Plough Quarterly

Plough Quarterly is a magazine published by Plough Publishing. It was started in 1920 by Eberhard Arnold in Germany.

With Eberhard Arnold as editorial director, the publishing house put out a biweekly magazine (later monthly), titled Das Neue Werk (“The New Work”). Early contributors included not only prominent authors such as Karl Barth, Martin Buber, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, but also radicals such as Rosa Luxemburg, Kurt Eisner, Pyotr Kropotkin, and Gustav Landauer. Never shy of controversy, the magazine proposed early Christianity and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as the solution to contemporary problems. It was closely associated with the German Youth Movement, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the religious socialists inspired by the Blumhardts.

The magazine began appearing in an American edition in 1983. Frequent topics included global Christianity, reconciliation and peacemaking, evangelism, Anabaptism, intentional community, and death penalty abolition.

It is now a magazine of stories, culture and ideas, and was re-launched in June 2014. It quickly garnered awards, including Library Journal’s “Top Ten Magazines of the Year.” Author Philip Yancey calls it “the richest publication I get these days,” while Methodist bishop William Willimon finds it “an essential part of my ministry.”