Holding All Things in Common...Not So Common Anymore

I had returned to my childhood home between graduating college and getting married. About the time I was planning my wedding, the long-time neighbor on the driveway side of my mom's house put her home up for sale. Grandpa told me my future husband and I should buy it. He said it in a matter-of-fact manner, like it was the most natural and logical thing to do. I had to explain to Grandpa that my future husband, in graduate school some 250 odd miles away, was likely to remain there for some years into our marriage, and then go off to who knows where for more schooling or employment. No, we would not be buying the house next door...

I relate this story because it is the only tiny faint remnant I ever saw in my family of the distinctive Hutterite belief in community of goods, holding all things in common. Buying the house next door would be saying that, yes, I was still here, to share in whatever – meals, work projects, driving Grandpa to the lumberyard. In order to hold all things in common, close communal proximity to one another was necessary. I suppose I could make the case that we did live in somewhat of a communal house, an extended family made up of Mom, my brother and I, and Grandma and Grandpa. I know there was a pooling of financial resources to make ends meet and the free childcare that Grandma and Grandpa provided made it possible for my mom to be the full time breadwinner of the family. I always saw this as a practical necessity of our family circumstances, but perhaps it was made easier by some hereditary Hutterite predisposition to working together. Aside from that, we all seemed to be respecters of private property. We were attached to our personal stuff.

The Hutterites' communal life was difficult to maintain and it flickered in and out of existence depending on their stability of the moment. In towns where they had some peace and freedom from persecution, the communal lifestyle would flourish. When they were on the run from their persecutors, community of goods was impossible to maintain. There were four towns in what is now Slovakia that provided some degree of stability for the Hutterites, and later, for the Haban. Sobotište, Vel'ké Leváre, Moravský Svätý Ján, and Trenčín. Sobotište, Grandma's town, and Moravský Svätý Ján, Grandpa's town, both have areas dating from the 1500s containing the buildings where the Hutterites, and later, the Haban, lived first communally, and then more in an extended family-like way. The Hutterite settlements were called Bruderhofs and consisted of mills and other places of work, clustered together in a small area, as well as large houses where families shared living spaces. Writers of the time likened a Bruderhof to a beehive, a busy place, with everyone working together to create a productive, godly life.   

Grandpa's house, Moravsky Svaty Jan

Grandma's house, Sobotiste

Present day Sobotište and Moravský Svätý Ján both have areas that are called Habánský dvor, translated as “Haban Court”. Grandpa's childhood home was most likely one of the original Bruderhof homes. Grandma's childhood home was most likely not, but built in the style of the Bruderhof home close to the original Hutterite Bruderhof site.

Tomorrow I'll take you on a visual tour of both Grandma and Grandpa's home towns...

Draft Dodging...

Grandpa always had strong opinions about political issues and was never shy about expressing them. The Hutterites' desire to distance themselves from the concerns of civil government had faded out by the time it reached Grandpa, at least when it came to expressing political opinions. I remember, however, two subjects that Grandpa kept relatively quiet about. One was the 1972 presidential election. Grandpa was surprisingly silent when Richard Nixon won reelection. Two years later, when Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Grandpa broke his silence, saying how he was so glad he had voted for George McGovern and had not voted for that crook Nixon. We were stunned - we had all assumed he had voted for Nixon - though we really shouldn't have been surprised. Grandpa always liked to be on the winning side of things and had probably been deeply disappointed with McGovern's poor showing at the voting booths and didn't want it to be known that he had voted for such a big loser. Nixon's resignation gave Grandpa the chance to justify his vote two years earlier. Better to be associated with a noble loser than a crooked winner...

The other political issue I don't remember Grandpa expressing his opinion on was the number of young Americans during the Vietnam war era who left the country rather than serve in the military. This was a hot topic in the 1960s and early 1970s. The numbers vary wildly, but it is estimated that 30,000 – 100,000 Americans moved to Canada rather than face the possibility of combat in Southeast Asia. I don't remember Grandpa, very pro-American in most of his opinions, commenting on this, though he may have to Mom and Grandma. I think he may have felt a camaraderie with the draft dodgers. He was one himself. It was how he came to be an American.

