Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
seem all the more perverse. 25 In this same chapter he wrote of a new community
of people to be gathered from all the nations – the church of Jesus Christ – thus
repudiating the idolization of the nation state. Eberhard went on to seak of Jesus
Christ as the “opposite of all earthly rulers,” and declared the inherent conflict
between exercising governmental authority and living the likeness of Christ. He
called upon people to refuse military service, to be conscientious objectors who
reject all participation in war, and to love their enemies. 26
“Light and Fire” carries Eberhard’s statement: “Whoever gets ready for the
expectation of his kingdom – Jesus’ kingdom – prepares himself in spirit for
martyrdom’s baptism of fire.” With the early fourth-century martyr Methodius
he said:
Fleeing the cunning Serpent’s
thousandfold flatteries,
I endure the firebrand’s flame
and the dread onslaught of wild beasts,
to await Thy coming from heaven.
Jesus Christ, Eberhard declared, is the “one and only leader” for Christians to
follow – their one and only Führer.
Only a few months after the chapter was published (“Light and Fire” first
appeared as a separate booklet) Eberhard’s stand would be put to the test. Would
it prove to be nothing but empty words and wasted breath, unable to withstand
the storm of evil engulfing a whole society? Or would it be a conviction built on
rock, strong enough to stand firm against the wind?
today thE JEwS, tomorrow thE ChriStianS
Even today, decades after World War II, many people still assert that right until
the end of the war nothing was known about the crimes of National Socialism,
that the true characer of Hitler’s regime was hidden from ordinary people. Either
this assertion is a conscious lie or else it is psychological denial. How else could
it be explained that in a remote settlement at the edge of the idyllic Fulda valley
everyone knew what was going on two months after Hitler seized power?
Good Friday 1933 came two days after the Reichstag had passed the so-called
Enabling Act, and two days after Adolf Hitler’s address to the Reichstag in which
he finally dropped his mask of resectability. 27 On this day the brotherhood of
the Rhön Bruderhof gathered to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Each member had a
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