Sociology

    I decided to write about the Hutterites of North America because I have always been fascinated by religious sects in America where the people still live the way they did hundreds of years ago and they dont use all of the modern conveniences we take for granted. I thought they would be like the Amish but I did not know before reading this book that the Hutterites are related to the Amish and also the Menonites. That makes sense so I was surprised to find out that Hutterites can use electricity and have a lot of modern farm equipment and trucks and vans, but they dont listen to the radio or watch tv or movies and I bet they dont have cell phones.

    The Hutterites in North America live mostly in the plains states of America and Canada. There were more than twenty-two thousand Hutterites in North America by 1974. They live in communities of colonies and the colonies are made up of families. Each colony has a house for each family and each house has separate apartments for the parents and the children and even the grandchildren. The houses are built around a big kitchen that everyone shares and the church.

    When there are too many young men in a colony and no room to move up because all of the top spots are filled by older men then the community helps buy some land and everything they need to start a new colony. Not just the young men move to the new colony. They also need people who know what theyre doing and have some experience but there is more room for the younger men to have mens jobs in the new colony.

    Hutterites do mostly farming. They have big farms and even though they usually have the most modern farm equipment and machinery and trucks the work is still very hard. The men work the farm and any other businesses they need. They raise vegetables and fruit and wheat and pigs and chickens and they have dairy cows. The women do all of the cooking and baking and cleaning and making clothes and doing laundry and washing dishes. They take turns in the communal kitchen but they all work together for big projects especially at harvest time or when a lot of pigs or chickens are killed. They also can and jar fruits and vegetables and do other big farm projects that are womens work.

    The men and the women both work very hard but they also spend a lot of time with their families. They are together every day for meals and after lunch they take a break just to enjoy being with the family for a while. Everyone has an afternoon snack break together and they go to church together every evening. Sunday is the only day they dont work (but I bet the women still work making food and washing dishes).

    John Hostetler started learning about the Hutterites in 1959 when he was a teacher at the University of Alberta in Canada. Five elders went to see Hostetler to talk to him about a new Canadian law that was making it hard for the Hutterites to buy more land. I think they came to see Hostetler because he was raised Amish and could understand them better than regular Canadians. He took his class to watch hearings about the law and then started being friends with them. Hostetler spent weekends and holidays with the Hutterites and he would often bring family with him. The colonies he visited were not far from his home in Edmonton so for three years he spent a lot of time with them.

    Later he got a grant to study Hutterites because he wanted to learn more about communal living and Gertrude Huntington was one of his field workers. They studied three colonies  one in Alberta, one in Manitoba, and one in Montana -- and all together that was about 280 Hutterites. They chose colonies that were very normal for Hutterite society. Hostetler wanted to figure out how they raised children to live so well in the colonies when they grow up and what kind of people leave the colonies when they grow up so they had to study every aspect of the Hutterites lives and they did that for a little more than three years between 1962 and 1965.

    Hostetler also wanted to study the beginning of the Hutterites so in 1970 and 1971 he went to stay with family in Vienna and from there visited archeological areas and museums and libraries. He learned everything he could about how the Hutterites started and then developed.

    The Hutterian Brethren were an outgrowth of sixteenth-century Anabaptism, which means they were rebaptisers. The Hutterites wanted a church that was free from the State and that made Catholic and Protestant leaders upset. Being called an Anabaptist was an insult and the term was used not only for the Hutterites but also to describe anyone who did not think like everybody else so it was not just about baptism. I guess thats kind of like savages being used to describe Native Peoples in Hawaii and on the mainland just because their beliefs and ways of life are different from the rulers and the majority.

    One kind of Anabaptist was very Old Testament and they started in Saxony but it looks like they only lasted five years from 1520 until 1525. They did not believe in baptizing at all but were more concerned about not baptizing babies which I think was a law then for every baby but its not exactly clear from this book. There was another group of Old Testament Anabaptists that did baptize adults but they didnt last very long either. 1533 to 1535 and they were gone.

    The New Testament Anabaptists did not believe in fighting and they were called pacifists. They came from Bible groups started in Zurich Switzerland between 1523 and 1525 and in 1525 some of them started being baptized if they were adults. They were thrown out of Zurich and thats when they started to really spread all over Europe. A man named George Blaurock became a leader and he spread the teachings to the Hapsburg Empire which is where they eventually became the Hutterites.

    The Hutterites mostly met in peoples houses and they studied the Bible. The more they studied the more they believed that the New Testament was right so they refused to fight in wars and they still refused to swear allegiance to a state or to a king. They also made it a rule that you could not baptize babies because they thought it was only right to have adults think first and then make their own choices about religion. Babies and children can only think what their parents teach them but when they grow up they can decide for themselves. The Hutterites dont believe that everyone in the church has to be perfect either they just want people who are conscious of sin and try to be better people every day.

    The Hutterites were in South Germany and Austria. They were related to but completely separate from two groups of Mennonites, one in the Netherlands and North Germany and the other in Switzerland and South Germany. The Amish came from the Swiss Mennonites in the end of the seventeenth century and they were very conservative.

    An Anabaptist from South Germany named Hans Denck was very smart and he studied Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He was made the director of a school when he was only twenty-three years old but then he was fired because of things he said about baptizing and communion. He believed people should follow the teachings of Jesus and forget about the Old Testament because Jesus would not do any of the things they talk about in the Old Testament. Even when he was arguing with people he would do it in a nice way because he did not believe in fighting of any kind. He died when he was only twenty-seven years old but his writing influenced a lot of people after his death.

