Now, Where Was I....?

It's been over four years since I last posted on this blog. I apologize, but life got in the way of my writing, and I've been seriously distracted in these intervening years.* And of course, once I got out of the habit of writing and posting, it was hard to get the momentum going again. I think I'm finally at a place where I can resume my research and writing and hope to be more consistent in my posting of all things Haban.

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I stopped at an inconvenient place, right in the middle of looking at basic Hutterite beliefs and how they were or weren't reflected in the lives of Grandma and Grandpa and their descendants. I'll pick up where I left off, but some of you may want to review past posts to refresh your memories of where I was going with all this. I myself had to reread all I had written to figure out where I was headed in my narrative.

In the last several blog posts before my hiatus, we've taken a look at some of the Hutterite beliefs and how they have appeared to filter down into the family line and show itself in the more recent generations. (See the blog post from August 9, 2018 - "Believin'" - if you need a refresh on the beliefs that distinguished the Hutterites, or check the brief cheat sheet below**) We've looked at Grandma's love of reading the Bible, Grandpa's quoting of his wise mother's sayings a.k.a scripture verses ("Word!") and Grandpa's Hutterite-inspired draft dodging ("Put down that sword"). We've taken a virtual tour of the Haban areas of Grandma and Grandpa's hometowns and seen the houses and settlements they and their ancestors lived in in community, sharing all things in common ("We are all in this together."). Today we are going to look at the other areas of Hutterite belief less visible in the lives of Grandma and Grandpa.

Separation of Church and State...a radical idea

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

These two Hutterite beliefs were no longer plainly visible in the lives of Grandma and Grandpa's ancestors when they became Haban. I saw no strong manifestation of these two beliefs among my family members when I was growing up. Of course, separation of church and state, no longer the radical idea it was in the days of the European Hutterites, was a given in the twentieth century, especially in the United States. My grandparents would not have to choose it. It was chosen for them. And the society they lived in didn't require any swearing of oaths, except, perhaps, if they were called to give testimony in a trial, something I don't remember either of my grandparents having to do. Overall, I'd say they took gospel writer Matthew at his word and let their yes be yes and their no be no.

Ban 'em...

Obviously, Grandma and Grandpa had no authority to ostracize baptized believers from their company. Grandma, however, was always concerned about who my brother and I chose to hang out with. Were they good people of good behavior and character? Grandma was quick to judge anyone I was dating, and I've said I married my husband because he was the only one of a string of guys that finally met Grandma's approval. (There was one guy of dubious character I had dated who Grandma begrudgingly liked because he used to stop by after work and bring her platters of “leftover” deli meat and cheese as a bribe for her affections. “I like him, but I think he's a wolf,” Grandma decided. She had judged him correctly, and my relationship with him was short-lived.) On the whole, Grandma's attitude toward those she judged as not quite up to par was quite similar to Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Darcy: “My good opinion once lost is lost forever." So, I guess you could say there was a mental ban on some people...

Leading the way...

When the Hutterites became Haban, their alligance was necessarily transferred from their organic leaders to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. As a child, we were taught to have great respect for the priests of our church. In the post Vatican II atmosphere in our parish, by the time we were in high school, we would hang out with the seminarians (pre-priests in Grandma's eyes) and be involved with service and social activities with the young priests assigned to our parish. They were friends to me and my brother, but they were still priests to Grandma and she watched carefully to make sure our friendships were always respectful.

Let's keep Communion...

Though the Hutterites did not believe communion to be the actual and literal body and blood of Christ, they held the celebration of the Lord's Supper in high regard. For them, this meant a once-a-year celebration of taking communion on the day after Easter. They considered this a highlight of their church year. One wonders what the Haban thought when they were forced into Catholicism and had access to the Lord's Supper every day. In our house, we went to church and received communion every Sunday. If Grandma could manage to drag us to weekday mass, we would receive communion more often. When Grandpa retired, Grandma would convince him to come to church with her almost every day. When he gave up driving, she would walk the scant mile to go to daily mass. A younger neighbor, her kids all in school, started going to church everyday because she said she felt guilty seeing Grandma walk past her house every morning when she herself had a car to drive her and the time to go as well.

