Figure 1.--The Anabaptist communal group best known to Americans is the Amish who have a strong presence in Pennsylvania. Here we see an Amish family wearing their sunday best clothing. They are probably on their way to sinday church services.

The Anabaptists which survived into the modern age were primarily the communal groups: Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites. It was the strength of their communities that allowed them to survive. While all three have Anabaptist roots and as a result many similarities, there are also substantial differences among the three as well as within each. Often brutal repression during the Reformation (16th century) and Religious Wars (17th century) resulted in an odessy that drove them east to Russia and west to North America. Today they are mostly found in North America with a few small communities in Central America and South America. The Amish are the best known in America. They began arriving in the colonial period. The other two groups have arrived more recently.

Amish

The Anabaptist communal group best known to Americans is the Amish who have a strong presence in Pennsylvania. The Amish are a religious group who live in settlements in 22 states and Ontario, Canada. The oldest group of Old Order Amish, about 16-18,000 people live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The Amish stress humility, family and community, and separation from the world. Although Lancaster Amish are Pennsylvania Dutch, all Pennsylvania Dutch are not Amish. The Pennsylvania Dutch are natives of Central Pennsylvania, particularly Lancaster and its surrounding counties. Unlike the Amish, they are not all one religion. Instead, their common bond is a mainly German background (Pennsylvania Dutch is actually Pennsylvania Deutsch, or German). They also have Welsh, English, Scottish, Swiss, and French ancestry.

Hutterites

The Hutterites are another communal Anabaptists group. Their origins date to the Radical Reformation (16th century). They were founded and take their name from their charismatic leader--Jakob Hutter. The first Hutterite communities were organized in Austria and southern Germany. Hutter was tortured and burned as a heretic (1536). Their discenting views on baptism resulted in persecution by both other Protestants and Catholics. They also developed a communal society in which labor and goods were shared--using the early church in Jerusalem as their model. Opposition to many taxes and absolute pacifism resulted in persecution by civil authorities. The result was first leaving Austria and later Moravia fleeing Austrian authorities, Their history is a communsl odessey through much of Europe ending up in the Ukraine--than part of the Russian Empire. Here they nearly died out (18th-19th century). A small group found a refugee in North America and while they were not free from repression, their numbers have increased and new colonies have been founded. The Hutterites today live primarily in the upper Great Plains of the United States and in the neighboring Prairie Provinces of Canada. Here they are organized into colonies of 60 to 150 persons which operate collective farms (Bruderhof). One Hutterite source tiday summarizes their belirfs as, "... respect for the authority of God. God has established a hierarchy of relationships, with the lower always obeying the higher—the younger person obeys the older, the woman the man, and man obeys God. They feel that the individual will must be broken—people should accept self-denial rather than self-fulfillment. But individuals are never secure before God—only their daily behavior gives them security, not their baptism or verbal affirmations. Since the will of God is expressed through the decisions of the community, the individual must be obedient to group will. Communal living is God's order, and private possessions express man's greed."

Mennonites

The Amish are one of the Mennonite groups which settled in America. The Mennonites were an early Protestant sect which developed among Swiss Anabaptists. The Mennonites were moderate Anabaptists. They were initially referred to as the Swiss Bretheren, but were renamed the Mennanites after an earlier leader--Menno Simons (1496?-1561). A Zurrich group seceded from the state church (1523-25). One of the principal issues was infant baptism. The Mennites were nonresistants (pacifists) and refused to take oaths because of a Biblical interpretation. The Mennites took the Bible as the soul authority in matters of faith and accepted only two sacraments (batism and the Lord's Supper). Mennites spread to Germany and were an important part of the Volksdeutsche that migrated to Russia. The offere by Tsarina Chatherine the Great was especially attractive to the Mennonites because they were allowed to live as communities under their own laws and were exempted from military service. Other Mennites established communities in France and the Netherlands. Dutch Menninites issued the Dordrecht Confession (1632). The Mennonites settled areas of eastern Pennsylvania. The first Pennsylvania colony was at Germantown (1683). The Amish are one of the Mennite groups in Pennsylvania. Other colonies were established in Ohio and other mid-Western states. Mennonite familes also established colonies in western Canada. As Russian policies changed toward the Folksdeutsche in the 19th century, many moved to Canada. Large numbers were killed with Stalin during World War II exiled the Folksdeutsche from their Volga farms to Siberia (1941). A small group of Canadian Mennonites established two Mexican colonies during the 1920s.

Created: 9:15 PM 3/13/2011
Last updated: 9:15 PM 3/13/2011