Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the WindChapter fifteen“The mystery of the kingdom of God is that itencompasses both polarity and universality.All questions come together into one centralquestion.”Spoken to winifred bridgwater.a ChurCh or thE ChurCh?179Hitler and the new state challenged the Bruderhof and faced it with questions.At almost the same time, the community had to deal with a question of quitea different character. Leonhard Ragaz wrote a letter on February 22, 1933,addressed to “Eberhard Arnold, Hans Boller, and their closest friends.” Ragazsounded genuinely disturbed. He asked point-blank, “Isn’t it the case that youare not simply ‘a’ church, but ‘the’ church?…Do you believe that the Hutterianbrothers, taken as a whole today, constitute ‘the’ church?” – and, in the same breath,he urged them to “holy sobriety” and strongly warned against “fanaticism.”What had happened? On the face of it the question seemed to have beenprovoked by the disintegration of the Werkhof, a Swiss Christian communitysettlement. The Werkhof was by no means the first community experiment ofits type in Switzerland. Earlier a religious-socialist group had lived in communitynear Lake Zurich. Ragaz had identified very closely with these settlements, all themore so because, out of consideration for his wife, he had never taken the step ofjoining their communal life.The Werkhof had been founded in 1930 by three young married couples. Maxand Eva Lezzi knew the Rhön Bruderhof; they had stayed there for some time andhad gathered much valuable experience about community living. When anotheryoung couple, the Kyburg pastor Hans Boller and his wife Else, made plans to jointhe Werkhof in 1931, the Lezzis advised them to spend time at the Bruderhof first.The Bollers went to the Rhön and after a few weeks decided to remain there. Thismeant that the Bruderhof had deprived Leonhard Ragaz of both a zealous discipleand a friend – or at least that was how he felt about it. 1