Friday, May 22, 2009 4:00 PM CDT
USA's Yesterday's: Hutterites in America: An uncommon people living in common
Hal Malehorn
Beginning with the Pilgrims, this nation has welcomed a variety of theocracies to these shores: Shakers, Amanans, Jansenites, Rappites, Amish and Hutterites come readily to mind.
While most such sects have long since have either disappeared, lost their religious focus, or become assimilated into society at large, the Amish and the Hutterites have continued to thrive and grow.
Illinoisans are familiar with the Amish, for one of their enclaves is in Douglas County, with others found in many states. In contrast, the Hutterites are called “forgotten people,” for when their vanguard came to America, they chose to live in the most remote reaches of America’s High Plains.
The Hutterites were founded in 1528 in the Austrian Tyrol by Jakob Hutter, who rejected the Protestant practice of infant baptism and the governmental requirement of membership in the state church. Wanting to withdraw from society, the Hutterites were persecuted for their unconventional beliefs, and were driven from their homeland.
The first Hutterite immigrants to North America in 1874 numbered 400, a contingent that has since grown to an estimated 49,000 in the United States and Canada. Their main means of livelihood in those days (and yet today) was the raising of crops and livestock, especially hogs, cattle and poultry.
Differing from other “plain” people, the Hutterites have always lived in colonies, which today number about 150 in the United States. Each colony features a dozen or more buildings that shelter a given colony’s means of economic production. Other buildings include a dining hall, a school, a church, as well as one or more “long houses.”
Each long house, erected on an age-old floor plan, accommodates many families. The quarters include a large living room and many bedrooms, each occupied by one family.
All buildings are oriented north-south, at right angles to each other. Each dwelling is painted white, with blue trim.
When a colony numbers from 100 to 150 members, half of the families “branch off” into some new area well removed from the parent colony, and usually a part of the same expansive landscape. The decision as to which families will move is decided by lot.
Colonies in the United States are located mainly in Montana and the Dakotas, with several in Washington and Minnesota.
Each colony is headed by a minister, elected for life by the adult male members. He is aided by an assistant minister and a secretary, who is responsible for the colony’s financial affairs. Notwithstanding occasional votes that decide unimportant matters (women not voting), the theocratic governance is strictly authoritarian, based upon a literal Bible framework — especially the Book of Acts, which describes early Christians as having all goods in common.
Adulthood is reached at age 18, when offspring are baptized and become full-fledged members. They have already been trained to be subjected to the will of God (as defined by the minister), and to be subservient to the needs of others.
Nearly all new adults choose to remain with the colony.
The commune worships twice daily, sitting segregated by gender, with the minister reading sermons from the 1500s and leading prayers. The assembled worshipers sing (without accompaniment) old German hymns. Members file in and out of the church by age, with the women walking behind the men.
And while no member “owns” major items, he or she may permanently “use” a few things, such as clothing. Also, for the purchase of minor personal items, each adult is issued a regular stipend from the common treasury, depending upon that person’s age, needs and responsibilities.
Each colony supports itself by a highly-organized (and usually very productive) agricultural operation. Differing from other historically “plain” sects, the Hutterites have embraced modern technology — even generator-delivered electricity, as well as cell phones and laptops. However, television sets are not permitted.
Each realm of farm work has an elected “boss” of crops, hogs, poultry and dairy. What foodstuffs are not needed by the colony are sold at market (some 60 percent of the hogs sold yearly in Montana are raised on Hutterite farms). Hutterite men become skillful at adapting used or outdated machines to more efficient purposes.
Women’s work, in turn, is done on a rotating basis, with one experienced supervisor overseeing each activity: cooking, baking, laundering and sewing. Infant and toddler care is assigned to elderly females. Families usually include five or six offspring.
Every aspect of daily living is regulated according to an unvarying schedule: rising, eating, schooling, working, worshiping, retiring.
After age 3 and up until age 15, the children are enrolled daily in two successive forms of instruction, both in the same building: German school (where youngsters learn High German), followed later by English school (where the students encounter a public-school curriculum). Adding the Tyrolean dialect (“Hutterisch”) to the mix, most Hutterites become tri-lingual.
A separate kindergarten room in the school building is set aside for 3s-to-5s. Both rooms are presided over by experienced teachers.
Young people may marry, but only after age 18. They must marry someone from another colony — a person they may have met, and then courted, only a half-dozen times. Marriages occur only with permission of both ministers of the colonies involved, as well as permission from the two councils and both sets of parents. After a brief but joyous wedding ceremony, the bride joins the groom’s colony, leaving behind her parents and friends.
Where Hutterites have settled, they are readily distinguishable: dark shirts and trousers for the men, and beards on adult males. For their part, the women wear plain garb of dark colors, and a characteristic polka-dot headkerchief.
Granted, the Hutterites contentedly experience conformity, surveillance, submission, unvarying rituals and a tightly regulated schedule. All are subject to the minister, workers to bosses, women to men, wives to husbands, younger to older. Discipline at all levels is loving, but stern.
Still, one close observer of a colony wrote: “There was no anger, no jealousy, no vengeance, no envy, no gambling, no remorse.” To this might be added: “No waste, no violence, no abuse, no disrespect.”
Where else on this planet could anyone, regarding such aspects, come so close to a bit of heaven on earth?
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