Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
neighboring communities, an area two to three miles wide and fourteen miles
long – a “state within a state,” a “communal principality,” he called it. He could not
understand how the rich communities could look on quite undisturbed while
poorer communities struggled for economic survival, and he did not hide his
feelings. At several communities he told them, “Today the devil is using much
subtler ways to lead you astray with his accursed property. Instead of tempting
you with private property, he is getting at you through collective property…Only
one thing can help you: transfer any rights of ownership to the whole group or
body – fully, entirely, and forever.” The brothers and sisters listened to him with
intense interest: “The sharper my words, the happier and more thankful they are,”
he wrote. But of course nothing changed overnight.
This was all a part of the contradictory impressions Eberhard received from the
Hutterian communities in America. In general they were extremely hardworking
and thorough, full of exuberant life, and a living tradition. Yet in a few areas he
sensed weariness, sluggishness, and fatalism. This was connected with such details
as the fixed amount of petty cash given to travelers – money they did not have to
account for. Eberhard saw this as a loophole for the little devil of private property
to wiggle through. This lukewarmness also showed up in the failure to appoint
a common elder for all three groups. The servants of the Word were simply
unable and unwilling to revive the bishop’s office. It also showed in the Hutterites’
complete neglect of and indifference to mission work during the seventy years
since their emigration to America. As a result the thirty-three colonies were now
peopled by the descendants of only fifteen clans and extended families. In vain
Eberhard called them back to the first centuries of Anabaptism, the days when
Hutterian communities had devoted great effort to mission. “You urge us to do
mission, but your Bruderhof with its guests is already a mission station,” they
responded. The American Hutterites had no understanding at all of Eberhard’s
words on this topic.
ordination
If Eberhard’s eye had not grown worse his circuit through the communities might
well have continued for several more weeks. Ironically it was Eberhard’s painful
sickness that caused the Lehrerleut and Dariusleut elders to realize that he had
been tesed sufficiently. This brought them to sit down together at the same table
for the first time in twelve years. On December 8, 1930, the elders and leaders
of the Alberta Hutterites met at the Stand Off community and agreed to unite
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