These Anabaptist Christians are less concerned with changing society than seeking the lowest place.

The first major presentation of the Christianity Today Institute will appear in the April 19 issue on the subject “The Christian As Citizen.” It includes the thinking of some of evangelicalism’s most insightful theologians and practitioners on a subject of critical importance to the church.

In anticipation, we are featuring two articles on the relationship of faith to public life: the first, presented here, explores a unique example of a classic Anabaptist position; the second, an article by Stephen Monsma in the next issue, deals with the direct involvement of Christians in the political process.

The year was 1933, and Germany was a country eagerly looking to the future. Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists had pushed aside the shaky Weimar Republic, and the dark days of great poverty and lost national honor that followed World War I seemed already to be fading into the past. Even the churches were swept up in the enthusiasm of a new beginning. “Our national leaders now explicitly confess their loyalty to Christianity and Church …,” rejoiced the Federation of Protestant Churches. The defeat of communism appeared decisive, and church leaders praised the rebirth of “patriotic awareness, true national community, and religious revival.” All of Germany could now look to the future with confidence and a renewed sense of divine mission.

Even as the church fanned the flames of nationalism, a small community of Christian believers living in the Rhön mountains began to raise their solitary voice against the Third Reich. On November 12, 1933, members of the Bruderhof movement, led by founder Eberhard Arnold, refused to vote yes in a carefully watched Nazi plebiscite. (For a review of Arnold’s writings, see p. 48.) On signed ballots, every Bruderhof adult explained that their allegiance was to Jesus Christ, whose kingdom was the standard by which all governments were judged. Four days later, over 100 Nazi storm troopers surrounded the tiny community and ransacked their buildings in search of nonexistent weapons. It was the first of many head-on confrontations with the Gestapo, but the members of the Bruderhof were determined to remain in Germany as long as the government allowed. “It will depend on who holds out the longest,” said Arnold. Amid daily hardship and the constant threat of exile to concentration camps, the 150 members of the Bruderhof carried on their mission of living in Christian unity and providing shelter for people seeking a deeper spirituality than that offered by German state churches.

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From the very beginning, the Bruderhof had faced overwhelming obstacles. In the year of its origin, 1920, all of Germany was on the edge of economic and political collapse. Lost national honor, high unemployment, staggering inflation (by late 1923, it took billions of German marks to buy one American dollar), and widespread hunger had crushed the German people. The credibility of the Christian church was seriously undermined by its wholehearted support of the war, and young and old alike were crippled by disillusionment.

In the midst of this devastation, Eberhard Arnold, his family, and a small band of friends sought to witness to the unquenched power of Jesus Christ by following the communal path of the early Christian church. Arnold’s own spiritual roots were in the Student Christian Movement, a mission arm of Dwight L. Moody’s revivalism, and in the nineteenth-century “religious-social” movement, a Protestant renewal combining personal piety with social concern. By mutual agreement, members of Arnold’s new community held all property in common, dressed modestly, upheld the sanctity of marriage and family life, educated their own children, and followed the example of the early Christians by refusing to participate in military service. The atmosphere of the Bruderhof was one of joyful simplicity; its members combined a love of nature and four-part singing with a firm commitment to following the radical precepts of the Sermon on the Mount. Shelter was given to numerous underprivileged and orphaned children, and a cheerful welcome was extended to thousands of guests. Financial support for the community came from small-scale publishing and farming, and from donations.

Despite severe poverty, constant hunger, and a period of serious internal disunity, the Bruderhof survived and increased in number. Eberhard Arnold died in 1935, and in 1937 the Gestapo ordered all members of the Bruderhof to leave Germany. In the years to come the winds of war blew the tightly knit community from Liechtenstein to England, and—at the height of U-boat activity—across the Atlantic Ocean to Paraguay. At every step of the way, the Bruderhof grew in size, although several adults and 20 infants died in the harsh tropical climate of Paraguay. Finally, in 1961, the entire community immigrated to the United States.

Today, the Bruderhof has over 1,200 members in four communities in the eastern United States and England. Many of their original members are still alive, and the present-day Bruderhof follows much the same path as the early Rhön community. Property is held in common, dress is modest, men do not participate in military service, and children are taught in community schools until the eighth grade, when they enter public schools. The Bruderhof is self-supporting through the production of children’s toys (Community Playthings) and Rifton equipment for the handicapped, and members work at a variety of community jobs, including shop work, child care, kitchen service, and gardening. Housing is provided in large buildings with individual family units, and most meals are taken communally in a central dining hall.

