A Christian Peace Experiment ― The Bruderhof Community in Britain, 1933-1942

What does a community of peace look like? Peace Community in Britain traces the story of the Bruderhof, an international Anabaptist intentional community founded in Germany in 1920, and its contributions to the European and British peace movement on the eve on World War II. After having laid the historical groundwork, the narrative begins in 1935 as the Nazi regime's harrassment of the group intensified. As a result, the Bruderhof was forced to look abroad for refuge--and found it in the UK, where pacifism and Christian radicalism where influential in both political and church circles.

In 1937, the Bruderhof was forcibly dissolved by the Gestapo and its members expelled from Germany. Political refugees, they re-gathered in the Cotswold region of England--and despite economic and internal difficulties, were soon flourishing, with membership doubling in just four years. The now-international community sponsored Jewish refugees from the Kindertransport; startd a thriving publishing program; operated a farm; attracted seekers from throughout Europe; and was in touch with an astonishing array of movements and figures including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth, the Salvation Army, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, Hutterites and Mennonites, Jewish kibbutzim, society figures such as Lady Astor, social reformers such as Muriel Lester, Tolstoyan agrarian idealists, and artistic pioneers such as Eric Gill.

Only when the onset of the Blitzkrieg inflamed local vigilantes to target the "German pacifists" did this remarkable experiment come to an end. Threatened with internment as enemy aliens, most members emigrated to South America by 1942; a handful remained in England to carry on the witness of peace, community, and international reconciliation through the war years and beyond.