Includes bibliographical references (p. [347]-362) and index.
Contents:
Communal Christians in North America -- Origins and history -- Immigration and settlement in North America -- Four Hutterite branches -- Beliefs and practices -- Life patterns and rites of passage -- Identity, tradition, and folk beliefs -- Education and cultural continuity -- Colony structure, governance, and economics -- Population, demography, and defection -- Managing technology and social change -- Relationships with non-Hutterites -- Facing the future.
Summary:
One of the longest-lived communal societies in North America, the Hutterites have developed multifaceted communitarian perspectives on everything from conflict resolution and decision-making practices to standards of living and care for the elderly. This compellingly written book offers a glimpse into the complex and varied lives of the nearly 500 North American Hutterite communities. North American Hutterites today number around 50,000 and have common roots with and beliefs akin to the Amish and other Old Order Christians. This historical analysis and anthropological investigation draws on existing research, primary sources, and over 25 years of the authors' interaction with Hutterite communities to recount the group's physical and spiritual journey from its 16th-century founding in Eastern Europe and its near disappearance in Transylvania in the 1760s to its late 19th-century transplantation to North America and into the modern era. It explains how the Hutterites found creative ways to manage social and economic changes over more than five centuries while holding to the principles and cultural values embedded in their faith. Religious scholars, anthropologists, and historians of America and the Anabaptist faiths will find this objective-yet-appreciative account of the Hutterites' distinct North American culture to be a valuable and fascinating study both of the religion and of a viable alternative to modern-day capitalism. - Publisher.
Series:
Young Center books in Anabaptist & Pietist studies.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.