According to Mom's memoir of Grandma and Grandpa, when Grandpa was twenty years old, he was required to report for four years of military training in the then Austria-Hungary army. “...instead, he jumped the border and ran away to America.” This was a decision with serious repercussions. It meant he could never return to his home country without facing the real possibility of being arrested. Mom doesn't state it in her book, but I remember being told as a child that Grandpa's mother felt very strongly that her son should have nothing to do with the army and facilitated her son's leaving. At the time I remember thinking, of course, no mother would want her son to have to go in the army and potentially fight in a war. * Now, however, knowing about the strong Hutterite prohibition against bearing arms, I think Grandpa's Haban mother was just living out her Hutterite pacifist heritage, encouraging her son to do so as well. Grandpa came to America, met Grandma, and became an American citizen in 1915. By the time of the first World War, Grandpa was thirty years old with two small children, so again was able to avoid military service. He spent the war happily building ships in the New York City shipyards. According to Mom, he was quite proud of these ships, taking his two daughters to see their launches. Most likely these ships were used in the first World War, so though Grandpa didn't technically “bear arms”, his work, in fact, did support the war effort, a very un-Hutterite thing to do.

Grandpa's Mother, Julianna Kubina Cederle

After World War I, Austria-Hungary ceased to exist, as did the military Grandpa had jumped the border to escape. Czechoslovakia was now the country Grandpa's town of Svätý Ján resided in. In 1921 Grandpa returned to his hometown with his wife and three daughters without fear of any repercussions from his draft dodging. He lived there for a year, spending part of that time under his parent's roof, with the Haban mother who had encouraged him to leave all those years before.

*I, personally, have always admitted to pacifist tendencies. I thought it was because I was a child of the 1960s, the “Give peace a chance” mentality seeping into my psyche, and later, that I was a woman and mother, and war and fighting just didn't make sense to me. I now wonder if maybe I am truly my great grandmother's great granddaughter, with full-blown Hutterite pacifism somewhere in my heart...

Laying Hold of the Word...Literally...

In the years I grew up under Grandma's watchful eye, I knew her to be a godly woman, kind but firm, with a sense of humor, someone not afraid to speak her mind, but able to do so somewhat gently. She wasn't perfect, but she was, for the most part, a good, law-abiding person. In all the years I knew her I only remember one set of actions on her part that bordered on the criminal.

She stole missalettes.

After the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church changed the language of its liturgy from Latin to English. In the days of the old Latin mass, some congregants would buy their own missals, a hardcovered book with the prayers and readings of the liturgical year written in both Latin and English. As the mass was said in Latin, they would follow along with the English translation. After Vatican II, in an effort to make the English mass more accessible to all, churches started providing missalettes for those who attended mass. These were small paperback booklets, usually placed in a rack along the back of every pew, available to everyone to make the mass a more participatory experience. In the early days of their existence, missalettes were published and replaced monthly though now I believe they are larger and replaced yearly. Despite the fact each booklet had a vaguely threatening note on it that read “Do not remove from pew!”, somehow a copy of the current month's missalette found its way next to the chair in our living room where Grandma would sit down in the afternoon to have a much needed break from her busy day. We teased her about the missalettes, asking her why she felt the need to “steal” from the church. Her justification was that she really liked to be able to read the epistle and gospel readings for the week, and the print and language of the missalette was so much bigger and clearer than the outdated Latin missals we had in the house. Eventually we bought Grandma a large print Bible, which she liked even better, and her life of crime came to an end.

One of the earmarks of the Protestant Reformation was a heavy emphasis on the Bible and its accessibility to the common man and woman. This filtered down to the Anabaptists, the Hutterites and continued on in the Haban. I have three photographs of Grandma's mother, dressed in traditional Haban garb, and in each one she is holding a small book, possibly a Bible, possibly a missal. It would appear that she carried it with her most of the time, showing a desire to never be far from God's Word. Her daughter appeared to have inherited the same love of and attachment to scripture. An interesting note: In one photo, Great Grandma's rosary beads are intertwined in the hands holding the book, a very visual image of that Haban Hutterite/Catholic hybrid.

