Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
at the front. Professor Schaeder’s theme boiled down to one point: for a Christian,
patriotic duty represented “service to God and service to Christ.”
In the Small Wartime Newsletter for Academics Eberhard summed up this
seech:
It revealed with ruthless clarity the terrible burden of conscience that the war means
for all of us; it stated plainly the whole difficulty of the problem of how to reconcile
participation in the war with the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. Clear and
convincing proof was given that in the world we live in today, organic life can, in all
instances, achieve its development only through mutual strife and the expulsion of
competitors.
To put it plainly the body of Christian scholars did not look to Jesus for a standard
by which to judge the war – they looked to Darwin. The strong devour the weak.
And in this case there was every confidence that, in the final analysis, Germany
would be the stronger side. That was in August 1916. Then, the bloodbath of
Verdun swallowed one division after another. And on the eastern front the forces
of the Central Powers retreated with heavy losses from the Russian offensive at
Brussilow.
ChangE
For a long time Eberhard swam with the broad current of popular sentiment. And
yet, though hard to pinpoint, there is a trace of uneasiness in many of his reports.
On his visits to various universities he observed that the war was weakening
the student groups and that bible study and prayer groups were dying out. He
complained that relationships within the groups were growing looser and less
committed. 24
But it was Emmy who pointed out to him that some of the “gifts of love” and
other writings from the Furche Publishing House proclaimed a bit too German of
a gosel. In Die Furche, some authors were beginning to adopt an ugly, anti-Semitic
tone. They slandered the Jews even as Jews and Christians fought side by side in
the trenches for emperor, nation, and fatherland. In the publishing house Eberhard
had to listen to Dr. Niedermeyer’s declaration: “Dr. Arnold, there’s no time for
inwardness now. It is war, war, and again war, Dr. Arnold!” On Eberhard’s regular
visits to military hospitals in Berlin he listened as wounded soldiers confessed their
agonizing feelings of guilt and distress of conscience. The superficial solutions
recommended by various articles in Die Furche and by seeches at the SCM
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