The Hermitage is a place to contact our essential oneness with the planet. We are the earth. It’s where we find connection and purpose through being the consciousness and conscience of the planet. It knows itself through us and is how we serve the planet. It’s why we call ourselves Harmonists, because we create harmony with the earth and all living things.

 The Hermitage is the vision and life’s work of Christian and Johannes Zinzendorf. We have shared each other’s lives for more than thirty years as lovers, brothers and partners. Having met in Salt Lake City as college students, we decided to move east seeking a life on the land. Initially influenced by the mysticism and communal settlements of the early Mormons, as well as magic and eastern spiritual traditions, we settled in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where the mysticism and communal settlements of the early Moravians provided a blueprint for establishing a new community rooted in the past. 

William Penn’s vision of a land where the many varieties of people and their beliefs can live together in harmony is central to our own and is a major reason the Hermitage is located in Pennsylvania. “The Peaceable Kingdom” by Quaker artist Edward Hicks provides a visual model for our lives, a vision of an achievable earthly paradise.

 In addition to being an earth-centered spiritual center, the Hermitage is a working farm whose goal is sustainability and living gently on the planet, adopting technology to meet those goals. To that end we have preserved a variety of log and timber-frame structures by moving them here and rebuilding them. Among the structures are a 1758 Moravian Gemeinehaus from the Indian missionary village of Nain outside Bethlehem; a 1765 pioneer settler’s cabin, a number of cabins from reused corn cribs, pig houses and graneries, craft shops for pottery, printing, blacksmithing, woodworking and weaving, an outdoor bake oven, a one-room schoolhouse plus a variety of other structures. There is a primitive encampment, a variety of cultivated fruit trees, an orchard, a stage, a wash house, an outhouse and an existing barn (the only building on the land when it was purchased in 1988). We generate our own electricity using a wind turbine (hopefully to be supplemented with solar).

Visitors are always welcome but please let us know in advance for a mutually-convenient time.

 The Hermitage provides a variety of video programming on YouTube, as well as a sporatically updated blog.

 The Hermitage is a non-for-profit corporation under the rules and regulations of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt private foundation as determined by the IRS. It is run by a board of directors.

 We are affiliated with the Fellowship of Intentional Community, the Communal Studies Association and the International Communal Studies Association.