Liza-pedia: The Hutterites

I find religions fascinating. A friend at work told me about this interesting group, which appears to be similar to the better known Amish in some ways. Upon a little research it does appear that both groups are off-shoots of the larger Anabaptist belief system, although the Amish most direct religious 'ancestry' is the Mennonites. Both groups also originated, like most American belief systems, in persecution of their group in Europe. For the Hutterites, that area was Germany. For the Amish, the original split lead to settlements in Switzerland as well the southern Rhine river region.

This page seems to be an official one by the Hutterite group and has some good overview information. It's existence indicates (to me at least) that the Hutterites don't eschew technology to the level that I've heard most Amish do. Although there are multiple websites that offer Amish goods and services; it seems that most of these are third party groups which deal with the Amish through more traditional face to face means. The Hutterite website even has blogs done by various community members and pictures make it appear that they use modern tractors. Their clothing standards, while more conservative than most of the contemporary United States (long dresses on the woman, dark slacks, long sleeved shirts on the men) the colors seem to be brighter and several photos have younger men wearing what look like baseball caps.

Certain elements of this faith really stand out to me. One of them is the idea of adult baptism. I find this a really sensible idea. The site I mentioned above indicates that the community tends to request baptism between the ages of 20 and 30, after somewhere between five and ten years of Sunday School teaching. Even then, the baptism is not instantaneous but requires several more months of specific teaching by community elders.

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