From a new post at Footnotes Since the Wilderness about the Ephrata Cloister in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and it’s conscription by George Washington as a hospital during the Revolution:

Cynics might point out that Ephrata became a hospital because George Washington said it must and, indeed, he did. He offered Peter Miller, Ephrata’s spiritual leader, no true choice. The cloister was commandeered. Community members, riled, objected; some of them had been hermits but, when the topic turned to religion or government, they proved tenacious and argumentative. Intellectually, they were neither meek nor mild. They debated. Passively resisting the war machine, they insisted that the army take what it needed by force. They knew they would suffer severe material loss, and sacrifice the routines of their spiritual lives to tend to the immediate physical needs of others. They knew such service might kill them. In the end, the commune embraced its role. What looked from outside the commune like a seizure of property and the conscription of a hospital staff was transformed by the adepts of Ephrata into the work of the spirit, until it became, from within, an offering and a devotion to holy service.