    A man named Hans Hut was one of Dencks followers. He got rebaptized in 1526 and then became a missionary. Hut had three converts  Leonard Scheimer, a Franciscan friar Hans Schlaffer, a priest and Ambrose Spittelmaier, a university-trained layman -- who wrote a lot of things called codices that influenced people. Schlaffer was beheaded

    Three things all of these men believed were that there would be a second coming of Christ, that living according to Jesus words would involve hardship and suffering, and they all believed that people are supposed to share everything. A lot of this reminds me of the Amish and how they share their crops and their workloads. The people in these religions help each other for building houses and barns and the men can make a really good house or barn in only one day while the women share cooking all of the food for the men who are doing the building.

    Even though people were being killed for being Anabaptists, all different kinds of people started becoming Anabaptists. There were poor people and rich people and school teachers and artists and even nobles. Charles V was the Holy Roman Emperor and it was his job to protect the Catholic church. He took his job very seriously Even people who just attended Anabaptist meetings were executed and by 1530 the book said maybe a thousand Anabaptists were killed. That was probably like a million people being killed today.

    Moravia already had a lot of fighting about religion and they got tired of it and started having more freedom of religion (even though the leaders didnt really like that) so a lot of the Anabaptists began moving there. They called it the Promised Land. That is where the Hutterites officially became Hutterites but none of them were from Moravia.

    The Hutterite community in Moravia grew for fifty years but for the first one-hundred years not one of the leaders was from Moravia. King Ferdinand didnt like them very much but he couldnt do anything about it because some of the people in power locally were protecting the Hutterites. The Liechtensteins was one of the powerful families protecting these Anabaptists and Leonard von Liechtenstein got himself baptized into this new faith. After Liechtenstein was baptized a lot of other people were converted too.

    Pretty soon the Anabaptists were fighting with each other. Most of the fighting was about war and paying taxes that are used for war but some of the fighting was about people who got baptized too easily without really having to think about what it means to be Anabaptist. Some people were baptizing anyone who asked and that caused problems in the church. There was also fighting between Anabaptists who believed in sharing and those who did not.

    In 1527 Hans Hut started telling everyone to sell their homes and possessions because he was sure Jesus would come back in 1528 and he wanted everyone to be ready (which sounds like something you could hear on the news now so I guess this kind of thing started a long time ago. Im always surprised when people stay with their churches after the end of the world doesnt happen. If I was an Anabaptist in 1527 and my leader told me to sell everything because the end of the world was coming in 1528, I would not still be an Anabaptist in 1529).

    After Hans Hut became one of the leaders there was even more fighting and moving until 1529 when they were in Austerlitz and a hatmaker named Jakob Hutter became a leader even though he wasnt very well educated. I was surprised to read about Hutter because when I first saw the name Hans Hut I thought that was where the name came from but now I see it was probably from Hutter. Its kind of strange that these two men would have such similar names and both be so important in the founding of this church or sect (and I am guessing that in German hut means hat and hutter means hatmaker. Its a very strange coincidence).

    Hutter was in Tyrol and there was a lot of persecution against the Anabaptists so when he found out about Morovia he tried to move everyone there. They had to go in very small groups because it was dangerous. Anabaptists were still being killed just for being Anabaptists and there was even a legal death penalty for being an Anabaptist

    The groups that escaped were called Volker. They had to go on foot and leave everything behind. They even left their small children behind because the trip was so dangerous. Even if the children could physically survive the trip the adults worried the children would make noise or do something that would get the Volkers discovered and killed before they could get to Morovia.

    The community of Anabaptists in Austerlitz grew so quickly that there wasnt room for all of them in one place. When the weather was good they were all meeting together outdoors but in 1530 there was a very bad winter. They couldnt meet outside and by then the church wasnt big enough for all the Anabaptists so they had to split up and meet in three different places. Thats when they began breaking off into three different groups.

    One of the Anabaptist leaders was a man named Weidemann and there was also a man  named Reublin who used to be a priest. A lot of Anabaptists were very upset with Weidemann because he was too controlling and not very nice so Reublin went after him. He wrote a letter charging Weidemann with ten different crimes including responsibility for the deaths of more than twenty babies who had no milk. Their parents gave Weidemann lots of money when they started being Anabaptists so no one could understand why there was no money to feed the babies. Twenty babies starving to death is pretty bad for a church.

    Reublin also accused Weidemann of spending most of the money on the rich people in their group and hardly any on the poor people. A lot of the Anabaptists were upset that the girls had to marry men the church leaders chose and they didnt have any say at all about who they would marry. It was also a big problem that Weidemann was baptizing babies and saying they would go to Hell if they died when they werent baptized. That was totally against everything the Anabaptists believed but its kind of strange because Reublin was also upset that Weidemann wasnt turning over money for taxes to fund the war against the Turks when paying taxes for war is also supposed to be against their belief.

    It seems like every time one of the leaders left town another leader would call everyone together and take a vote about how things should be, then the leader who was out of town would return and take another vote without the other leaders. They went back and forth like this which would make me dizzy. Its funny that I chose to write about the Hutterites because of all the peace and sharing but when I start reading about them they sound just like everyone else and I start falling asleep. All this fighting is really stupid and boring so Im skipping ahead to more interesting things that dont give me a headache.

    The Hutterites in Moravia had the good period from 1554 to 1565 and then they had the golden period from 1565 to 1592. More than a hundred communities called Bruderhofs were formed and they had twenty or thirty thousand people. That is a lot of people for the 1500s They were very good at making businesses and schools and they started becoming known for their crafts. Hutterite ceramics are beautiful and the women were great at sewing. The Hutterites wanted to keep their designs very simple but they also needed money so they would make very decorative things for people who werent Hutterites but keep everything simple for themselves.

    The Hutterites would inscribe words inspired by Bible passages on their pottery but they didnt have to be exact. A common saying among North American Hutterites appears on a Hutterite plate in the National Gallery in Prague In Gottes segen  ist alles gelegen. I had to look that one up Gods blessing gained, all is obtained. Hutterites were famous for their pottery and sewing. They were also famous for their knives and bed frames.

