Beeson Podcast, Episode 354
Peter Mommsen
August 22, 2017

Announcer:	Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George.

Timothy George:	Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. Well, today we're coming from New York City, where I have the privilege of having a conversation with my friend Peter Mommsen. Peter is a member of the Bruderhof community. We're going to talk about that today. He's also the editor of Plough Quarterly Magazine, a wonderful publication, the author of a book about his grandfather, whose name was J. Heinrich Arnold. Just a fascinating story, and I wanted to introduce Peter to you and also, through him, the Bruderhof community. So welcome to the Beeson Podcast, Peter.

Peter Mommsen:	Timothy, it's a joy and an honor to be together here today.

Timothy George:	Now, I guess we should tell people that we've gotten to know each other through the work of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, and that's kind of what brought us into communication with one another. But I've been fascinated to know about the Bruderhof community. Tell us, what is the Bruderhof community?

Peter Mommsen:	Sure, gladly. "Bruderhof" literally is a German word, so that's where it was founded. "Bruderhof" means "place of the brothers," brothers and sisters. It was founded as an Anabaptist community, international community with 23 settlements around the world, four different continents. It was founded in 1920 in Germany, right after World War I, as a response to the horrors of that war, seeking an answer in Jesus' words, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount, and inspired by the book of Acts, the first church in Jerusalem, that shared all things in common, was of one heart and one soul, and sought to proclaim the gospel through that way. So that's our inspiration, not in the sense of imitation, but that's what we feel our calling is: living together. So we share everything, we live in community of goods; I don't have a paycheck, I don't have any possessions. It's families, it's singles, and that's been our story.

Timothy George:	Now, the key figure in the beginning was Eberhard Arnold-

Peter Mommsen:	That's right.

Timothy George:	... who I think was your great-grandfather. Is that right?

Peter Mommsen:	Yeah, that's right.

Timothy George:	Tell us about him and his vision, way back in the 1920s in Germany.

Peter Mommsen:	Eberhard Arnold was a half-American, half-German who grew up in Germany, however; grew up Lutheran. He was a big part in the revival movement that swept through Germany and many other countries at the beginning of the 20th century. Of course, there's big revival movements as well in Scandinavia, in Wales, in Korea, and in the United States at that time, and in Germany as well. And through that, he got to know his future wife, Emmy von Hollander, and her sister Else, the three founding members of our community.
	Shortly before World War I, he became increasingly dissatisfied with what he saw as the established church's approach to living out the gospel, and particularly, that was sharpened through World War I when Germany's religious leaders across the board, including in the evangelical circles, blessed the war, blessed nationalism, literally blessed the weapons, and turned a blind eye to the incredible suffering, particularly of poor people, during that war, and that drove him and his wife and many others to search in the Scripture. So the result was that they discovered the Anabaptist movement of the 1500s, the radical wing of the Reformation, as it's been called, and particularly the way brothers and sisters in those early years of the Reformation lived in full community as an answer to the question, "How should we live together as a church in such a way that our love to each other is visible to the world around us?"

Timothy George:	So I think it's fascinating that he reaches back into the Reformation era and finds these Anabaptists, and in a way, uses that as a model, as an inspiration?

Peter Mommsen:	I think it was one of many inspirations, and I think it's also something that just happened. So, through searching Scripture, they became very convicted that they needed baptism as believers, so that was the first step, and that was a tremendously wrenching step for them.

Timothy George:	Because they were all Lutherans, [inaudible 00:04:21]?

Peter Mommsen:	They were all Lutherans, and to leave the church was considered social suicide. In fact, Eberhard's wife's mother threatened literal suicide if she would follow through on this step. That was still considered something you didn't do. And then, at the same time, of course, they didn't want to become their own little thing, or a strange sect living off in the corner, so they looked for, "Where are our spiritual roots? Where has God worked in history in a way that we can connect to?" And they found that in the early Anabaptist movement.

Timothy George:	What role does the Bible play in the Bruderhof community?

