I’ve been slowly picking through Eberhard Arnold: A Testimony to Church Community from His Life and Writings about the founder of the Bruderfof Communities. The last section of the book is a collection of correspondence from those who knew Arnold. One of these letters recalls this interaction,

At a conference we asked Eberhard Arnold how he could be so tolerant toward all the various opinions, persuasions and religions, considering his radical affirmations of the Sermon on the Mount and the teachings of Jesus. What he answered has stayed with me for life and helped me many times.

He said: “You have only to go back far enough. In the ultimate depths, everything good and true that men have ever known, thought, or lived, comes from the one source of light. Our vocation is to make the way free for it.”

While my knowledge of Arnold is quite limited, it seems his idea of making the way free for “the one source of life” centered around intentional community where the teachings of Jesus were lived out in very practical ways. He was obviously a very intelligent man and one with political opinions, but his apologetic seemed to focus mostly on the life of the community.

Arnold’s vision seems at odds with how many see and have experienced the American church today. Rather than inhabiting the teachings of Jesus within community, the church can feel like a collection of individuals whose witness often sounds belligerent and narrowly political. There are, of course, plenty of beautiful exceptions to this.

This brings to minds a few questions. How do most Christians experience the church today? Is it the role of the entire community to “make the way free” for Christ in how we live together? How do those outside the Christian community experience this?