***

Grandpa, also, had a strong biblical heritage. My mother told me that growing up, Grandpa would frequently quote “wise sayings” his Haban 
mother had taught him. As an adult, Mom realized that the “wise sayings” of Grandpa's mother were, in fact, scripture verses. Grandpa was just quoting his mother quoting scripture. Of course, for Grandpa, sometimes these scriptures were the means for him to get his own way with something. He would quote his mother saying what comes out of the mouth is more important than what goes into the mouth when he wanted to play fast and loose with Lenten or communion fasting rules. His mother's saying was a pretty good distillation of a verse from Matthew 15:

Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. (17-19)

And so Grandpa, believing to be undefiled, would have that late bagel before church and still expect to receive communion when he got to mass...

Believin'

“We are what we believe” is the headline of an April 17, 2017, article by CNN in which over 600 readers shared their faith experiences. CNN came up with six similarities shared by those who told their faith stories:

- You are passionate from a young age

- You know everything can change in an instant

- You think actions speak louder than words

- You find strength in believing...or not (Yes, atheism is a spiritual belief system...)

- You seek beyond major religions

- You believe the search for meaning never ends

In the next several blog posts, I want to examine what the Hutterites believed and what parts of their belief system has filtered down to their Haban descendants. To some extent, the six similarities listed above are also true of the Hutterites and the Haban. They were what they believed. Today, I want to look at the specific beliefs that made the Hutterites who they were and made them different from other Protestants of the time as well as the one thing that made them distinct from other Anabaptists.*

Word!

Hutterites took the Bible seriously. Their spiritual leaders were not called priests or pastors but “Servants..." or "Ministers of the Word". This love of God's Word was not a uniquely Hutterite trait, but one shared by many after the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther believed that the Bible was the Word of God, the sole source of spiritual truth, and it was to be studied and embraced by everyone for their spiritual growth. The Catholic Church of his day believed the Latin Bible should remain in the hands of educated priests, that the average believer would not be smart enough to interpret the Word of God accurately. Bibles in the common language were forbidden. Luther, however, said, “...a simple layman armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it". The Hutterites ran with that, looking to the Bible for all wisdom and knowledge. The Haban continued to cling to the Word of God even after their conversion to Catholicism. (Spoiler alert: This love of the Word led Grandma to a brief life of crime...)

Baptism – Adults only, please...

Anabaptists, including the Hutterites, after reading their Bibles, found no biblical basis for baptizing babies. Baptism was for grownups...well, at least for those old enough to understand what they were getting themselves into. Salvation wasn't something that was poured over a baby, like water. When one was old enough to understand what Christ's death and resurrection meant for the individual, when one could freely choose to surrender one's life to Jesus, then one could be baptized as a sign of entering into that new life of faith. The Hutterites desperately held onto this belief, to the death in many instances. It was the issue of infant baptism that eventually led to some Hutterites giving up their identity as “true” believers and resigned themselves to the Catholic/Hutterite hybrid we know as Haban.

Separation of Church and State...a radical idea

As modern Americans, we take the idea of separation of church and state for granted. It seems like a good idea. But before, during and for hundreds of years after the Protestant Reformation, the church, whatever the denomination, and the government, whatever that may locally have looked like, were seriously intertwined. Hutterites, as well as most Anabaptists, tried to keep themselves separated from the civil authorities. Government was “of the world”. Hutterites were “of God.” This strict separation rarely went well for the Hutterites. Local government saw the Hutterites as uncooperative at best, and downright rebellious at worst.

...No swearing (of oaths, that is...)

Simply put, an oath is calling upon God to witness the fact that what one is saying is true - “I swear to God that.....” When the Hutterites read their Bibles, they saw Jesus' take on the swearing of oaths:

Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. - Matthew 5:33-37 (ESV)

Most Anabaptists had some prohibition against oaths, but Hutterites took the prohibition very seriously. In a time when loyalty oaths of all kinds were required, this provided one more cause for persecution. Even when asked to swear an oath that they would never return to a certain town or region again, the Hutterites would refuse. How could they swear such a thing when they didn't know where the Holy Spirit might lead them in the future? Asking God to witness a statement that might not be true in the future would make God a party to one's sin. No, no swearing of oaths...

Put down that sword...

