I used to go regularly to the various Bruderhof websites: they had some of the best designed sites I had ever seen on peacemaking and grief. Their online downloadable books were rich resources with few if any parallels. Their Daily Dig email meditations were welcome and enriching.
Then, without notice, they were all gone, replaced with 1994-era “headstones” like Bruderhof.org.
I was confused — a server problem? an internal coup? — but assumed they would all be back eventually. I’m afraid I’m probably wrong.
A website lobbying the Bruderhof to bring back their sites. Serious and interesting stuff in our Internet age.
You can get a hint of the good old days from the unformatted, rather messy remote archives of Bruderhof (March 26, 2005), Grief Companion (March 15, 2005), and Saving Childhood (March 25, 2005) .
I was surprised as well to get my last Daily Dig – but I assumed it was just that – it never occured to me that they’d shut down their entire presence – given the effort and energy that was put into it. I wonder what’s up? I wish they at least would explain.
Although I know that they were theologically (and socially) more conservative than I, I very much appreciated and honored their point of view, and they were a welcome, sane voice, in this presently fractious chaos we call American Christianity. They will be missed.