Peter Mommsen:	Well, it's absolutely central, as with, I think, everyone coming out of the Reformation, and certainly the Anabaptist wing of the Reformation. It was a return to the Bible, to the example of the first believers, and most of all, to Jesus Himself, His words, taking them for what they say, and not trying to explain them away. So what was very convicting, particularly to Eberhard and the early members of the community, was, as I said, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 through 7. What does it really mean to live in such a way that I don't care for tomorrow? That my treasures are not on this earth, in terms of my bank account? That I share freely with anyone who asks of me? That I turn the other cheek, that I don't have enemies, that I pray for my enemies?
	These are things that had real hands and feet — they weren't just beautiful ideas for them — and they sought ways of living that out, and they found that ... Again, not in a sense of sort of blind imitation, "Let's try to be Acts 2 and 4 Christians as if we live 2,000 years ago, when we don't," but rather, here was an example, as recorded in the book of Acts, of a church that tried to form a different way of living together in which it would be possible to live out the Sermon on the Mount and not say, "Oh, it's an impossible ideal. We don't want to ... We need to find theological excuses for why we don't actually need to do this."

Timothy George:	You know, I think it was Lesslie Newbigin who said that the hermeneutic of the gospel today is the church, is the community of faith, and people will look at us and judge the truth or falsity of the Christian faith by what they see in us. And it seems to me, that is very important to the Bruderhof idea, this sense that the community is the embodiment of the gospel in our time.

Peter Mommsen:	I think Lesslie Newbigin's thought is very, very close to Eberhard Arnold's, as well. There was other influence as well, I hasten to add. Particularly, they were very much in the same circles as Karl Barth, and as Leonhard Ragaz, and others in what was then called the Religious Socialist movement, which is a bit of a misnomer. You think sort of political socialism, but it was a way of reacting to this otherworldly gospel that had been preached, that they felt led to a divorce between how you lived your life as a Christian and what you said you believed.

Timothy George:	Now, this period we're talking about, in the 20th century, the 1920s and '30s in Germany, as we know, the time of the Weimar Republic, followed by the rise of Nazism. Hitler came to power in 1933. Place the story of the emerging Bruderhof community in terms of that conflict, and in particular, the role of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in this.

Peter Mommsen:	Sure. Dietrich Bonhoeffer came from a background actually very similar to Eberhard Arnold's, so their biographies are somewhat similar: both from what was then the eastern part of Germany, both growing up in Lutheran households, academic households. And there was an encounter with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, actually, and the Bruderhof, first in London in the early '30s, and then later again, and some back and forth, at the time when he was seeking, "How does Christianity get lived out?" This is his Costly Discipleship and Life Together period, and he was very taken with Gandhi and the ashrams in India, he wanted to go out to India. He was looking for forms of where stuff was being lived out.
	The Bruderhof, of course, had been founded in 1920. Hitler came to power in 1933, and instantly, the Bruderhof was under suspicion for a whole bunch of reasons. There was people of Jewish descent in the Bruderhof, so that was suspect. There was people with mental disabilities that became increasingly also an issue. And a big one, the Anabaptist commitment to peace, to nonviolence, to what's politically called pacifism. None of the men in the community would serve in the army, and there was mandatory conscription after 1934. So the Bruderhof shipped out all its kids out of Germany already in ... End of 1933, and then shipped out all the conscription-aged men in 1934, and there was a gradual process of economic strangulation that was practiced on the rest of the community by the regime up until 1937, when the Gestapo finally invaded and dissolved it as a "communist nest" under the Reich order for the suppression of anti-regime organizations.
	Bonhoeffer, the relationship with Bonhoeffer actually kind of petered out. He went to Finkenwalde and poured his energy into that, and then, of course, his life took a different turn, as is documented in the different Bonhoeffer biographies. But I always think it's intriguing, of course, his thought, particularly in The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, is super sympathetic to what we're trying to do.

Timothy George:	You know, he was criticized by his mentor, in some ways, Karl Barth, and others for trying to create at Finkenwalde a neo-monastic movement.

Peter Mommsen:	Right.

