The Bruderhof

Movement·Founded 1920 CE·About 3,000 people in roughly two dozen communities as of 2024, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Paraguay, Australia and South Korea. The Bruderhof does not publish an audited membership figure; the count includes children and resident non-members.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → Anabaptism → The Bruderhof

Branch
Core tenet of The Bruderhof

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.

Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

Community Playthings makes wooden nursery furniture and Rifton Equipment makes mobility and seating equipment for children and adults with disabilities; both are Bruderhof-owned, staffed by members and used across Europe and North America. The money supports the communities and funds Plough Publishing, which puts out books and a quarterly magazine aimed well beyond the movement. Members are not paid, do not accumulate pensions, and hold no title to the property they live on. That arrangement produces the same asymmetry as among the Hutterites: a person who has given forty years to the community and leaves has no equity in it, and the fairness of departure settlements is one of the standing criticisms made by former members.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
M Mahapajapati — the first nun. Buddhism · figure Meet them →
C Chandanbala. Jainism · figure Meet them →
S Sun Buer. Taoism · figure Meet them →
Hipparchia chose the cloak. Cynicism · story Read it in full →
Four virtues, and no fifth thing that counts. Stoicism · precept Go deeper →
Holi — the festival of color. Hinduism · rite Go deeper →

The conversation

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