    The Hutterites were all over the place including Russia until the late 1800s when they started moving to North America. The main reasons they left Russia after almost a hundred years there were because they wanted to speak German and the Russians were saying they had to learn Russian, but even worse was that the Russians started wanting them to join the military.

    After they came to North America they lived in a few places in Canada and America but settled in the Dakotas for a while. Things were fine until World War I and then big problems started because Americans didnt like that they spoke German and they wouldnt join the military. It was just like Russia all over again.

    The young Hutterite men who would not join the army were sent to prison camps and even prisons like Alcatraz and Leavenworth (which I did not know were such old prisons) They were conscientious objectors but they got tortured and stabbed with bayonets and thrown out of windows and hung by their feet and chased by motorcycles until they dropped and when they were in their barracks they only had bread and water. There were other kinds of torture and a lot of it reminded me of the things I see on the news now. Thats another big shock because I just didnt believe things like that would happen in America and because I was thinking if I chose to write about the Hutterites I could forget about whats happening now in real life for a while.

    Anyway, a lot of Americans believed conscientious objectors were just cowards and they would not listen to the Hutterites when they said they were only following Jesus teachings so nobody really cared what was happening to them. Pretty soon they moved to Canada.

    They started having the same kinds of problems again in Canada during World War II but it got even worse because Canada passed laws that made it very hard for the Hutterites to buy land they needed for their colonies and farms. Thats when they started thinking about coming back to America. Okay this is seriously making me sick so Im going to skip ahead again and try to find where they have some peace and nobody is dying or fighting or being tortured. It was nice to read that in more than four hundred years there has never been one murder in a Hutterite community though. Thats amazing even if there have been some Hutterites who believed in war.

    The Hutterites are very disconnected from the rest of the world so people who arent  Hutterites dont really know much about them. They are the oldest group of people who live and work together as a religious community. What I read about the communities and colonies was very interesting. I think its great that they dont have really rich people or really poor people and nobody ever has to worry about being homeless or going hungry or not having a job. Everyone has the clothes and shoes they need and there is always help for old people and people who are sick or injured. Hutterites are wonderful to old people and they love them. Old Hutterites dont have to worry about being alone or not having food.

    A lot of it sounds great except I know I wouldnt like having to walk behind the men or having to do whatever a man tells me to do and act like he is always right I also would not want to work as hard as they work and do only womens work and wear boring clothes. I would miss television and movies and dancing and sports and listening to the kind of music I like. I cant imagine never having my own car and not being able to drive and go out and travel unless I was moving to a new colony or visiting another colony. I would be very surprised if the Hutterites eat pizza and chocolate. I would definitely have a hard time giving up pizza and chocolate but it would be nice to never have to worry about money and jobs and rent or mortgage payments and all the things we worry about now if were not Hutterites (or really rich).

    All the money earned by the Hutterite men goes to the colony and then the colony buys the community and families and individual people what they need. Even if something seems like it belongs to one person everyone thinks of it as being on loan to that person from the colony.

    The Hutterites are different from outsiders in many ways. The language they speak and the clothes they wear are easy ways to see that they are Hutterites, but they can also tell who is Hutterite (or unser Leut which means our people) and who is not (or Welt Leut which means worldly people) only from mannerisms and non-verbal communication

    Their whole lives are in two stages. The first is when they are children and preparing for adulthood when they will decide whether or not they want to be baptized (I wonder how many  Hutterite children grow up and decide not to be baptized. That would be a really hard choice if that was all you knew your whole life. I bet there are hardly any Hutterite children who decide they dont want to be baptized) and the other stage is when they are adults and preparing for life after death.

    The Hutterite adults prepare for the afterlife by getting baptized, and then they devote themselves to living good lives. Its not enough just to be baptized either. Hutterites believe that if an adult doesnt try to live a good life when they die it wont be any different than if they were never baptized at all.  Adults are supposed to use their free will to choose right over wrong and good over bad and to try to think more about the good of their community than about themselves. They help each other and everything belongs to everybody in the community, even the children The families are very close though.

    Hutterites can choose who they want to marry in their community but they like to have brothers and sisters marry other brothers and sisters. Thats probably to keep the family more connected because this is another religion where everything goes by the fathers and the men.

    When a girl gets married she moves into her husbands familys house. She and her husband have an apartment in the fathers house and the husbands mother is kind of like her boss (its a good thing the girls have a say in who they marry because when youre a Hutterite you really will be marrying the whole family and your husband is your big boss while his mother is your new everyday boss). If the husband has a brother and the brother marries the new wifes sister then she will still have close family with her because the sister will move into an apartment in the same house. If the husband has sisters who marry the new wifes brothers then they would be together too and the ties between the two families would be stronger even though all the Hutterite families are close to each other in the community and especially in the colony.

    Hutterites like to have large families with lots of children and having ten kids is normal. Children are considered gifts from God who dont belong to the parents so everyone in the colony shares responsibility for the children and the men are very involved with the children too (it takes a village). I started wondering what happens to Hutterites who cant have children.

    It would be really hard for both the men and the women who cant have children because it would be so obvious to everybody that they cant have kids (deciding not to have children doesnt seem like an option in their world) and having kids is really important. Maybe one of the reasons Hutterites share children is so that people who cant have children wont feel bad. There must be accidents sometimes that leave Hutterite orphans. Maybe they would go to the husbands and wives who cant have any children of their own instead of staying with the extended family. Maybe families that have lots of children will give a new baby to a family that cant have children. If a different family did that every couple of years the childless couple would have a lot of children too. That might happen especially if a woman has lots of sisters who have lots of kids. I think the sisters who have children would want to help the sister who cant have children either because she cant get pregnant or because her husband has a low sperm count.