Hutterites, as well as most Anabaptists, were pacifists. They were adamantly opposed to war and any violence. They would not defend themselves when attacked by their enemies, making them easy targets to plunder. They were also very careful not to provide nonviolent support for war efforts. Before agreeing to do certain projects for their neighbors or protective lord, they would seriously examine the use of the object they had been contracted to construct. The lord of the region wished to purchase wagons for his estate. For what purpose were they to be used? To carry war implements to go out into battle against the Turks? Or to cart food for the animals of the estate and be used for the crops during harvest time? The answer to questions such as these would determine whether or not the Hutterites would agree to build what was asked of them.

When the Hutterites came to the United States, their pacifist beliefs got them into trouble during the first world war. As conscientious objectors, the young Hutterite men were required to do alternate service. Since almost all alternate service at that time in some way supported the war effort, they would politely refuse. Several were beaten, starved and eventually died in military prison for refusal to support the war effort. The Hutterites, living in the Great Plains at the time, struggled with whether the United States was a country which would tolerate their strict pacifism. Many left their farms in the Dakotas and migrated to Canada, a country with a more lenient view of those who would not support war efforts of any kind.

Let's keep communion...

The Lord's supper was seen as a remembrance of the suffering and death of Jesus. Unlike the Catholic Church which viewed its Holy Communion as the literal body and blood of Christ, the Lord's supper of the Hutterites was a symbolic remembrance. The Hutterites took the celebration of the Lord's Supper very seriously and with great reverence, so much so that they only celebrated it once a year, the day after Easter. It was the high point of their church year.

Ban 'em...

Following God day in and day out and striving to live holy, godly lives is not easy. What do you do with those among you who just can't cut it and fall into sin? You speak to them, encourage them to get back on the straight and narrow, and then, if they refuse, you ban them from the community. This ban was reserved for baptized members of the fellowship. If you were old enough (Adult baptism, remember?) to commit to following God, you knew what you were getting into. If you abandoned the committed, holy life, then you needed to leave before you dragged others down with you.

Leading the way...

Leaders of some sort were required. Different Anabaptist groups had different titles for their spiritual leaders. Each Hutterite community had a teacher/preacher called a “minister of the Word”. His duties were spelled out in the Schleitheim Confession* as follows: “His office shall be to read, to admonish and to teach, to warn, to discipline, to ban in the church, to lead out in prayer for the advancement of all the brethren and sisters, to lift up the bread when it is broken, and in all things to see to the care of the body of Christ that it may be built up and developed.” They also had a head leader over all the Hutterite communities known as a Vorsteher, a sort of moderator. He oversaw missionaries, comforted those in prison (and there were many) and generally dealt with any problems that came up and clarified any issues that needed clarifying.

We are all in this together...

...Literally. The thing that distinguished the Hutterites from most other Anabaptist groups was their commitment to the community of goods a.k.a. holding all things in common. In the book of Acts it says:

Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. (4:32)

The Hutterites took hold of this scripture and throughout their history strived to adhere to a communal lifestyle. Sometimes they succeeded and sometimes they didn't. Hutterites have looked back on their history and point to the times they succeeded as the times they were walking most closely with God. Many Hutterite colonies today still practice a community of goods, living a communal lifestyle and having almost no personal possessions.

Hutterite communities were called Bruderhofs and consisted of large, rambling houses, grouped together to shelter multiple families in close proximity to one another. Both Grandma and Grandpa's villages had Hutterite Bruderhofs, and both Grandma and Grandpa grew up in Bruderhof-now-Haban homesteads. In both Sobotište and Moravský Svätý Ján today there are historic sections of town called Habánsky Dvor or Haban Court, the old Hutterite homes of the Bruderhofs, grouped together with other buildings, such as mills, and a chapel for gathering to worship.

Present day photo of the Habansky Dvor in Grandma's hometown of Sobotiste

*In 1527, a group of Swiss Anabaptists in Schleitheim, Switzerland, met and agreed unanimously on the middle seven of these Anabaptist beliefs. It was referred to as the Schleitheim Confession. The first belief listed, the Bible as God's true word and ultimate authority was already a given in Anabaptist circles by this time in the Protestant Reformation. The last belief listed, the community of goods, also described as holding all things in common, was primarily Hutterite.