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The early education of Bruderhof children is of particular interest. Classrooms are brightly colored and festive, and instruction includes not only basic skills, but pottery, singing, painting, woodworking, and foreign language training. Children learn to work and play together at an early age, and their self-discipline and love of life is apparent even to the casual visitor. “The children of the Brothers give special delight,” said Malcolm Muggeridge, a neighbor of the Darvell Bruderhof in England. “Their eyes express the wonder of life rather than the fantasies of a TV screen, and their voices, when they sing, harmonize with the birds. In our village we rejoice that they should be with us.”

Membership in the Bruderhof requires a lifetime commitment, and young people who grow up in the community are encouraged to spend one or two years outside the Bruderhof (often in job training) before choosing community life. The hospitality of the Bruderhof is warm and genuine, but no effort is made to recruit new members. “We do not want to persuade people with smooth words or build a big church,” says one Bruderhof elder. “Our task is not to call people to the Bruderhof, but to follow Christ more completely. If, in this effort, it is given to us to challenge others to live a more radical discipleship, then that is a great joy.”

In keeping with the early vision of Eberhard Arnold, the community is formally united with the Hutterites, and their outward mission is determined not by political inclinations (members of the Bruderhof do not vote), but by their commitment to take the Bible seriously in every area of life. Currently, the Bruderhof operates a temporary shelter for the homeless, and is involved in local prison ministry as well as overseas missions. A small magazine, The Plough, expresses Bruderhof views on issues as diverse as abortion, prostitution, divorce, and the nuclear arms race.

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In the following interview, members of the Bruderhof in three communities in the United States (Rifton, N.Y.; Farmington, Pa.; Norfolk, Conn.) speak to many of the issues facing them as an “early church” community seeking to live faithfully in the twentieth century. The interview was conducted both in small discussion groups, and in large meetings, where members of all three communities participated via telephone hookup.

The Bruderhof was born in war-tom Germany, and much of your early lifetogether was shaped by a sense of impending crises. How do you perceive the current situation in the United States, and what role do you see for yourselves?

For every generation of Christian believers, the task is always the same: to hear the call of God and answer the challenge of the time in which we live. In Germany, there was a hard struggle with the spirit of hate and destruction, and we felt a call to maintain a witness for peace as long as we could. We built houses and a print shop, and worked in our fields with real jubilation, as if we were going to change the world. We did not speak words of hate against Hitler or the Nazis, but we tried to witness by our daily life that we were going a different direction, the way of Jesus and brotherly love.

Today, as then, we believe our task is to live in a way that is completely opposed to the spirit of the age. And once again we are standing in the hour of decision, before questions of life and death. Mankind has the armaments and the hatred to destroy all of God’s earthly creation. The spirit of nationalism has been revived, and many people, including well-meaning Christians, are thinking only of themselves and the political and economic interests of their country. We have lived through one renewal of “religious feeling and patriotism,” and we know that it can be a very dangerous time.

In this climate, we believe our daily life together is still the best witness we can make. For each one personally, the challenge is to fight against those things in the human heart which make for immorality and a lack of brotherliness. For us as community, the challenge is to live in true brotherhood. We are seeking to follow the example of the early Christian church and witness by our communal life to the imminent coming of a different order—the kingdom of God.

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As an isolated community, distinct in dress and culture, what impact do you hope to make on society?

Our task isn’t to make an impact on society. Perhaps Jesus himself could have made a greater impact, humanly speaking, if he had given in to Satan’s temptation to become ruler of the kingdoms of the world. Instead, he went the lowly way, the way of the cross. It is this path we are seeking to follow.

Jesus prayed, “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” What we long for is that God’s kingdom breaks in somewhere on this earth. It is our task as Christians to work and pray for this coming, and that is why we live together. We want to witness to the kingdom in every relationship between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters. But our communities are not so important; they will pass away. What is important is that God’s kingdom breaks in, which Jesus promised. If we can be used as a tool for this, we are grateful, and don’t want to stand in the way.

How have you experienced God’s kingdom in your life together?

This is a deep matter, and we tremble to speak of it. God’s kingdom is not so small that we can define it in human words, and we do not want to seem as if we have all the answers, or that our life in Christ can be put down on paper. We are only fellow seekers of the kingdom.

Yet we believe, and have experienced, that God’s kingdom has to do with the unity of hearts and the love with which Christ loved his disciples. To experience something of this unity and love, we must in repentance go very, very low, because the Holy Spirit seeks the lowest place, like water running down. When in repentance we seek God’s kingdom, then Christ himself is present and our life together becomes an atmosphere where a deeply wounded soul can find rebirth. But the unity and love which Christ willed for his followers are never something we possess. We experience them in spite of ourselves and only to the degree that we are willing to stay in the place of repentance.