    The things I read in this book give me a lot of interesting questions to think about. Do Hutterites ever use fertility drugs or try invitro fertilization if they cant have children Do they ever use birth control Hutterites absolutely cannot get divorced and there is no premarital sex. It just doesnt happen and I bet theres no adultery either.

    A Hutterite colony will have many families and even though they like to have a lot of the people from one family married to a lot of the people in one other family they dont make their businesses that way. Men from one family make businesses with men from another family even when none of the people in their families are married to each other.

    Hutterite children stay at home for their first two years with their mothers and different friends and family who babysit when the mother has to be doing something else. When they are three years old the go to a school that sounds like preschool or daycare. In this school the children start learning to share and cooperate and build relationships with each other. They go to this school from the time they are three until they are five. Next they go to German school and English school, but they dont learn anything against Hutterite beliefs.

    Hutterites believe in Jesus so they are Christians but they believe the only way to be saved and go to Heaven is to live in one of their communities and make your whole life about God and the Hutterite ways. The Christian churches were used to believe you can be saved just by saying you accept Jesus and getting baptized, but then you can live a regular life during the week and go to church on Sundays and its fine.

    Everyone in the colony is supposed to put the colony first and then the church. I thought that was really interesting and strange for a religious community but it makes sense when you think about it. They believe that the way they act here on earth is whats most important and the church is symbolic. Its like actions speak louder than words.

    When they are in church their attitude about communion is very different from other religions too. The women make a special bread for communion with lots of eggs and sugar so that it tastes really good. They usually have wine they made themselves but if they are out of their own wine it is fine to get wine from somewhere else.

    When it is time for communion the leader of the church takes the bread in his hands and breaks it into two pieces. Then he takes a little piece from one of the big pieces, eats it and then starts passing the two big pieces around. Everybody takes a little piece to eat and then passes it again. This made me think I hope everybody washes their hands before they come to church

    The leader also pours the wine into a communal cup, takes a sip and then starts passing that around, and thats how the Hutterites do communion. In other churches only the priest or the pastor is supposed to touch the communion bread or the wafer.

    Church is every day for Hutterites and not just Sundays, or Sundays and Wednesdays (or Saturdays for Seventh Day Adventists). They have special clothes that they only wear to church. Every evening there is a service with a sermon. They sing hymns and pray together (they pray before and after every single meal and snack, too) but its not as long as the Sunday services. The big Hutterite holiday is the day after Easter and its called Holy Communion Day. All of the men and women who have been baptized take a special communion on that day. I wonder if they can touch the Holy Communion or if that one is only touched by the church leader.

    The children go to Sunday school every week and they also have religious studies during the week in German school. English school is taught by an outsider and the teacher cant teach anything that doesnt agree with the Hutterite beliefs but they probably dont teach the Hutterite religion since theyre not Hutterites.

    The children have English school and German school so that they will learn to keep the Hutterite world and the outside world separate in their heads, but they are not considered part of the church yet because they have not been baptized and they cant be baptized until they are old enough to choose it for themselves. Most Hutterites go to school until about the ninth grade.

    Men usually get baptized somewhere between the time they are twenty and as late as when they are twenty-six years old but I think its probably rare to wait that long since they cant get married until after they are baptized and they cant have sex until they are married. They also cant have any important jobs if they arent baptized and married. Girls get baptized when they are about nineteen years old.

    Being baptized is the most important part of a Hutterites life because its when they become full adults in the eyes of their colony. After they are baptized they are usually closer to their parents because theyre actually part of the church and the parents arent responsible for teaching them any more so they can be more like friends and equals. Thats pretty normal even for people who arent in a church though.

    The colony has a council thats all men and they make the big decisions for the colony. Only baptized men can be on the council or vote for council members or anything else. Some of the men from this council will form a smaller group to make the little decisions that have to be made every day. There is one man who is the leader of the colony and one man who is kind of like the colony accountant, and there is a leader of the church who is always the person who talks to people who arent Hutterites when they have to talk to someone who isnt a Hutterite.

    If someone in the colony does something bad they have to go in front of the council and get a lecture. Its probably embarrassing because everyone would know in a small community so it works to keep people from doing bad things. If someone does a really bad thing they can be excommunicated and kicked out of the colony.

    The book said that they can also come back after excommunication so I like that the church is forgiving but I wondered what kinds of things get someone a lecture and what kinds of things get people excommunicated. If they leave the colony they can be excommunicated but they can come back and be not-excommunicated.

    If they kill another person on purpose they can never come back but it also said there had never been even one single murder (and even if there was a murder the regular police would take over and the church wouldnt be able to decide that the murderer could come back to the colony) so  what have Hutterites done to be excommunicated and what did they do to get permission to come back I think that would be really interesting to know. All of the excommunications cant be people who want to leave and then want to come back. It almost makes me wish there was a Hutterite blotter sheet like the ones they sell at ABC even though there probably isnt enough Hutterite crime for one issue a year. Still I would like to see that one issue. I wonder if it would be easy to look at the crimes and figure out who was going to get a lecture and who was going to be excommunicated.

    Thinking about criminal behavior in Hutterite colonies, if you never go anywhere in the outside world and everything in the colony belongs to everyone and the colony will buy you whatever you need its hard to think of why anyone would steal. Especially since you couldnt use or wear whatever you stole or everyone would know right away that you stole it. They work really hard from the time they wake up early in the morning until they go to bed early at night and there would not be a lot of privacy in those homes so I just cant see adultery being a big problem. Maybe once in a while someone gets drunk or is lazy Those would probably be reasons for a lecture and not excommunication though. I hope there arent a lot of Hutterite wife-beaters and child-abusers but I dont see anything like that. You never know though. I hope thats not something they would just ignore like the Catholic church did with priests.

