Penned in August 1925, Eberhard Arnold’s “First Law of Sannerz” is the oldest written rule of the community now known as the Bruderhof, and members have been attempting to practice it ever since. It is no exaggeration to say that without it, the community probably would have succumbed by now to one of the many crises it has weathered over the last one hundred years. Here it is:
There is no law but that of love. Love is joy in others. What, then, is anger at them? If we have joy in the presence of others, we will convey it with words of love. It follows that words of irritation or annoyance about members of the community are unacceptable. This is why we can never allow talk against brothers or sisters or their character traits, whether openly or by insinuation – under no circumstances behind their backs. Gossiping within one’s own family is no exception.
Without the commandment of silence, there is no loyalty and therefore no community. The only possibility, when someone’s weakness has caused something in us to rise up against them, is to speak to them directly, in the sense of performing a service of love.
An open word, directly addressed, deepens friendship and will not be taken amiss. Only when two people cannot find one another in this manner will it be necessary to draw in a third person whom both parties trust; and this will lead to a mutual understanding at the highest and deepest levels.
Members of our household should hang this admonition at their places of work, where they always have it before their eyes.
In writing the “First Law,” Arnold, a founder of the Bruderhof, drew inspiration from a passage in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus advises his followers to solve quarrels “just between the two of you” (Matt. 18:15) and to forgive someone who angers you not just once, nor even seven times, but “seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:21).
Beyond this, Arnold saw the “First Law” as a logical extension of something he had written in Sannerz’s quarterly, Das Neue Werk, in 1922. There he described the community as one in which “a handful of people dare to acknowledge no law above them but that which obedience to the living Christ imposes.”
By 1929, the realities of communal living had tempered Arnold’s initial idealism to the degree that he felt additional direction was necessary, and the Bruderhof’s first collection of rules, Foundations and Orders, appeared. It included the “First Law of Sannerz.” After quoting it, Arnold wrote, “This word of Jesus from Matthew 18 is the basis of all our orders.”
Today, a full century later, few in the Bruderhof would contest the significance of this document. Times may have changed, as have methods of communication (even at the Bruderhof, people are often as likely to text one another as to talk), but at least two things have remained the same: the knowledge that gossip can turn the most heavenly community into hell overnight, and a commitment to fighting it.
So does the “First Law” work? Not always. Firstly, any rule against gossip militates against human nature. Secondly, it’s all too easy to wield the chosen alternative – “straight speaking in love” – like a weapon: to forget that little ameliorating phrase “in love” and go straight for the jugular. (Keenly aware of this tendency, Arnold forewarned his flock that though “love without truth lies, truth without love kills.”)
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