As Christians living in the world, we are citizens of two kingdoms, one of human origin and one established by God. What relationship do you see between the two kingdoms?

We don’t want to get lost in an ethereal, other-worldly kind of thinking, but the reality is that God’s kingdom breaks in upon us from outside of the present order. This kingdom has an embassy on earth now, and as Christians, our task is to live in the embassy as ambassadors in a strange land. The laws that operate in the embassy are the laws of God’s kingdom, and the loyalties we are struggling to establish are kingdom loyalties.

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As ambassadors, we are called to witness by our daily life together that it is possible for human beings here on Earth to follow completely the way of Jesus. Through repentance and the forgiveness of sins, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are commissioned to dwell in peace with one another, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to love our enemies, and to pray for those who spitefully use us.

There is an increasing movement, both on the political Left and the political Right, to identify the interests of the kingdom of God with the interests of a particular country or political party. How do you view this trend?

From our own history, we know that this politicization of the gospel can be a very serious matter. When the Bruderhof began in 1920, there was a wind of revival blowing through Europe. The suffering of World War I led to a deep movement of the heart, and a call to repentance was given to the church by the Spirit of God. One has to say that Germany, at least, missed that call. Our churches began to align themselves with political parties, and the old spirit of nationalism returned. The welfare of the kingdom of God was identified with the welfare of the nation, and then came Hitler. By that time, the Christian church was so deeply involved with politics that it was unable to see the storm clouds coming.

Whenever society is crumbling, as it is today, the church is tempted to align itself with political parties and national interests. In the beginning, this alignment seems to be a good thing, and it is justified on the grounds that the government will keep its Christian base if it is influenced by followers of Jesus. But the end reality is that the state corrupts the church. The church can no longer hear clearly the call of Christ because it is deafened by its own political interests.

To what extent do you yourselves participate in the political process?

Although we are grateful for the witness of some Christian leaders in government, we believe the teaching of the early church clearly forbade followers of Jesus to hold political office. If a man was a judge, a soldier, or a policeman, he had to choose between his profession and following Christ. The way of Jesus was not the way of human power; from the beginning to the end, from his birth in a manger to his death on a cross, Jesus went the lowly way. The only power he served was God.

In politics, it seems easy to think that human power can be used as a means to good ends. Sometimes the end is used to justify means that aren’t quite right or may even be evil. But as you continue on, often your means becomes your end, or perhaps your good end becomes something evil as you yourself are perverted by ungodly methods.

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That is part of the reason why at the present time we choose not to vote. Perhaps in the future we will see things differently, but now it seems to us that voting is an act of bestowing human power on a person and thereby becoming coresponsible for his actions. We had a close call during the election of ’64. Johnson was the dove, Goldwater was the hawk; and our sympathy for Johnson was so strong we nearly voted for him. Finally, we felt together that as people who were trying to follow the way of Jesus completely, we shouldn’t vote. As it was, Johnson did exactly the same things Goldwater threatened, only much worse.

Do you see any positive role that the church can play in politics?

It is not a matter of playing a role, but of being faithful to the gospel. We believe that, as Christians, we must respect the government of any country in which we live. We need to pay our taxes (except in cases of an isolated war tax), pray for our leaders that they may be protected in the awesome responsibility given them by God, and refrain from speaking words of ridicule or disrespect about anyone in power. From the early years of our community, we also have made it a practice to visit our government leaders, even the Gestapo, and tell them in a respectful manner what we believe.

At the same time, we believe that the church cannot remain silent when governments begin to go in dangerous directions. That was the great sin under Hitler. After the war, it came out that many Germans were killed because of their resistance, so there wasn’t complete silence. But there should have been much more of an outcry in the late ’20s and ’30s when Hitler was slowly consolidating his power.

In the current situation, we face many hard decisions. We are deeply thankful for the democracy in the United States; we know what it means to live in a totalitarian society, and we are grateful that here we have been able to live out our beliefs in peace, and teach our children. Yet we are increasingly alarmed by the direction the government is taking. We are seeking how to respond, and the questions are very difficult. What should be our reaction to all that is done in Nicaragua and Central America? How shall we respond to the continual build-up of the nuclear arsenal? Soon we may stand before the question of having to go into the army, and there are hundreds of things about which we must ask, “What shall we do?” Not just how to say no, but what must we do?