    The Hutterites dont play sports and theres no dancing but they sing all the time. Theyre famous for singing a lot. They sing in church and at home and at work, they sing when theyre in small groups and big groups and when theyre by themselves. Its sad that they dont make pottery or have businesses where they sell things the women sew as much as they used to and I wonder why that is dying out. Are Hutterite kids growing up and deciding they want to do things that are more modern That doesnt sound right.

    Hutterites believe in using regular medicine so theres no problem going to the doctor when they need one. There are Hutterite chiropractors who can also have patients who arent Hutterites so the education cant be that limited even though its mostly about learning to be a good Hutterite. I wonder if the Hutterite chiropractors go to college or if that is a skill they pass down through members of their colonies with apprenticeships.

    When Hutterites die the custom is to bury them after three days and they have a wake before they bury the person. I thought that was really interesting too. First, I wonder why they wait three days. Did that start a few hundred years ago when sometimes it seemed like people were dead but they really werent so waiting a few days was to make sure the person was really dead Since they dedicate their whole lives to the church and spend their entire adult lives getting ready to go to Heaven it makes sense that they would have wakes.

    I learned a lot about the Hutterites from reading this book but at the same time it feels like I didnt learn very much at all. I did not think I would have so many questions after I was finished but its kind of a cliffhanger. I want to read more about them and find out what they are doing now.

    A lot of things about their lives is very interesting and much of it sounds wonderful but I know it would drive me crazy fast. It would be different if I was born a Hutterite and never knew anything else, but I wasnt born a Hutterite. If they ever opened their doors to tourists who wanted to live like Hutterites for a week or a month (which wouldnt be a bad idea, actually), I would definitely go for a week. Spring Break

    The Hutterites chose to settle areas of the U.S. And Canada that are very big and open and desolate and cold, so I hope they will be left in peace and no one will persecute them again. Even if I would never want to be a Hutterite, they arent bothering anybody, they should be free to follow their religious ways, and its nice to know that there are people like them in the world.

The Hutterites in North Americaby John A. Hostetler, Gertrude Enders Huntington
    I decided to write about the Hutterites of North America because I have always been fascinated by religious sects where the people still live the way they did hundreds of years ago and dont use all of the modern conveniences we take for granted. I thought the Hutterites would be just like the Amish however I learned reading this book that although they are related to the Amish, unlike the Amish the Hutterites are allowed to use gas and electricity.

    Hutterites are like the Amish in that they dont listen to the radio or watch tv or movies. They also dont play sports, and theres no dancing but they sing. They are actually famous for their singing. They sing in church, at home and at work. They sing when theyre in small groups and large groups, and they sing when theyre alone. Hutterite teenagers get together to sing too.

        John Hostetler started learning about the Hutterites in 1959 when he was a teacher at the University of Alberta in Canada and five elders went to see Hostetler to talk to him about a Canadian law that made it hard for Hutterites to buy land. They came to see Hostetler because he was raised Amish and would understand their lives better than regular Canadians. He took his class to watch hearings about the law and then started being friends with them. Hostetler spent many weekends and holidays with the Hutterites over the next three years and he would often bring family members with him. The colonies he visited were close to his home in Edmonton.

    Later he got a grant to study Hutterites and Gertrude Huntington was one of his field workers. They studied three colonies  one in Alberta, one in Manitoba, and one in Montana -- all together about 280 Hutterites. They chose those colonies because they were very normal for Hutterite society. Hostetler wanted to figure out how they raised children to live so well in the colonies when they are adults, and what kind of people leave the colonies when they become adults. They studied every aspect of the Hutterites lives for a little more than three years between 1962 and 1965.

    Hutterites in North America are mostly in the plains of America and Canada. There were more than twenty-two thousand Hutterites in North America by 1974. They live in communities of colonies, and the colonies are made up of families. There is a house for each extended family in the colony, and each house has separate apartments for the family units within the extended family. Hutterite houses are built around the big communal kitchen that is one of the centers of community life, and there is also a church in the center of each colony.

    When there are too many young men in a colony and no room to move up because all of the top spots are filled by older men, the community buys more land and everything needed to start a new colony. Not just young men move to the new colony. A new colony also needs people who have experience running a colony but younger men will be able to have mens jobs in the new colony.

    Hutterites do mostly farming and have very big farms. Even though they have modern farm equipment, machinery, and vehicles the work is still very hard. The men work the farm and any other businesses the colony or community needs. Hutterite farmers usually grow fruits and vegetables, raise pigs and chickens, and have dairy cows.

    Hutterite women do all of the cooking, baking, cleaning, and laundry. They also make all of the clothes worn by the people in their families and colony. The women take turns working in the communal kitchen but work together for big projects, especially at harvest time or when a lot of pigs or chickens are killed. They can and jar fruits and vegetables and do many other big farm projects that are considered womens work.

    The Hutterites work very hard but they also spend a lot of time with their families. They eat every meal together and every day after lunch they take a break just to enjoy being with the family for a while. There is an afternoon snack break and they go to church together every evening. Sunday is the only day they dont work (but I bet the women still work making food and washing dishes). Hutterites have lived this way for more than four-hundred years.

    Hostetler also wanted to study the beginning of the Hutterites so in 1970 and 1971 he stayed with family in Vienna and from there he visited important archeological areas, villages, museums, and libraries. He learned everything he could about how the Hutterites started, and how the religion and communal living developed.

    The Hutterian Brethren were an outgrowth of sixteenth-century Anabaptism, which means they were rebaptisers. The Hutterites wanted a church that was free from the State, and that made Catholic and Protestant leaders upset. Being called an Anabaptist back then was an insult, and the term was used not only for the Hutterites but also to describe anyone who did not think like everybody else, so the term was not just about baptism.

