article : Love Letters

Eberhard Arnold and Emmy von Hollander

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Everyone’s looking for true love, but few people seem willing to work at making it last. With separation and divorce so commonplace that most people see them as inevitable, it seems the very idea of marital commitment is fast becoming a foreign one. What’s gone wrong?

On Good Friday 1907, in the German university town of Halle, a young couple sealed their secret engagement with a kiss – and a vow to follow God wherever he led them. They were passionately in love, yet they rejected romance as the basis of their relationship, building instead on the promise of Jesus’ words, “Seek first the kingdom of God.” Circumstance (and scandalised parents) kept them separated for most of the next three years. But that separation bore its own fruit: an intense exchange of letters.

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Anthony Tony Campolo, Eastern University
More than love letters. They show how a man and a woman can nurture each other toward spiritual maturity.

Frederica Mathewes-Green, author of The Lost Gospel of Mary
These letters disclose the writers’ burning commitment to the Lord above all else, and demonstrate how it became the foundation of the commitment they bore to each other. Such clarity and passion are rarely seen these days.

Father Philip K. Eichner, S.M. Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
A rare find. It is a privilege to be invited into such an intimate conversation.

Prof. John Briggs, Oxford University
Here are letters of both immense intensity and the deepest intimacy, almost too sacred for publication. They witness to a deeply based love nurtured in the context of an absolute commitment to Christ.

Prof. Lawrence S. Cunningham, The University of Notre Dame
These inspiring letters interweave a profound love for Jesus Christ with a deep love between two young people, as well as an utterly transparent search to do God’s will.

Denton Lotz, General Secretary, Baptist World Alliance

For modern secular humanity these Love Letters of Eberhard and Emmy Arnold must seem from another planet! But for Christian believers these letters are a powerful reminder of God’s transformation of ordinary human relationships into divine grace and the mystery of God’s love. Love Letters portrays the depth of human emotions that can be kindled by expressing through the written word the meaning and purpose of Christ’s love.

With enthusiasm I commend reading these letters for one’s own spiritual growth. In so doing one will also gain a greater appreciation for the tremendous spiritual movement that renewed the Church universal at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. This renewal raised up a generation of young men and women completely dedicated to Christ and the evangelisation of the world in their generation. The love story of Eberhard and Emmy is a thrilling testimony of what complete commitment and obedience to Christ can do. Read it, pray about it, and your marriage will take on new life and joy!

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