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Many Christians are taking part in organized resistance to government policies, such as civil disobedience directed at the nuclear arms industry and the giving of “sanctuary” to Central American refugees. How do you view this development?

We are thankful that an increasing number of people see these concerns not just as intellectual issues, but as matters of life and death. It is a sign of an awakening, and we must respect people when they are ready to give their lives for what they believe. Surely this is better than apathy, when the world can come to an end, and people don’t care.

At the same time, we are sensitive to what actually is our calling. To participate in violence, such as pouring blood on files or hammering nuclear warheads, is not our way. And whether or not we would break the law to give sanctuary to a refugee is not something we can decide ahead of time. If someone came asking our help, we would call the Brotherhood together and seek the way of Jesus. We cannot say in advance how the Holy Spirit would lead, but somehow our decision would not be a general flouting of the law, but an answer to a specific need. And we would act in unity, with everyone agreeing, and everyone prepared to pay the consequences.

When making community decisions of this magnitude, how do you avoid the endless debate and paralysis that frequently accompany group decisions?

It is a struggle. We are all human beings, we all love to hear our own voice sometimes, and that is not helpful in community. When there are endless debates, when everyone has to say his piece, even if it has been said before, then we stop and become quiet. We believe the Holy Spirit gives unity, and speaks the same truth to all; so if there are many opinions, and every opinion is different from the others, it is time to quit our meeting. We go our separate ways, to be alone before God, and then meet again the next day.

At the same time, the people whom we ask to take responsibility for community meetings have the task to listen to every voice that speaks. It might be someone who seldom offers an opinion, but he or she is given careful attention. It has happened on some issues; 20 or 30 people in our big circle will all speak in the same direction. We think everyone feels the same, and then suddenly someone says, “I’m not so sure.” We listen and hear something that no one else thought of, and we realize we were going in a wrong direction. This speaking up is harder for some than others, but it is a responsibility we accept when we commit ourselves to the community.

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What checks and balances operate within your leadership, and how do you allow leaders to emerge without allowing them to dominate?

The authority of the community lies in the Brotherhood, the circle of baptized believers. Each one is given a specific task, but at any time the Brotherhood can tell someone that he or she has served long enough as a kitchen worker or a shop manager, or in the role that we call “Servant of the Word.” The task given to the Servants, whose name comes from an old Hutterian term, is not to manage or direct the community, but to serve the Word, to listen carefully to the Spirit as it is given to the Brotherhood. It can happen in a meeting that the Servant or person in charge will not feel the same as several voices raised; however, his job is not to answer back, but to wait and hear what is said. He was chosen for his task not because he has the gift to be chairman, but because he knows how to listen. And actually every person in the Brotherhood has this same responsibility.

From our own experience we know that it is pure devastation when power over people comes into play. Our life is based on trust; we have given our lives to Christ and each other, and we are vulnerable. If the Brotherhood shows someone trust, and he misuses it to take power over others, it undermines our whole way of life. That is why when we are choosing a Servant, if one or two brethren say we are afraid of that brother, then he is not given the task.

This is an area in which we must all exercise great care. Jesus warned that false prophets would come from the company of believers to use human power and crush souls by misrepresenting the gospel. In such situations, both the one who dominates and those who are dominated can be destroyed. That is why we are a bit allergic to human charisma; we know that it is potentially a very dangerous quality.

What steps do you take to encourage the development of individual gifts and talents within your community?

We rejoice in the gifts that are given to our brothers and sisters, and we are grateful for all that God gives to enable us to bring his kingdom to others. But it is not healthy when individuals begin to see their gifts as the chief object of their lives. So we try to help each other use our talents as a means of service, not as a way to feel proud or set apart from others.

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One thinks of the millions of people who feel they have a gift in poetry or the arts, or any field, and certainly they do have these gifts. But often they cannot bring them to fruit because there is no working together, or because self-seeking stands in the way of a deeper vision of God’s kingdom and a healthy, sane life. We long to represent with our life together a sanity that enables each one to truly give themselves and all that they have to others. Then whatever way God wants to use us, we leave it to him to judge the fruits.

It is important to understand that we do not share the world’s values about who or what is important. In the world, the people who command respect are those who are highly gifted and perhaps start off with many advantages. Here, any work that contributes to the community is of equal value, and even if one is not able to work, he is appreciated for what he is. There is no need to try for human approval, and we would hope that everyone is free to be who God created him or her to be.