Timothy George:	And you sort of have to think, in a way, that he was being informed by the Bruderhof, by these other Quakers and others that he was in touch with, in ... How do you do Christian community? How do you live together as believers in Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters, in a common life? So I think he must have learned something from the early Bruderhof community.

Peter Mommsen:	Well, I know ... We know that he had quite a few of the publications — the Bruderhof actually began with a publishing house before there was a community — and so there was certainly an exchange of literature that he would have had access to.

Timothy George:	Now, I want to shift and ask you about your role. You're the editor of the Plough Magazine, which is one of the nicest, finest, well-done magazines I have read in recent years. You're really to be commended for that. But you also have had a role in bringing together a confession of faith for the Bruderhof. Now, often, when you think about the Anabaptist tradition ... I'm a Baptist myself, but even some Baptists don't like confessions of faith, though we have lots of them in our history. But the Anabaptists seem to be Bible alone, we don't need statements, we don't want creeds or confessions. What's behind the confession of faith that you helped to bring about and draft, and how does ... What role does it play in the community?

Peter Mommsen:	Well, we definitely had those same debates, you know, "Isn't the Bible good enough?" And really, I think it was a very pragmatic reason. As a community, we were in our fourth, fifth generation; we needed to say who we are in a cohesive and theologically defensible way, and a way that would be understandable to the wider world, but also, just as much understandable to young people, or those who come to join us and want to know, "Who are these people, what do they believe?"
	And particularly, when you live in a community like ours, and it frankly, Timothy, often drives me a little nuts that this suspicion is instantly "You must not be engaged, you must be isolated, you must be living in a silo or in a sort of utopian otherworld, without contact with the wider society," which just in a practical sense, I find humorous, because living in community, you're deeply involved in the neighborhood around you, and you are actually able to be more involved with things than, possibly, one would be if you were working a nine-to-five job. But there was a need, I think, just to ... Because of those perceptions, also, to come up with something, "This is who we are, this is what we believe, and here are, also, the things that we're going to draw our line in the sand." Because we all know that our culture is pushing Christians around on many issues, and every tradition, and we know we're not invulnerable to that either.

Timothy George:	Yeah.

Peter Mommsen:	And so we look back to the early church, and to some of the apologists, Justin Martyr, to Tertullian, the great efforts they made to speak to the society and say, "This is who we really are. Don't believe the crazy rumors you hear about cannibalism and orgies at the love-feast." And the early Anabaptists did the same thing. Peter Riedemann's Hutterite Confession of Faith is a key example of a beautiful document that was actually written for his imprisoner, Philip of Hesse, while he was in prison.
	Now, the weird thing is that these confessions that were written for the wider world actually ended up being church-shaping confessions for people who were within the church, and so that was sort of our ... This felt need, and yes, I was ... Did participate in drafting that. But it was an interesting thing, because as a church, we believe in making decisions unanimously, and so this was a confession of faith that also everyone needed to agree with, so 1,600 members across the world all needed to fully stand behind it. We were just sitting with Evangelicals and Catholics Together today, and realized even with a group of 30, it can be difficult to come to a joint statement on something. We did go through that process, and I think it was really helpful, really healthy, and frankly, pretty exciting. You can actually go onto our website, bruderhof.com, and the full confession of faith there is called Foundations of our Faith and Calling.

Timothy George:	That's wonderful. Now, you mentioned the communities, the Bruderhof communities throughout the world. You live here in New York. Upstate New York, or some distance from New York City?

Peter Mommsen:	I live in upstate New York. We have a house here in New York City, in Harlem, but the community where I live, and where our publishing house is based, is right near Newburgh, New York.

Timothy George:	So where are these other communities?

Peter Mommsen:	There's a bunch in the Hudson Valley. That's where our, actually, oldest community is, called Woodcrest, founded right after World War II, when the first communities moved into the United States. Then there's three communities in England, there's three communities in Australia, a community in Paraguay in South America, and two communities in Germany, and then we have a bunch of communities around the United States, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida. And then we have a lot of sort of temporary little house communities, just somebody will set up shop in a town somewhere and be there as long as seems to make sense. That's really from a missionary standpoint.

