Also known as Church Communities International and Bruderhof Communities, the Bruderhof is an intentional Christian community of nearly three thousand people living in 23 settlements on four continents, including families and singles who have renounced private property and share everything in common, as did the New Testament Church.
The Bruderhof was founded in Germany in 1920, in the aftermath of World War I, by Eberhard Arnold, his wife Emmy, and her sister Else von Hollander. The group left Berlin and moved to the remote village of Sannerz, where they started a community. Facing persecution by the Nazis due to their refusal to salute Hitler, serve in the military, or accept a Nazi school teacher, the group moved to England 1937. When England adopted a policy of internment of enemy aliens in 1940 and 1941, the Bruderhof moved to Paraguay, the only country willing to accept a multinational group of pacifists in wartime.
In the early 1950s, the first American Bruderhof was founded in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York, and other communities were founded in Europe. Today, the Bruderhof has locations in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Paraguay.
The Bruderhof is a Christian community, strongly influenced by Anabaptist and early Christian beliefs and practices. The Bruderhof and the traditional Hutterites were in fellowship between 1930 and 1955, and again between 1974 and 1990. Although the Bruderhof and the Hutterites are both peace churches, and both hold property in common, the groups have grown apart in several areas, including education, leadership, decision making, church discipline, ecumenism, and what constitutes the Word of God, with the Bruderhof becoming more secular, and involved in political issues in recent years, largely due to the Bruderhof's acceptance of a large number of members from outside of the Hutterian tradition. Their official web site even states that they are less religious than other church groups.
Recommended Resources
The official site of the Christian communal communities, whose legal name is Church Communities International, relates a history of the movement, and a description of life in any of its communities, including family and daily life, work, education, and its policies of sharing assets, as well as its outreach programs and visitor policies. An interactive world map shows the locations of its settlements, and promotional videos are available.
http://www.bruderhof.com/
Michael Caine tells stories of his life as a British war orphan sent to live with the Bruderhof in Paraguay. He tells several stories of his life with the Bruderhof in Paraguay, and later in South Dakota, and of some of the people he remembers during this period of his life, and among these stories are those of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of Bruderhof leaders. A gallery of photographs is included.
http://www.bruderhoforphan.com/
Born in 1883, Eberhard Arnold founded the Bruderhof communities in 1920. Maintained by the Bruderhof, the site features a biography of Mr. Arnold that was written by his widow, and first published in 1953. Writings, essays, and transcriptions of lectures by Arnold are posted to the site, along with quotations, and synopses of eleven book written by Eberhard Arnold that are available for purchase from The Plough Publishing House.
http://www.eberhardarnold.com/
Also known as Heini, Johann Heinrich Arnold was an elder of the Bruderhof community movement and the author of several books on Christian living, at the time of his death in 1982. Heinrich was seven when his parents, Eberhard and Emmy Arnold, founded the Bruderhof. A biography of J. Heinrich Arnold is posted, along with several of his readings, synopses of his books, and links to where they can be obtained from The Plough Publishing House.
http://www.heiniarnold.com/
Born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1917, Jane Tyson earned a degree in English from Smith College, taught school, and married Robert Allen Clement, a Quaker attorney and fellow pacifist, in 1941. In 1954, the Clements moved to Woodcrest, a Bruderhof settlement in Rifton, New York, and remained members of the Bruderhof for the remainder of their lives. Her poems and stories are published here, along with photographs, and a biography of the poet and author.
http://www.janetysonclement.com/
Soundcloud: Bruderhof Communities
The Bruderhof is an intentional Christian community. Audio files on various topics related to the Bruderhof can be heard here, including accounts of Bruderhof weddings and why they celebrate Summer Solstice, and answers to questions of why they live without money, the compatibility of science and religion, the problem of guilt, what is a person’s worth, and the Bruderhof and the Benedict option.
https://soundcloud.com/bruderhof
The publishing house of Church Communities International (Bruderhof) offers free e-books in several languages, categorized by language and subject, as well as access to articles from other Plough Publishing magazines and publications. Plough Quarterly, its magazine, may be subscribed to, and its online bookstore offers church biographies and memoirs, devotionals, poetry, literary fiction, spiritual classics, and children’s books.
http://www.plough.com/
