Three forerunners stand out as defining influences on our communal life and as guides for our future:

The early Hutterian Church. This communal church arose in central Europe after 1525 when the Anabaptists Felix Manz, Conrad Grebel, and Georg Blaurock set the Radical Reformation in motion by accepting believer’s baptism. Soon tens of thousands were following them, despite a bloody campaign of persecution. Unified by the Schleitheim Confession, they championed freedom of conscience and a return to original Christianity in obedience to Jesus’ words in the Gospels, rejecting armed force, infant baptism, and the institutional churches.

One sector of this movement, known as Hutterites after their leader Jakob Hutter, settled in communities, sharing money and possessions, work, housing, and a common daily life founded on brotherly and sisterly love. Zealous to spread the gospel, hundreds suffered martyrdom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

In the 1920s, the founding members of our community took inspiration from the witness of the early Hutterites, and made contact with their descendants living in North America. In 1930, Eberhard Arnold was ordained as a minister by all branches of the Hutterian church.

At present our community is not affiliated with the Hutterian colonies. We nevertheless seek to live in the same spirit as the original Hutterites during the time of their first love and active mission (1528–1578). We treasure the Hutterian chronicles and spiritual writings – for example, those of Jakob Hutter, Peter Riedemann, Ulrich Stadler, and Peter Walpot.1

The Blumhardts. Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–1880) and his son Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842–1919) were widely known German Lutheran pastors. Both men approached all questions of life – whether the personal needs of those they counseled or broader social and political ills – with the conviction that Jesus is victor. They fervently expected that God’s kingdom would soon become a reality on earth, bringing redemption not just to an elect few but to all humankind.

The Blumhardts’ bold attitude of faith and expectation of the kingdom continue to inspire and guide us.2

The European Youth Movements (1896 –1925). Our community was founded in the midst of a wave of youth movements that swept Germany, Austria, Poland, and Switzerland in the years preceding the rise of National Socialism. Though the young people in these movements held diverse political and religious views, they shared certain common convictions. They rejected materialism and the formalities of social and class-based conventions in favor of genuineness, freedom, equality, and simplicity. They loved hiking, the outdoors, folk culture, and life on the land. Many of them pioneered new approaches to education and work, and – influenced by Jewish philosopher and pacifist Gustav Landauer – saw community as the answer to poverty and social need. By the early 1920s, youth movement ideals were being lived out in more than a hundred communities across Germany, as well as in kibbutzim founded in the Holy Land by the Jewish branches of the movement.

By 1925 the youth movements in Germany were on the wane, and political affiliations were robbing them of their earlier independence. After 1933 they were destroyed by Hitler’s regime, which co-opted their energy for its own ends. But their original genuineness and rigor, their emphasis on simplicity and respect for creation, remain essential to our community today.

Our particular movement will pass away, but the stream of life to which it belongs can never pass away. We want to remain part of this living stream of God’s spirit. This is possible only through an ever new encounter with Christ. As a church community and as individuals, we constantly need times of refreshing through him. God is the Lord of history; as he has ordered the destinies of the nations through the ages, faithfully caring for his covenant people, so he will continue to move and act today. We await his future: the day when he will fulfill all his promises, establishing his kingdom of peace and renewing creation.

* This online version of Foundations is for reference only. For the authoritative version, see the print edition.