Timothy George:	Yeah. Now, you're not, it seems, like a lot of the Roman Catholic boarders, a celibate community; you're a community of families, right?

Peter Mommsen:	That's right, absolutely.

Timothy George:	And so, is there a rule that binds you together? What's the basis of your community life?

Peter Mommsen:	Well, there is a rule in the sense that we make a lifelong commitment to each other, and that's based on the experience that we need that in order to trust each other. And living together with that type of intimacy, you really need to have confidence that others will not walk out on you, and that, conversely, I'm there for my brothers and sisters every bit as much as I am for anybody. That is something that you make a vow after a process of discernment, so in that sense, it's quite like a Catholic order, there's actually admission process and a discernment process, and certainly not something you just are born into, and sort of slurp into just because your family lives there. And in fact, we try to make that quite difficult, because as Anabaptists — and Baptists, I'm sure, would agree — we feel it's so important for that to be an individual decision and an individual calling.

Timothy George:	Yes.

Peter Mommsen:	So, like, I tell my kids, who are still quite young, but I want to tell them already now, "I do not expect you to live this life. I want you to do what ... I want you to follow Jesus, and Jesus will show you where you are to serve, but I know this is where Jesus asked me to be."

Timothy George:	When will they be baptized? What age?

Peter Mommsen:	We wouldn't baptize much under 18. We certainly encourage them to make a commitment to Jesus, public commitment to Jesus, as early as they like, but baptism, you know, we really want to make sure that ... Trying to follow the example of the early church and their catechumenate, we try to really make sure they know what they're getting into. And then, if there's a question of membership in the community, that isn't before they're age 21.

Timothy George:	Yeah. Do you share the Lord's Supper together?

Peter Mommsen:	Yes, absolutely.

Timothy George:	And how often would you do that?

Peter Mommsen:	That is a good question. I would say we don't do it on regularly scheduled times, except on the major feast days of the church calendar. We would certainly do it otherwise ... You know, so Easter, Pentecost, Christmas, often would be times we'd celebrate it, and then other times during the year where we feel we need to celebrate Jesus' death and resurrection, we'll decide to do that.

Timothy George:	Now, you've written a biography about your grandfather, I mentioned, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold. You sent me a copy, or the publisher did, and I enjoyed reading that so much. It was very inspiring, his story's a ... It's a dramatic story. Tell us if you can ... Now, it's a big book, but tell us a little bit about his life, who he was, [inaudible 00:17:54].

Peter Mommsen:	Sure. So, the challenge in writing this book was, here's somebody that nobody knows about. Why would you read a book about him? And I, of course, knew him, although not well; he died when I was six. But he was somebody that, even as a child, I felt there's something really special about his love for Jesus, and I heard about that my whole life. So for me, particularly going to college, and then trying to find my own faith, which I didn't really have during my college years, for me, it was very instrumental to remember him, and then seek what was it that he had. And I wanted to tell his story, but then I did find that, of course, he had led the Bruderhof community through some very difficult times.

Timothy George:	He was the son of Eberhard.

Peter Mommsen:	He was the son of Eberhard Arnold, he wasn't ... Although Eberhard died in 1935, and there was sort of this long interim where the community was trying to find its way, and he wasn't the leader of the community during that period, until 1962, he was then asked to become the elder of the community. And during that time, our community went through some really difficult moments, and I think this is one of the things I try to bring out in the book. What is it about any Christian church, any Christian community, that can get in the way of Jesus? And one of the first things is, which our community found, is idolatry of your own community, of your own fellowship, of your own sense of your task, and when Jesus isn't the center of it all, people are hurt.
	And I think his great contribution to us, but then also to many other people that he was involved with over his life as a pastor and counselor, and then author — his book Discipleship remains probably my favorite book, and not just because he's my grandfather — is just Jesus first, and this deep, simple, but very demanding, challenging faith that would, with great love and great compassion, but with great clarity, challenge somebody to make that decision, "How am I going to open myself to Jesus? How am I going to go the whole way?"
	And that's what I found by researching him, his life. He suffered a great deal. He was actually kicked out of the community several times because of this witness, which was not appreciated, sent to a leper colony, separated from his family for a spell. And yet he forgave again and again, which I, again, found something so important for any Christian leader, this willingness to be vulnerable, to serve, and to trust in God to lead things to the good.

