The Bruderhof: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

Community of goods, started again in 1920 by people who had read about it.

A German communal movement founded by the theologian Eberhard Arnold in 1920, which sought out the Hutterites in 1930 and was formally joined to them, then separated, then reconciled in 1974 and again in the 1990s. Unlike the Hutterites the Bruderhof recruits, uses the internet, publishes a magazine, sends members to universities and runs two well-known manufacturing businesses. Roughly 3,000 people across about two dozen communities in the United States, England, Germany, Austria, Paraguay, Australia and South Korea.

Why it is filed this way

The Bruderhof was founded as an intentional community rather than as a church split, and only afterwards attached itself to the Anabaptist line. It is formally in fellowship with the Schmiedeleut Hutterites, which makes it a denomination by descent and a movement by behaviour — it seeks converts, publishes to a general audience, and has no territorial parish of any kind.

DeitiesThe Trinity, held without much dogmatic apparatus. The stress falls on the church as a visible body — Arnold's formula was that the incarnation must become social or it has not happened.

Founded1920 CE · Sannerz, Hesse, Germany

FounderEberhard Arnold

AfterlifeResurrection and the kingdom, expected and partly built now

TextsThe Bible · Eberhard Arnold, Innerland (1914-1936) · The Hutterite Chronicle

The map

The Bruderhof’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1517 CE Protestantism 1525 CE Anabaptism 1920 CE The Bruderhof

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

The Sermon on the Mount is a set of instructions, not an ideal. Arnold's argument in 1920 was that the church had spiritualised the Sermon in order not to obey it, and that if it is true, a group of people can simply start doing it. The Bruderhof is that argument made into an address you can visit. Go deeper — context →

Nobody is paid and nobody owns anything, including the leadership. Members receive no wage, stipend or allowance; housing, food, healthcare and education come from the common purse. The two businesses — Community Playthings and Rifton Equipment — turn over serious money, and no member has a personal claim on any of it. Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

E Eberhard Arnold — the theologian who went looking for the Hutterites. A doctor of philosophy and a lecture-circuit speaker in the German youth movement, he left Berlin in 1920 for a house in the Rhon and a shared purse. In 1930 he crossed the Atlantic, spent a year among the Hutterite colonies and was ordained by them; he died in 1935 after a failed operation on a broken leg. Domain Community of goods, the Sermon on the Mount as social orderStanding Read constantly, quoted constantly, and not venerated Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

The dining hall, every day, guests included. Meals are the structure of the day and the point at which the community is visible to itself. Singing in four parts comes before eating; several evenings a week the meal is followed by a gathering where letters from the other communities are read aloud. When Daily — the communal meal, and the gathering after it several evenings a weekWho Everyone in the community, members and guests Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Sikhism — 12 shared ideas, a different faith Hinduism — 11 shared ideas, a different faith Judaism — 11 shared ideas, a different faith Christianity — 11 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Bruderhof — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Bruderhof shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been