As a student, and later as publisher, lecturer, chaplain, and community leader, a constant in Eberhard Arnold’s life was his intense desire to study the Bible – alone and with others – and to put into practice what he read there, as well as his pastoral encouragement to other seekers of the kingdom of God.

Eberhard was sixteen when he committed himself to Christianity through the influence of his uncle, Ernst Ferdinand Klein, a pastor who preached a radical adherence to the gospels. Eberhard began a Bible study group with other teenage students, which grew to fifty members. His missionary zeal and strong sense of responsibility for his friends as fellow seekers consumed most of his time and energy. Besides leading the bible study group, he volunteered with the Salvation Army and was deeply troubled by the poverty and injustice that he encountered.

At university, Eberhard joined the Student Christian Movement, where he served as general secretary. The local chapter of the SCM grew steadily under his leadership, contributing to a broader revival sweeping the area, with lecture series and Bible study classes held in people’s homes.

After Eberhard’s marriage to Emmy von Hollander in 1909, the couple started a weekly Bible study meeting at their home. For the next few years Eberhard also traveled widely, giving sermons and lectures on themes such as “Jesus and the Riddle of the Future,” “Poverty and the Enslavement of the Masses,” “The Greatest Deed in History,” “Jesus as He Really Was,” and “Doubting God.”^[1] For audiences in the hundreds, he testified that personal faith in Jesus Christ gives strength for a new life, for overcoming egotism, for love – and thereby for a change in social conditions.

During World War I Eberhard made regular pastoral visits to military hospitals in Berlin where he listened as wounded soldiers confessed their agonizing feelings of guilt and distress of conscience. These encounters proved instrumental in his change from a patriotic supporter of the German cause to an ardent pacifist.

Amid the social upheaval following the war, Eberhard became convinced that the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount were intended to be lived out in the here and now. This belief led him and Emmy to form a Christian community settlement with likeminded believers which became known as the Bruderhof. Under his leadership the community grew to 150 people. Seeking unity with other believers, he established a partnership in 1930 with the Hutterian Brethren in America.

With the changes in his community from a fledgling movement to a growing church, Eberhard could see the dangers of hierarchy, order, and an emphasis on form. He urged members of his community to constantly think outside of the structures they were becoming accustomed to, and to remember why they were doing what they were doing – as a vehicle to support apostolic mission.

Within the community, he emphasized his leadership role as being subjugated to the role that the Holy Spirit played in guiding their movement. Revelations from the Holy Spirit, he argued, would always be new but would never contradict the Bible. In his pastoral work, he pushed those in his care to realize that the Holy Spirit speaks first into individual lives and then through individuals into the life of the church.

Eberhard shepherded the Bruderhof until his death in 1935.

1. Markus Baum, Against the Wind (Walden, NY: Plough, 2015), 51.