Bruderhof Communities

The Bruderhof Communities (German: place of brothers) are Christian faith-based 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.

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.

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 opposition to the death penalty. 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.

Bruderhof today

The Bruderhof movement has continued to grow, and membership is more than 2,500. The largest Bruderhof has over four hundred members; the smallest has less 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.

The Bruderhof today is lead by Heinrich Arnold's son, Johann Christoph Arnold, who acts as a spiritual leader and the literary face of the Bruderhof through a number of published books and advocacy.

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. One attraction was the Bruderhof Museum at the Woodcrest Bruderhof which was designed, built, and staffed by Bruderhof high school and college students. The museum housed exhibits illustrating the community’s 80-year history spanning five generations and four continents. The museum is no longer in existence, however, due to a community decision to convert the room into a place of meeting: The Brotherhood Room.

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 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. Some are still available on the Plough website in ebook format as well as occasional articles. The Plough is no longer operational, however, due to a community decision to focus its efforts elsewhere.

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 and have marched, in recent years, for the abolition of the death penalty and an end to the war in Iraq.

Since the 1990s, Heinrich Arnold's son Johann Christoph Arnold has brought Bruderhof values into the mainstream through public speaking, websites, and a number of bestselling books on forgiving, marriage and sexuality, parenting, prayer, dying with dignity, and peacemaking.

Cult accusations and external conflict

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. For the most part, however, the surrounding communities are at peace with Bruderhof neighbors.

Accusations have been made that the Bruderhof acts like a cult. These accusations were made by a sociologist, Julius Rubin, who wrote a book on the subject after interviewing ex-members and researching Bruderhof history. Oddly, he has never visited a working Bruderhof, despite being invited, and has never interviewed current members.

External links

The Bruderhof had an extensive collection of Internet sites until December 2005, when they took them down and replaced them with a few short pages with information on how to contact them offline. Remaining official sites:

• Bruderhof Communities - The Official Website - Now only includes address and phone number of the Rifton, NY community.
• Bruderhof Foundation - Includes basic foundation information, donation instructions, and instructions on receiving annual report
• The Bruderhof in United Kingdom - Address and phone number of the community in East Sussex, UK
• The Plough - Plough is the publishing house of The Bruderhof Foundation.

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