Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84organized to oppose the Nazification of church life. The two strangers introduced themselves to Niemöller as Hutterites and said that they lived a communistic lifestyle on a Bruderhof, in strict accordance with the Sermon on the Mount. They practiced absolute nonviolence as a basic tenet of their faith. Niemöller, who had served as a submarine commander in the German imperial navy during World War I, had little sympathy for the two pacifists and ended the conversation quickly. But he reported about the visit to his friend and fellow pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had recently returned from America. Bonhoeffer was intrigued, and by the summer of 1934 had struck up a relationship with the Bruderhof, meeting with a representative and exchanging letters and manuscripts. 13 Though he planned to visit the Bruderhof community in Germany, this visit never took place; shortly afterward, he assumed leadership of the Confessing Church’s illegal theological seminary in Finkenwalde. Here he began his own experiment with Christian community, an experience that would become the basis for his book Life Together. In it he described his goals as follows: Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it. 14 Bonhoeffer’s words could well have been written by the founder of the German ­ Bruderhof, Eberhard Arnold. Born a Lutheran, Arnold had started his Christian fellowship in 1920, partly inspired by the historical Ana- baptist communities; in 1930, his community formally joined the Hutterian Church. Five years after the founding of his com- munity, Arnold set out to explain its new-old way of life in a seminal essay titled “Why We Live in Community.” 15 In the 1960s, this essay was discovered by a Trappist monk in North America who was fascinated to discover a kindred spirit in a German Anabaptist who had died three decades earlier. The Trappist’s name was Thomas Merton. When Merton, then at the height of his fame, was asked to hold retreats in monasteries in Alaska, he chose to present his lectures in the form of a conversation with Eberhard Arnold. His words, initially addressed to the Catholic religious communities of his day, remain relevant to anyone seeking a way of radical discipleship: 34 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2017 Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eberhard Arnold Photograph of Arnold courtesy of the family. Photograph of Bonhoeffer (public domain). Photograph of Merton by John Lyons.