Page 3 - Bulletin #67 - November 2020

personally, thus keeping our membership support high for the years up to the 2025
conference. Amsale Temesgen is willing to help with this and we hope that this could be
done together with Ruth Sobol using our Bulletin.

With very best wishes to all our readers,

Ole Uggerby. Amsale Temesgen, Dan McKanan,
Taisa Mattos, Cynthia Tina and Jan Martin Bang

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Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (and Unpredictable)

Tim Miller

What happens when a commune closes its doors? Lots of scenarios are possible, of
course―staying closed, reorganizing and reopening, and watching members scatter to
seek new communities (or give up communal living altogether) are all possible next
steps, among others.

But sometimes it isn’t that simple. Sometimes the breakup itself is aggravated by people
whose intentions are less than noble. There are several cases on record in which bad
actors have raided the communal treasury, or tried (and maybe succeeded) to take 3
possession of the communal real estate. Breaking up is not only hard to do, but
sometimes disastrous.

Here I am going to tell a true story from American communal history, the story of the
tragedy that surrounded the closing of the Harmony Society. The Harmonists emerged
among the Pietists of 18th-century Germany, fervently devout Protestants who found the
dominant state church (Lutheran) too cold, lacking the burning spirit that they believed
should drive the true Christian. As with many such uprisings, some Pietists sought to
reform the established state church from within, and some separated from it and started
their own religious movements. One of the Pietist groups that eventually became
separatist was the Harmony Society, which took shape under the leadership of George
Rapp, a commoner from Iptingen in the German province of Württemberg. Before he was
30 years old he publicly denounced the faults he detected in the official church and its
rituals, including baptism and communion, and soon declared himself a prophet. By the
turn of the 19th century thousands had come to follow Rapp’s teachings.

In 1803 Rapp traveled to America to seek a new home for his following. With persecution
increasing in Germany, more Rappites fled to the United States, where in 1804 Rapp
secured land in Pennsylvania at a site he called Harmonie. Soon the Harmony Society
officially entered into a communal economy. The community grew and prospered, but
Rapp wanted the group to resettle in the West, and in 1814 they purchased 30,000 acres