Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
a vocation as a fellowship or student worker.” Their only concern was to prevent
his baptism.
All these ideas and schemes were shoved into the background by a turn of events
that, up to this point, neither Eberhard nor Emmy had seriously considered.
Examination dEniEd
Right up until the beginning of August 1908 everyone accepted as a matter of
course that Eberhard would sit for his first theology exam that fall – and he was
the most firmly convinced of them all. In March of 1908 he had applied to sit
for the examination and, when the affirmative response arrived on April 6, he
received the news ecstatically and enthused over his allotted examination theme:
“The subject is simply splendid, one of the most suitable I could have been given…
And the sermon, too, has a wonderful text for someone like me who wants to
live as a sower of seed for God’s kingdom.” 17 Eberhard convinced his parents that
the countryside would be the only place where he could find the undisturbed
concentration he needed for studying. At the end of May he went to stay in Bebra
at the family home of an SCM friend. The environment did him good: “I am as
if renewed in this atmosphere pervaded by the spirit of God.” In addition, Emmy
had just returned to live with her parents in Halle, and so “had moved much,
much nearer” to Eberhard. He had finished writing his thesis by mid-July and had
handed it in to the theological faculty of Breslau University.
Suddenly, complications came from an unexpected source. During a visit
to the Arnolds in early August by Dr. Genrich, the head official of the Breslau
church council, Clara Arnold casually referred to her brother’s intentions about
baptism. Carl Franklin stated his conviction that his son’s baptism would never,
under any circumstances, take place. Dr. Genrich then intimated that, although
it was against his official duty, he would make no use of this information, since a
candidate was granted permission to sit for the examination on the assumption
that he was willing to serve within the state church. How Eberhard, miles away
in Bebra, learned of this discussion is not known, but it remains a fact that he
caught wind of the incident. Consequently, on August 8 he reported to his fiancée
that “for the sake of honesty I had to include in my application…that after the
examination I was going to leave the church and receive believer’s baptism.” Two
weeks later, he wrote again on the same topic: “Honesty demanded that I add my
additional statement about baptism…It would have been hypocrisy and cowardly
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