01-17-2006, 08:36 PM
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Religion: Christian - LDS
Title:BANNED
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Join Date: Nov 2005
Gender: 
Posts: 18,629
Frubals: 855920
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History
- The Bruderhof claim that their roots go back to the time of the Radical Reformation of early 16th century Europe, when thousands of Anabaptists left the institutional church to seek a life of simplicity, brotherhood, and nonviolence. A branch of this movement was known as the Hutterites named after the leader of the movement, Jacob Hutter. The Hutterites settled in communal villages or Bruderhofs ("place of brothers") in Moravia. [4]
Eberhard Arnold the founder of the Bruderhof became General Secretary of the Student Christian Movement in Germany soon after finishing graduate school. As a result of this he was exposed to a variety of social movements and embarked on a mission in search of religious expression that lasted several years. It eventually ended with him renting a farm at Sannerz in 1920 where he founded a religous community. The original membership consisted of only seven adults, but eventually grew to more than forty members by 1926 and outgrew the Sannerz farm. [1]
Arnold moved part of the group to the nearby Rhoen mountains. Here he discovered that the Hutterites, a group that he had studied intensely and knew a great deal about, were still practicing and living in North America. In 1930 he traveled to meet them and while there he was ordained as a Hutterite minister. Upon returning to Rhoen he set about the process of Hutterization in his own group. Since his first encounter with them in 1930, communication between the two groups has remained open. However, acceptance of the Bruderhof has been inconsistent among the various Hutterite groups. A separation due to irreconcilable differences occurred in 1950 between the Lehrerleut and Dariusleut Hutterites and the Bruderhof. This separation continues even today. [1]
Little conflict occurred within the community or with society until 1933 when Hitler came to power. Early the following year the community moved some of its members, mainly draft-age young men, to Liechtenstein and created the Alm Bruderhof. The next year Eberhard Arnold died at age 52. The fact that the group felt unsafe in Liechtenstein compounded with their unwillingness to follow Nazism. This caused them to leave Germany and go to England. There they founded the Cotswold Bruderhof in 1936. The Cotswold Bruderhof eventually came to house the members of the Rhoen and Alm Bruderhofs also. In 1937 the Rhoen Bruderhof was closed by the German govenrment and in 1938 the Alm Bruderhofs left Germany also. That same year the community founded a second hof (communal village) in Oaksey, England were its population grew to over 300 members. [1]
When England entered the war against Germany the government of England chose to intern any German persons within the country. The group which now consisted of both German and English persons decided that they did not want to be separated in this way and looked elsewhere to live. Eventually after being denied access to live in Canada and the United States, the group moved to Paraguay between the years of 1940-1941. By 1953 the group had grown to a size of 700 members and had established three separate colonies at a site they called Primavera. Sometime later, the most liberal of the North American Hutterites, the Schmiedeleut Forest River colony in North Dakota, invited them to join them against the general Hutterite sentiment. Approximately 36 members of the Paraguayan Bruderhof did indeed join them and subsequently were accused of trying to take over the entire Schmiedeleut branch of Hutterites. As a consequence of this action many Hutterites, including the preacher, left the community. In 1955 Schmiedeleut preachers gathered together and excommunicated the Bruderhof and placed the Forest River colony on probation. [1]
In 1954 the group was allowed permission to come to the United States. In the United States the group set up its first Bruderhof, called Woodcrest in Rifton, New York. In 1961 a number of internal problems arose with the result that all the Bruderhofs outside of the United States shut down. Do to the internal problems which arose as many as 300 persons left the community during this time for various reasons. Some left on their own voluntarily and others were expelled from the community. Since their departure from the group, a number of former members have formed a network of correspondence designed for mutual support and comparisons on what they feel are the shortcomings of the Bruderhof communities. [1]
A huge stepping stone for the ex-members came in 1989 when Ramon Sender, a former member himself, started a newsletter known as KIT (Keep in Touch). In the late 1950's Ramon and his wife joined the Bruderhof but soon discovered the community was not to his liking so he left. His wife did not agree with him and stayed at the community with their daughter, Xaverie Sender Rhodes. Ramon and his wife eventually divorced and communications between him and his daughter practically did not exist. Visits and letters to his daughter were disallowed by the Bruderhof leadership. However in 1988 he no longer tolerated the situation when he learned that his daughter had died of cancer a month earlier in the Woodcrest Bruderhof in New York. As a result of this unexpected event, Ramon started the KIT newsletter which focuses mainly on grievances of ex-members concerning the abuses they believe they experienced while in the Bruderhof community. [1]
In 1973 Heini Arnold formally apologized for the incident which occurred with the Forest River colony in the 1950's. The following year the Schmiedeleut ministers voted to re-admit the Bruderhof to their church. However, in 1990 the Dariusleut and Lehrerleut Hutterite leaders excommunicated the Bruderhof. They presented ten disagreements that the Hutterites had with the Bruderhof to Christoph Arnold which addressed unhutterian practices on part of the Bruderhof. [1] Among these unhutterian practices were presentations of babies to the church, putting on plays that imitate parts of scripture, and lovemeals. [5] Over the years the Bruderhof has continued to grow even in the face of controversy and now consists of eight communities in the United States and two in England with over 2,500 members. The communities in the United States can be found in New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. [3]
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