    One kind of Anabaptist was very Old Testament. They started their church in Saxony but only lasted from 1520 until 1525. They did not believe in baptizing at all and did not like that babies were being baptized (which may have been the law at that time but its not exactly clear from this book). Another group of Old Testament Anabaptists did believe in baptizing adults but they didnt last long either. 1533 to 1535 and they were gone.

    The New Testament Anabaptists did not believe in any kind of fighting, and they were called pacifists. They came from Bible groups started in Zurich Switzerland between 1523 and 1525, and in 1525 some of the adults started being baptized. They were thrown out of Zurich and thats when they started to really spread all over Europe. A man named George Blaurock became their leader and he spread the teachings to the Hapsburg Empire.

    The Hutterites met in peoples houses to study the Bible. The more they studied the more they believed in the New Testament, so they refused to fight in wars. They still believed in complete separation from the State so they also refused to swear allegiance to any state or king.

    In addition, they made it a rule that you could not baptize babies. They believed only adults should be baptized, because only adults could think first and then make their own choices about religion. Babies and children think whatever their parents teach them to think, but when they grow up they can decide for themselves. Hutterites dont believe that everyone in the church has to be perfect either. They want people who know right from wrong and who are conscious of sin and who try to be better people every day.

    The Hutterites were in South Germany and Austria and were related to but completely separate from two groups of Mennonites, one in the Netherlands and North Germany and the other in Switzerland and South Germany. The Amish came from the Swiss Mennonites toward the end of the seventeenth century, and they were extremely conservative.

    An Anabaptist from South Germany named Hans Denck had studied Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He was made the director of a school when he was only twenty-three years old, but he was fired because of things he said about baptizing and communion. Denck believed people should follow the teachings of Jesus and forget about the Old Testament because Jesus would not want people to do any of the things they talk about in the Old Testament. Even when Denck was arguing with people he would do it in a nice way because he did not believe in fighting of any kind. He died when he was only twenty-seven years old but his writing influenced a lot of people after his death.

    A man named Hans Hut was one of Dencks followers. He got rebaptized in 1526 and then became a missionary. Hut had three converts  Leonard Scheimer, a Franciscan friar Hans Schlaffer, a priest and Ambrose Spittelmaier, a university-trained layman -- who wrote a lot of things called codices that influenced people. Schlaffer was beheaded

    All of these men believed that there would be a second coming of Christ and that living according to Jesus words would involve hardship and suffering. They also believed that people are supposed to share everything (which reminds me of the Amish and how they share their crops and workloads. The people in these religions help each other. The men can build really good houses and barns in only one day while the women share the chores involved in feeding the men who are doing the building).

    Even though people were killed for being Anabaptists, many people still chose to become Anabaptists. There were poor people, rich people, school teachers, artists and nobles. Charles V was the Holy Roman Emperor. It was his job to protect the Catholic church and he took his job seriously. Even people who were not Anabaptists but who attended Anabaptist meetings were executed, and by 1530 maybe a thousand Anabaptists had been killed. There were not as many people in the world back then so it was probably more like a million people (or maybe even more) being killed today.

    Moravia had already experienced a lot of fighting about religion. The Moravian people must have gotten tired of it because they started having more freedom of religion (even though the leaders didnt like that) so Anabaptists began moving there and they called Moravia the Promised Land.

    The Hutterite community in Moravia grew for fifty years but for the first one-hundred years not one of the leaders was from Moravia. King Ferdinand didnt like the Hutterites very much, but he couldnt do anything about it because some of the people in power locally were protecting them.

    The Liechtenstein family was one of the powerful families protecting the Anabaptists who lived in Morovia, and Leonard von Liechtenstein was baptized into this new faith. After Liechtenstein was baptized many other people were converted too.

    Soon the Anabaptists were fighting with each other. Most of their arguments were about whether or not they could fight in a war and whether or not they could pay taxes that are used for war but some of the fighting was about people who got baptized too easily without really having to think about what it means to be Anabaptist. Some leaders were baptizing anyone who asked to be baptized and that caused problems in the church. There was also fighting between Anabaptists who believed in sharing and those who did not.

    In 1527 Hans Hut started telling Anabaptists to sell their homes and all of their worldly possessions because he was sure Jesus would come back in 1528 and he wanted everyone to be ready (which sounds like something you could hear on the news today, so I guess this kind of thing started a very long time ago. I am always surprised when people stay with these churches and leaders after the end of the world does not happen. If I was an Anabaptist in 1527 and I sold my house and all of my things because my leader told me the end of the world was coming in 1528, I would not still be an Anabaptist in 1529).

    After Hans Hut became one of the leaders there was even more fighting and moving until 1529 when they were in Austerlitz and a hatmaker named Jakob Hutter became a leader even though he wasnt very well educated.

    Hutter was in Tyrol where there was a lot of persecution against Anabaptists, so when he found out about Morovia Hutter tried to move everyone there. They had to travel in very small groups because it was extremely dangerous. Anabaptists were still being killed just because they were Anabaptists. There was even a legal death penalty for being an Anabaptist

    Groups that escaped were called Volker. They traveled on foot and left everything behind. They even left small children behind because the trip was so dangerous. Even if they were able to physically survive the trip, the adults worried the children would make noise or do something that would get the Volkers discovered and killed before they could get to Morovia.

    The community of Anabaptists in Austerlitz grew so quickly that soon there wasnt room for all of them in one place. When the weather was good they were meeting outdoors, but in 1530 there was a very bad winter and it was too cold for Anabaptists to hold their meetings outside. The church wasnt big enough to hold all of the Anabaptists, so they had to split up and meet in three different places. That is when they began breaking off into three separate groups.

