An Embassy Besieged

Description:
Here for the first time in print is the story of a small group who dared to confront Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich with the love of Jesus Christ. Avoiding covert resistance on the one hand and complicity and compromise on the other, the Rhön Bruderhof, under the courageous leadership of Eberhard Arnold, boldly witnessed to the politics of the Kingdom of God in Nazi Germany. Although "less than a gnat to an elephant," in Arnold's words, they believed that as God's ambassadors love could overcome hatred-even of Adolf Hitler himself. This is an amazing account of a community who stayed true to the nonviolent way of the Cross, and how, despite relentless Nazi opposition, God protected and victoriously led them along the way.

Endorsements:
This meticulously documented story of faith serves as a handbook of heroism for believers today. God knows, we too are "besieged" by forces of untruth and duplicity. May we, like the Bruderhof, be found faithful.

-Daniel Berrigan

Scripture tells us that we are to be a counter-cultural community, living out the radical teachings of Christ. This book sets a pattern for those who want to live faithfully in opposition to the dictatorial consumeristic culture of our age.

-Tony Campolo, Eastern University, St. Davids, PA


In An Embassy Besieged, a small community of Christians courageously and graciously refuses to compromise their faith in the face of the worst human evil. Their witness has much to teach us today in a world so riddled with prejudice, so tired of militarism, so starved for grace, and so desperate for imagination.
-Shane Claiborne, author, activist

Seeking to embody the Sermon on the Mount and articulating a clear Anabaptist theology of church and state, the early Bruderhof movement gives a courageous testimony to nonviolence in a harsh totalitarian state. Emmy Barth tells a compelling and well-crafted story that is hard to put down.

-Donald B. Kraybill, author of The Upside Down Kingdom



About the Contributor(s):
Emmy Barth is senior archivist for and member of Church Communities International (formerly known as the Bruderhof Communities). Her earlier book No Lasting Home (2009) tells the story of the Bruderhof's first year in Paraguay when they were forced to leave Europe during World War II.