in a protest march. In 1990 the Spring Valley Bruderhof was founded adjacent to the New Meadow Run Bruderhof in Farmington, Pennsylvania. In 2002 the Bruderhof purchased the house in Sannerz where the movement started. It is one of two Bruderhof houses in Germany.
[edit] Bruderhof today
The Bruderhof movement has continued to grow, and membership is more than 2,500. The largest Bruderhof has over 400 members; the smallest has fewer than twenty. Most communities have a nursery, kindergarten, school, communal kitchen, laundry, various workshops, and offices. Bruderhof life is built around the family, though there are also many single members. Children are an important part of each community and participate in most communal gatherings. Disabled and elderly members are loved and cared for within the community and participate in daily life and work as much as they are able.
Like the Hutterites, the Bruderhof members do not hold private property individually, but rather share everything in common. No Bruderhof member receives a salary or has a bank account. Income from all businesses is pooled and used for the care for all members, and for various communal outreach efforts.
Children of Bruderhof families do not automatically become members, but are encouraged to leave the community and live elsewhere before deciding on their own whether or not to join the community. Numerous guests visit the Bruderhof and all communities are open to guests.
[edit] Bruderhof enterprises
Community Playthings, a line of classroom furniture and toys, was developed during the 1950s and soon became the Bruderhof’s main source of income. It still provides the community with a livelihood today. Other Bruderhof businesses include Rifton Aviation, a private charter business, Rifton Equipment, which offers mobility and rehabilitation equipment for disabled adults and children, Spring Valley Signs, which produces hand carved wooden signs, and Clean Sheen Services, which provides cleaning and property management services.
The Bruderhof has operated a publishing house since its founding in 1920, though it is now discontinued. For the last forty years, the community has published books and periodicals under its own imprint, the Plough. Plough published spiritual classics, inspirational books, and children’s books. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many of the Bruderhof's books were available as free resources on their websites but were inaccessible for a time due to Plough's closing down their main publishing operations in 2005. However, some are still available on the Plough website in ebook format as well as occasional articles.
[edit] Involvement in the wider community
Through the Bruderhof Foundation, a charity created to support outreach and service efforts, and through individual members, the Bruderhof remains actively involved in the neighborhoods that surround its communities, and in the world at large. Bruderhof members serve on school boards, volunteer at prisons and hospitals, and work with local social service agencies to provide food and shelter for those in need of help. Through Breaking the Cycle, a conflict resolution program for schools, the Bruderhof also reaches thousands of high school students each year. They are involved with a variety of peace and justice issues.
[edit] Controversy and criticism
Because the Bruderhof communities, like other Anabaptist communitarian movements, maintain a separation between the community and the outside world, there have been conflicts with neighbors and those outside the Bruderhof. Accusations have been made that the Bruderhof acts like a cult. These accusations were formally levied by the sociologist, Julius Rubin, who wrote a book on the subject after interviewing ex-members and researching Bruderhof history although he never visited a working Bruderhof and did not contact any current members during his research.
[edit] External links
- [1] - Church Communities International official web page
- [2] A website petitioning to bring the Bruderhof websites back online.
- [3] The e-book of "Joyful Pilgrimage" - on the early history of the Bruderhof
- [4] E-book of "Against The Wind" - biographical account of Eberhard Arnold
- [5] The Peregrine Foundation - a non-profit organization assisting "families and individuals living in or exiting from experimental social groups". Publishers of the Keep In Touch Newsletter and one of the Bruderhof's most vocal and most well known critics.
[edit] References
- Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof, Markus Baum, 1998 Plough Publishing House
- A Joyful Pilgrimage: My Life in Community, Emmy Arnold, 2002 The Bruderhof Foundation
- Community in Paraguay: A Visit to the Bruderhof, Bob and Shirley Wagoner
- Encyclopedia of American Religions (5th edition), J. Gordon Melton, editor
- Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold, by Peter Mommsen
- The Other Side of Joy: Religious Melancholy Among The Bruderhof, by Julius H. Rubin
- The Joyful Community: An account of the Bruderhof, a communal movement now in its third generation by Benjamin David Zablocki
- Torches Together: The beginings and Early Years of the Bruderhof Communities, by Emmy Arnold
- Seeking for the Kingdom of God: Origins of the Bruderhof Communities, Eberhard and Emmy Arnold
