Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
a diSappointing Confirmation
Eberhard and his sister Clara had high hopes when they first joined church
confirmation classes, so their disappointment was all the greater when the
instruction proved to be just as boring and laboriously pious as the religion classes
in high school. The confirmation itself brought no kind of revelation either. Carl
Franklin Arnold had arranged a relatively simple celebration for the occasion. 12
A godmother from Berlin came to visit them, and as a secial treat they rode the
short way home from the church in a carriage. In the afternoon a few friends of
Clara and Eberhard joined them. There were harmless games in the drawing room
and folk songs sung in harmony.
When it was all over, Eberhard must have sought out his father again. He
had a question to ask: could confirmation – the affirmation of faith – become
a personal experience, and if so, how? But Carl Franklin Arnold was unable to
provide a satisfactory answer. As a child in the Gildemeister household in Bremen,
Eberhard’s father had undoubtedly encountered a heartfelt, cheerful piety. His
foster parents and their relatives had followed the traditions of the bible scholar
Samuel Collenbusch13 and the Bremen minister Gottfried Menken. 14 Carl
Franklin Arnold had adopted his foster parents’ resect for these role models – he
subjected his wife and children to endless readings from old sermons by Menken.
But the Gildemeister’s natural and carefree faith remained foreign to Eberhard’s
father. He always had a deep reverence for God and his commandments, and felt
obliged to strive in all earnestness for personal holiness and moral improvement.
Carl Franklin Arnold could send hours meditating over a text from the Psalms
or wrestling with God in prayer over the most profound concerns of humanity. At
such times he would shut himself into his study. When he left it hours later, the
children often saw that their father was crushed and depressed. Carl Franklin
Arnold obviously found neither strength nor joy in prayer. He could tell his son
nothing different: he won certainty of forgiveness, even of eternal salvation, only
in this hard and painful manner – through continuous wrestling in prayer.
Through his confirmation Eberhard became more keenly aware than ever before
of the social abyss between the educated, proserous elite and the simple workingclass
people. The manner in which his family dressed sparked this awareness. Only
the upper crust could attend church as they did – for confirmation, Eberhard
wore a new black suit and Clara a white dress. Poorer children did not have
secial clothes for secial occasions. Eberhard found this unjust and decided that
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