Editing The Christian Community (section)

==History==
[[File:The Christian Community Founders.jpg|thumb|The Christian Community founders, pictured on 16 September 1922]]
During the early growth of the [[Anthroposophical Society]], some Lutheran pastors in Germany appealed to [[Rudolf Steiner]] for a system of worship oriented towards his concept of Jesus Christ as the first fully [[initiation|initiated]] human in history, possessing absolute consciousness of the spiritual realm.<ref name="cults"/> According to a founding member of the Christian Community, Friedrich Rittelmeyer, he and the other founders were inspired by Steiner.<ref>Friedrich Rittelmeyer, ''Rudolf Steiner Enters My Life'', {{ISBN|0-7661-3654-X}}</ref>

In 1939 in London, Evelyn Capel became the first English woman priest of The Christian Community to celebrate the sacraments.<ref name="capel">{{cite news |last1=Button |first1=Peter |title=Obituary: Evelyn Capel |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/feb/08/guardianobituaries3 |access-date=April 3, 2023 |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=February 7, 2000}}</ref> After World War II, she helped reestablish Christian Community congregations in Germany, as well as expand its foothold to [[South Africa]].<ref name="capel"/>

In [[Nazi Germany]], The Christian Community came under state surveillance, however, ''Reichsminister'' of Church Affairs [[Hanns Kerrl]] opposed an outright ban on the group. Despite [[Reinhard Heydrich]]'s misgivings about the church, police reports consistently found nothing objectionable about its activities or practices and new congregations were established in [[Cologne]] and [[Stuttgart]] between 1938 and 1939. Nonetheless, following the departure of [[Rudolf Hess]] for Britain in 1941, a national purge against perceived [[occult]] tendencies was initiated, the Christian Community banned, and its leader [[Emil Bock]] imprisoned due to the community's alleged "Masonic activities".<ref name="brill">{{cite book |last1=Staudenmaier |first1=Peter |title=Accommodation, Collaboration, Persecution: Anthroposophy in the Shadow of National Socialism, 1933–1945 |date=2014 |publisher=Brill |isbn=9789004270152 |page=104}}</ref><ref>{{cite thesis |last=Staudenmaier |first=Peter |date=2010 |pages=210–215|title=Between Occultism and Fascism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race and Nation in Germany and Italy, 1900-1945 |url=https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/db1dad79-53bf-451e-b95b-6982dd24afe3/content |degree=[[Ph.D.]] |chapter= |publisher=[[Cornell University]] |docket= |oclc= |access-date=November 21, 2024}}</ref> 

The first Christian Community congregation in the [[United States]] was established in New York in 1948.<ref>{{cite web |title=About the Congregation |url=https://www.christiancommunitynyc.org/about |website=christiancommunitynyc.org |publisher=The Christian Community of New York |access-date=November 21, 2024}}</ref>