This summer, I had the good fortune of visiting two Anabaptist groups that practice community of goods — the Fox Hill Bruderhof just outside of Walden, N.Y., and the Silverwinds Hutterite colony close to Sperling, Man. 

The two communities have much in common. Both are situated in beautiful country settings, with a score of modern-looking, well-furnished duplex homes surrounded by manicured flower gardens and connected by sidewalks populated with children riding scooters and bicycles. A large cafeteria serves communal meals. Administrative offices and factories at the edge of the communities hum with activity. On weekends, community members spend time in the garden, visiting relatives or, somewhat to my surprise, whacking golf balls on the Manitoba prairie. 

Though no one would pretend community life is easy, in both settings I found earnest Christians whose commitment to a life of shared community seemed genuine and mostly joyful. 

Yet for all that the Bruderhof and Hutterites have in common, a tempestuous past has strained relationships, even to the breaking point. 

Hutterite origins go back to the late 1520s, when a group of Anabaptists in Moravia pooled their belongings after being expelled from the city of Nikolsburg. Jacob Hutter helped bring theological and organizational order, and the group flourished during the late 16th century as local princes embraced Hutterite colonies for their medical expertise and artisanal craft production. Though the Hutterites were nearly destroyed by the Thirty Years War, an influx of Lutherans helped to restore the principle of community of goods. In the 1870s, after a brief sojourn in South Russia, the Hutterites migrated to the U.S. western states and Canadian provinces. Today, nearly 500 Hutterite colonies, organized into four groups, are scattered across Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, with a handful in the Dakotas. 

When the Bruderhof emerged in Germany in the 1920s as a Christian community under the visionary leadership of Eberhard and Emmy Arnold, its founders were deeply inspired by the Hutterite story. 

After a visit to North America in 1930, Arnold merged his group with the Hutterites, marking the beginning of a complicated, often painful, relationship. Part of the pain resulted from the disruption to Bruderhof life occasioned by the rise of National Socialism in Germany and their forced relocation, first to England and then to Paraguay, where they struggled for survival alongside Mennonite groups also seeking refuge there. 

In 1950, Hutterite visitors to the Bruderhof colony in Paraguay encountered a group preoccupied with internal dissension and defensive of a host of religious and cultural practices alien to the Hutterite experience. By the mid-1950s, as the Bruderhof sought to reestablish their communities in the United States and began to promote greater interaction with progressive Hutterite colonies, relations between the two groups broke down altogether. The formal break occurred in 1955.

But the vision of reconciliation refused to die. Throughout the 1960s, Eberhard Arnold’s son, Heini, who had regained leadership of the Bruderhof, sought to restore relationships by offering formal apologies. In 1974, somewhat to Arnold’s surprise, the Hutterites once again accepted the Bruderhof as full members. 

Heini was succeeded by his son, Christoph — solidifying the leadership of the Arnold family within the Bruderhof — and Christoph soon found an ally in Jakob Kleinsasser, elder of the Schmiedeleut, the most progressive Hutterite group. Kleinsasser and Arnold embarked on a series of shared economic ventures and educational initiatives. They encouraged intermarriage between the groups and established joint mission communities in Germany and Nigeria. Though never stated explicitly, the two leaders pursued a strategy of “creative disruption” that they hoped could forge a new shared culture.  

Once again, however, efforts to join the two traditions collapsed. The more conservative Hutterite groups resented the authoritarian leadership style they observed among the Bruderhof. They found the Bruderhof embrace of the arts, higher education, dancing and political activism at odds with their long-established patterns of community life. In 1990 the Dariusleut and Lehrerleut broke with the Bruderhof; and in 1992 the Schmiedeleut voted to replace Kleinsasser as elder. When he refused to leave, the Schmiedeleut divided. But by 1995 even the more progressive of the Schmiedeleut groups broke relations with the Bruderhof. 

After one of my presentations in Manitoba, a Schmiedeleut minister posed a haunting question. He was familiar with Anabaptist divisions, but did I know of any successful mergers? Why, he asked, was it so hard to bring groups together? How would you respond?