At the same time, we believe that self-fulfillment is a false hope that disappoints all those who seek it. The emphasis in the teachings of Jesus and the apostles was not on fulfilling our personalities, but on what happens among us and between us. What was important was justice and love and compassion, all those things that are so terribly missing in our world because we look at our brothers and sisters through our own eyes, and not through the eyes of God.

How do you guard against the dangers of “group think”?

Our life is built on the premise that Jesus uses us, and only by complete surrender can he take control. In this surrender, we trust that everything won’t come out gray or colorless. And in fact, we find that our relationship to Christ finds its expression in many different ways, depending on our personalities and cultural backgrounds. Uniformity only comes in when the individual heart strays from the Spirit.

We think of a recent experience with a sister who joined us in the early years, and lived among us all this time with no close relatives. In her last months, she became quite sick. Because she had no family, all the sisters took turns in her care, to cool her fever, or sometimes just to speak a few words. When she died, it was as if she was in the middle of a rainbow of many colors, where from all around her people expressed their love in many different ways. Somehow it helps us to think of our community this way; we are all the wrong color to begin with, but in our commitment to Jesus, we trust that we become the many colors of the rainbow through which he shines.

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Baptism at the Bruderhof includes a lifetime commitment to the community. Why do you make this identification between commitment to Christ and commitment to your specific community?

This is a deep question, and it has cost many struggles in our lives. We never say that a person cannot follow Christ unless he lives in community, and we urge everyone joining the Bruderhof to hold on to their relationship with God as the center of their lives.

At the same time, we look at community life as being very much like marriage. Wedding vows are down-to-earth; they apply to a specific wife or husband. You promise to remain faithful unto death to a particular man or woman, and you can’t say later (although some now do) that you made a mistake, that God has shown you the marriage wasn’t from him and you are marrying someone else.

In the same way, we believe the commitment to Christ includes commitment to specific brothers and sisters, for whom we must be ready to lay down our lives. Our first call is to Christ, but it cannot be separated from the brothers and sisters to whom we are bound. We feel it is this brotherly commitment to which John speaks when he says, “For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).

This conviction has proved very important in our history. In Paraguay, a time came when the whole community turned away from the gospel. We had the outward form and still said the right words, but the light of the Holy Spirit had left. The community became the center of our life together, and there was a great deal of legalism. Despite our failings, a handful of brothers and sisters held to the way of Jesus. They were excluded and abused by the others, but slowly they were able to call the whole community back to Christ. If instead they had decided to leave because we had strayed so far from the truth, where would the rest of us be today?

Isn’t this part of the problem that the whole church now faces? Many people commit themselves to the Lord and to a community of believers, but when things start going against their ideas of how it should be, they suddenly receive a call somewhere else. Or if they hear a call to be a missionary, they run off to start their own project. This is very dangerous. We do not want to speak too much of the Devil, but Satan comes in shining armor; and how is a person to distinguish between God’s voice and his own self-will? Perhaps the blindness of the present day is a result of the cult of the individual and self-expression, where the only thing that matters is my reaction to what I think God is telling me.

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In our community life, it does happen that one person feels a strong leading for a certain matter, and brings it to the Brotherhood, where he finds a strong echo in others. And then the important thing is that the individual who first had the burden doesn’t feel he necessarily has to be the one to carry it out. He can leave it in the hands of the community.

Emmy Arnold, wife of Bruderhof founder Eberhard, once wrote, “A life shared in common is a miracle. People cannot remain together for the sake of traditions. Community must be given again and again as a new birth.” In what ways are you experiencing this new birth today?

We know from our own history that Christian community is a miracle; it is not something we do, but something we receive. And while we want to witness by our lives to the importance of listening to the elders and learning from what has gone before, we realize that in the long run dead traditions will not sustain a living community.

In recent years, it is true, we became too concerned with our own internal problems, and lately we have been led to reach out more to others. One new beginning came when a brother realized that we were not fulfilling Jesus’ command to visit those in prison. We have been helped a great deal in this area by Charles Colson and members of the Prison Fellowship. Another beginning came when we discovered that there are a growing number of homeless people in our neighborhoods. We have also been moved to action by the problem of world hunger, and while we are still very much burdened by material goods, one of the joys of the last years is that our life is becoming simpler.

But we still have a long way to go, and it wouldn’t be right for us to say, “Now we aren’t putting ourselves at the center; we are reaching out.” We actually can’t explain how it is given, but it is a renewal from God, which we must accept in a childlike way, as a gift from him. We are still on the same bench of repentance, seeking together the kingdom of God.

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