    One leader was a man named Weidemann, and there was also a man who was a priest before becoming an Anabaptist, named Reublin. Many of the Anabaptists were very upset with Weidemann because he was controlling and not very nice, so Reublin went after him. Reublin wrote a letter charging Weidemann with ten different crimes, including responsibility for the deaths of more than twenty babies who died because they had no milk. The babies parents gave Weidemann a lot of money when they joined the Anabaptists, so it was difficult to understand why there was no money to feed the babies.

    Reublin also accused Weidemann of spending most of the groups money on the rich members but hardly any money was being used to help the poor people. A lot of the Anabaptists were also upset that the girls had to marry men the church leaders chose and they didnt have any say at all about who they would marry.

    Another big issue was that Weidemann was baptizing babies and saying they would go to Hell if they died when they werent baptized. Baptizing babies was totally against everything the Anabaptists believed, but Reublin was also upset that Weidemann wasnt turning over money for taxes to fund the war against the Turks. Since paying taxes for war was against their beliefs too, Reublin was being hypocritical with this charge.

    The Hutterites had the good period from 1554 to 1565 and then they had the golden period from 1565 to 1592. More than a hundred communities (called Bruderhofs) were formed and they had twenty or thirty thousand people in those communities. The Hutterites were very good at farming, business, and education, and started becoming known for their crafts.

    Hutterite ceramics are beautiful and the Hutterite women are great seamstresses. They wanted to keep their designs simple but they needed to make money, so they created decorative pottery and clothing for people who werent Hutterites and kept everything for their own use very simple. Hutterite artists inscribe words inspired by Bible passages on their pottery, but the words dont have to be exactly whats in the Bible. A common saying among North American Hutterites appears on a Hutterite plate in the National Gallery in Prague In Gottes segen  ist alles gelegen. In English that means Gods blessing gained, all is obtained.

    The Hutterites lived in many places including Russia until the late 1800s, which is when they started moving to North America. They left Russia after almost a hundred years because they wanted to continue speaking German and the Russians started trying to force them to learn and speak Russian. Even worse was that the Russians wanted Hutterites to start joining the military. After relocating to North America, the Hutterites lived in a few places in Canada and America before settling in the Dakotas for a while. Things were fine until World War I and then big problems started because Americans didnt like that they spoke German and wouldnt join the military. It was Russia all over again.

    Young Hutterite men who refused to join the army were sent to prison camps and even to prisons like Alcatraz and Leavenworth (which I did not know were in existence then) They were conscientious objectors who would not fight at all because they were following Jesus teachings, and for this they were tortured, stabbed with bayonets, thrown out of windows, hung by their feet and chased by motorcycles until they dropped. When they were in their barracks they only had bread and water to eat and drink.

    Other kinds of torture were used against the Hutterite men who refused to fight, including something which sounded a lot like waterboarding. These stories reminded me of the things I see on the news now. That was another big shock because I just didnt believe things like that would happen in America and also because I was thinking if I chose to write about the Hutterites I could forget about whats happening now in real life for a while. I guess its true that there are no good old days. Whenever you look closely at history you will probably see things like this happening.

    Many Americans believed conscientious objectors are really just cowards. They would not listen to the Hutterites when they said they were only following Jesus teachings so nobody really cared what was happening to them. Pretty soon the Hutterites moved to Canada. Sadly, during World War II they began having the same kinds of problems in Canada, but it got worse when Canada passed laws maing it very hard for the Hutterites to buy land they needed for their colonies and farms. Thats when the Hutterites started thinking about coming back to America.

    Hutterites are very disconnected from the outside world so people who arent Hutterites dont usually know much about their way of life. They are the oldest group of people living and working as a community. They dont have rich people or poor people in their communities, and nobody has to worry about being homeless or going hungry or not having a job. Everyone has what they need to survive and there is always help for people who are sick or injured. Hutterites are wonderful to old people and they love them. Old Hutterites never have to worry about being alone or not having food or medicine or a place to live. They are treated with great respect.

    A lot of things about Hutterite life sound great, but I wouldnt like having to walk behind the men and having to do whatever a man tells me to do, and I could never act as though the man  is always right. I would also not want to work as hard as they work or do only womens work, or wear the same style of clothing all my life. I would miss television and movies and dancing and sports and listening to the music I enjoy. I cant imagine never having my own car not being able to drive or go out with my friends or travel (unless I was moving to a new colony or visiting another colony). I would be very surprised if Hutterites eat pizza and chocolate and I would have a hard time giving up pizza and chocolate, but it would be nice to never have to worry about money, employment, utilities and rent or mortgage payments.

    All of the money earned by Hutterite men goes to the colony, then the colony buys the necessities for the community, families, and individuals. Even if something seems like it belongs to one person, everyone thinks of it as being on loan to that person from the colony.

    The Hutterites are different from outsiders in many ways. The language they speak and the clothes they wear are easy ways to see that they are Hutterites, but they can also tell who is Hutterite (or unser Leut which means our people) and who is not (or Welt Leut which means worldly people) just from mannerisms and other non-verbal communication.

    A Hutterites life is seen as being in two stages. The first stage is when they are children preparing for adulthood and the decision of whether or not to be baptized (I wonder how many  Hutterite children actually grow up and decide not to be baptized. That would be hard if it meant leaving everything you knew).

    The second stage is when they are adults preparing for life after death. Hutterite adults prepare for the afterlife by getting baptized, then they devote themselves to living good lives. Its not enough just to be baptized, either. Hutterites believe that if an adult doesnt try to live a good life, when they die it will be as if they were never baptized at all. Adults are supposed to use their free will to choose right over wrong and good over bad, and to try to think more about the good of their community than they do about themselves.

    Hutterites choose who they want to marry in their community, but they prefer to have brothers and sisters marry other brothers and sisters. Thats probably to keep the families more connected within the communities. This is another religion where everything goes by the fathers and the men. When a girl is married, she moves into her husbands familys house. She and her husband have an apartment in the fathers house and the husbands mother becomes her new boss of the house (its a good thing girls can have a say about who they marry because when youre a Hutterite you really will be marrying the whole family).