Timothy George:	I was also impressed by your grandmother, just through reading that book, because she was with him through a lot of these trials and difficulties, and appeared to be such a faithful, Godly woman.

Peter Mommsen:	Yes. Yes, well, she ... I mean, that's one thing ... I mean, I'm only gradually ... I'm married now 12 years, and I gradually understand more and more how we do it all together.

Timothy George:	Yeah. That's wonderful. Now, recently, you had a conversation around a very popular book, in a way, these days, is Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option. It's a book that's sort of just taken off, and it's a focus of a lot of conversations. Talk about that encounter, and in particular, the Benedict option, how you see it, how you would talk about it today.

Peter Mommsen:	We did an event with First Things Magazine and The American Conservative here in Manhattan a couple months ago, with Rod Dreher, the author of this book The Benedict Option, and a panel. It was Ross Douthat from the New York Times; a bishop from our communities, Randall Gauger; and Jacqueline C. Rivers, she's from the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies; and also Michael Wear, who's an evangelical, but who was in the Obama White House. And it was very interesting. You can actually go on our website, plough.com/benop, and see the video of that, and read the contributions.
	The thing that intrigued me about Rod's book, [inaudible 00:21:44] amazing, here's a guy writing about "How should Christians live more counter-culturally in America today?" that makes it to the New York Times bestseller list. I mean, I find that's just amazing, and also a very encouraging thing about our culture today, that people are exercised about it. The New Yorker magazine, not known as a great friend of Christians, published a very appreciative profile of Rod. And I should hasten to say, I don't agree with Rod about many things. He's a good friend of mine, he's from Louisiana, he started out, I believe, as a Methodist, went through a Catholic phase, and he's now Eastern Orthodox. But the question he's answering — asking, rather — I think is absolutely vital. How do we even live as Christian in a post-Christian society?
	The statistics are horrible about how well we as Christians are managing to live out our own faiths. Look at divorce rates, look at our ability or disability of passing on the faith to our own kids. How different are we from the society around us? Are we really being formed by the gospel? And he's calling for a more communal church, a church where we do more, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, that we really are there for each other in a tangible way. I think those questions are so vital.
	I have a bunch of hesitations about his answers, which aren't surprising. I think he's ... He compares the situation to that of the Christians after the fall of the Roman Empire, where St. Benedict of Nursia founded the first monastic communities as a response to that, and ended up preserving Christian civilization through the Dark Ages. He's calling us to do something similar, and he structures his book around recommendations that are hung off of the Rule of St. Benedict, which is a wonderful and wise document, but it's for monks, and I'm not a monk — I have a wife, I have kids — and most people aren't monks.
	So I think much more interesting, and I've talked about this with Rod, is to not talk about the Benedict option, but rather to talk about the early Christian option. How did the first Christians live in their equally Godless society, in the first couple of centuries after Jesus? And, having said that, I don't even think it's an early Christian option, I think it's an early Christian calling, because I don't think this is optional for us. We absolutely have to build communities where we can help each other stay on track. None of us are strong, none of us are strong enough to stand up to the demons of the age, and neither are our kids, and we need to have communities where we can help each other live as we should. Now, there's also been criticism of Rod for calling for retreat into some small-minded fundamentalist sects on the side. I recognize some people come from backgrounds like that, but I think there's also just a great amount of just practical wisdom in saying, "Of course we're not managing, and of course we need to draw together."

Timothy George:	My guest today on the Beeson Podcast has been Peter Mommsen. He's a member of the Bruderhof; that's an intentional community based on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. He's the editor of Plough Quarterly Magazine; he's the author of a biography of his own grandfather, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold. He's a wonderful theologian and leader in this community, and it's an honor to have you on the Beeson Podcast. Thank you, Peter, very much.

Peter Mommsen:	Thank you, Timothy. I've enjoyed it.

Announcer:	You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast, with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson Podcast.