    If the new husband has a brother and the brother marries the new wifes sister, then she will have close family with her because the sister will move into an apartment in the same house. If the new husband has sisters who marry the new wifes brothers, then they would be together and the ties between the two families would be stronger (but all Hutterite families are close to each other in the community and especially in the colony).

    Hutterites like to have large families and children are considered gifts from God who dont belong to the parents. Everyone in the colony shares responsibility for the children and the men are very involved with the children too (it takes a village). This made me wonder what life is like for Hutterites who cant have children. It would be very difficult for men and women who cant have children because it would be so obvious to everybody that they cant have kids (deciding not to have children doesnt seem like an option in their world) and having children is really important for Hutterites.

    This book raised interesting questions. Do Hutterites ever use fertility drugs or try invitro fertilization if they cant have children Do they use birth control Is there such a thing for them as too many children Hutterites absolutely cannot get divorced, and there is no premarital sex.

    Hutterite children stay at home for their first two years, with their mothers and different friends and family who babysit when the mother has to be doing something else. When they are three years old, the children go to a school (that sounds like preschool or daycare) where they start learning to share and cooperate and build relationships with each other. They attend this school from the age of three until they are five years old, then they go to a German school and an English school, but they are never taught anything which conflicts with Hutterite beliefs.

    Hutterites believe in Jesus so they are Christians, but they also believe the only way to be saved is to be part of a Hutterite community, making your whole life about serving God and living according to Hutterite ways. The people in Christian churches were used hearing about believe you can be saved just by saying you accept Jesus and getting baptized, but then you can live a regular life during the week and go to church on Sundays and you will be okay.

    Everyone in the Hutterite colony must put the colony first and the church is second. I thought that was interesting but also strange for a religious community, however it makes sense when you think about Hutterite beliefs (they believe that the way they act here on earth is whats most important and the church is symbolic. Its like actions speak louder than words).

    Hutterites attitude about communion is different from other religions too. The women make a special bread for communion and the recipe calls for lots of eggs and sugar so that it tastes really good. They usually have wine they made themselves, but if they are out of their own wine it is fine to get wine from somewhere else. When it is time for communion, the leader takes the bread in his hands and breaks it into two pieces. Then he takes a little piece from one of the big pieces, eats it, and starts passing the two big pieces around. Everybody takes a little piece to eat and then passes it again. The leader also pours the wine into a communal cup, takes a sip and then passes the cup, and thats how the Hutterites do communion. In other Christian churches, only a priest or pastor is supposed to touch the communion bread (or the wafer) or the cup that holds the wine.

    Church is every day for Hutterites and they have special clothing worn only for church. There is an evening service with a sermon where they sing hymns and pray together (they pray before and after every single meal and snack, too) but the everyday services are not as long as the Sunday services. The big Hutterite holiday is Holy Communion Day, and that is the day after Easter. All of the men and women who have been baptized take a special communion on that day (do they also touch the Holy Communion Or is that communion bread and wine touched only by the church leader The book didnt say).

    Hutterite children go to evening services and to Sunday school, and they have religious studies during the week in German school. English school is always taught by an outsider. The children have English school classes and German school classes so that they will learn to keep the Hutterite world and the outside world separate in their heads, but they are not considered part of the church yet because they have not been baptized and they cant be baptized until they are old enough to choose it for themselves. Most Hutterites go to school until about the ninth grade.

    Men usually get baptized around the age of twenty, but sometimes as late as twenty-six though its probably rare for a man to wait that long because they cant get married until after they are baptized and they cant have any important jobs if they arent baptized and married. Girls get baptized when they are about nineteen years old.

    Being baptized is the most important part of life for Hutterites because that is when they become full adults in the eyes of their colony. After they get baptized they are usually closer to their parents because then they are part of the church and more like equals (which sounds pretty normal for grown children and parents, even those who arent Hutterites).

    Each colony has a council thats all men, and they make the big decisions for the colony. Only baptized men can be on the council or vote. Some of the men from this council will form a smaller group to make the every-day decisions. There is one man who is the leader of the colony and one man who acts as the colony accountant (or CEO), and there is another leader for the church. The church leader is also the person who communicates with outsiders.

    If someone in the colony does something bad or wrong, that person has to appear before the council and will get a lecture. Its probably embarrassing because everyone would know in a small community so it works to keep people from doing bad things very often. If someone does an extremely bad thing they can be excommunicated and kicked out of the colony. A Hutterite committing murder wouldnt be allowed to return, but there has never been a single murder in a Hutterite community, even in the early days when some Hutterites believed in fighting wars. The book said that they can come back after excommunication so the Hutterites are forgiving, but I wonder what kinds of things get someone a lecture and what gets someone excommunicated.

    Hutterites have no problem using regular medicine so they go to doctors when they are sick or injured. There are Hutterite chiropractors who can also have patients who arent Hutterites so the education cant be as limited as it first sounds. When Hutterites die, the custom is to bury them after three days and a wake.

    I learned a lot about Hutterites from reading this book, but at the same time it feels like I didnt learn very much at all. I did not think I would have so many questions after I was finished but its kind of a cliffhanger. I want to know more about them and how they live now.

    The Hutterites chose to settle in areas of the U.S. and Canada that are desolate and cold, so I hope they will be left in peace and no one will persecute them again. Even if I would never want to be a Hutterite myself, they dont bother anybody and should be free to live as they choose. Its nice to know that there are people like them in the world and I cant imagine anyone wanting to kill them. If Hutterites had retreats which made it possible for outsiders to live with them and learn more about their lives, I would enjoy doing that for a week.