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A careful reader of this blog will note that as I have looked at Grandma and Grandpa's connection or lack thereof to the nine basic tenets of the Hutterite faith, I have yet to delve into an important Hutterite belief, one that figured prominently into the Hutterites becoming Haban – the issue of infant vs. adult baptism. That deserves a blog post of its own...

*Some of the distractions: two unrelated cancer diagnoses, surgeries, treatments and long recovery times, a pandemic, two granddaughters born, dealing with a major sewer repair while preparing to sell a house, buying a new house and relocating, limping around for five months waiting for hip replacement surgery, and finally having the surgery and all the recovery time that entails. It's a good time to start writing again...

**Review of Basic Hutterite beliefs:

Word! -the importance of the Bible

Baptism – Adults only, please – no infant baptism

Separation of Church and State...a radical idea – no church/government cooperation

No swearing (of oaths, that is...) - no taking of oaths of any kind

Put down that sword - pacificism

Let's keep communion – reverent celebration of the Lord's Supper once a year

Ban 'em - ostracize those baptized adults that don't live a godly life

Leading the way – godly church organization and leadership

We are all in this together – communal lifestyle

Stalking the Haban Houses...

I'm a stalker...I freely admit it...

The little girl who sat on the floor of the dining room in my mother's house, randomly reading out of the set of encyclopedias in the bookcase, searching for any bits of interesting information, has grown into a mature woman who loves the internet. I love google and all its search engines. I love google maps. I love google translate. I love facebook. I stalk in a quiet fly-on-the-wall sort of way, but I do stalk. This blog has given me many opportunities to justify my stalking. It has led me to lots of interesting information and photos and websites, some of which I'd like to share with you today.

As I mentioned yesterday, any Hutterite remnants in our family line of holding all things in common appeared to have faded away by my generation. So I thought I'd like to examine the historical physical remains of the the Bruderhofs in Grandma and Grandpa's home towns, the houses where their ancestors lived when then did share all thing in common.*

Sobotište, Grandma's town, has an intact Habánský dvor, or “Haban Court”. Sobotište had been a large Hutterite settlement and the only Bruderhof that continually existed during the Hutterites' time in Europe. (Unfortunately, there is no street view for the Haban Court.)   There appears to be a concerted effort to restore this part of Hutterite/Haban history into a museum area.  If you are interested, check out this video.  It's in Slovak, I can't figure out how to translate it, but has great shots of the Haban Court and its interiors and it's worth the viewing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV5bp95nP1o

Want more?  I believe the following link to be a proposal for the development of the museum area of the Haban Court.  Scroll down for lots of great pics  (If you want to dig deep, cut and paste into google translate to get the specifics...)

https://docplayer.cz/39889076-Sobotiste-pamiatkova-zona-habansky-dvor-zasady-ochrany-pamiatkoveho-uzemia.html

Old photo of the the Haban Court, Sobotiste

From Hutterite Society by John A. Hostetler

Google maps view of Habansky dvor or Haban Court within and around the loop of road.  Yellow mark in upper right is where Grandma's house is located.  Stodola is barn, mlyn is mill, kluciaren, I have no clue...

Using google maps street view, I did some stalking to find Grandma's house. Below is the house from my blog photo and the street view house as it looks today.  The yellow mark on the above aeriel view shows the location of the house in relation to the Haban Court.  It also shows the long, Bruderhof-style construction.  I don't know the age of the Grandma's house, but I think it is not as old as the houses in the Haban Court.

Grandma's house circa 1938?  That's Grandma's mother in the Haban outfit.

I think this is Grandma's house as it looks today.

Grandpa's town, Moravský Svätý Ján, also has a Habánský dvor, though it appears that it is somewhat behind in being developed into a museum area.  Unlike Grandma, Grandpa's family home was in the the Haban Court.  In a letter to my mother in the 1990s, one of her cousins bemoaned the fact the house was now empty and abandoned.  I did as much stalking on google street view as I could, but again, no street view for the Haban Court in Svätý Ján.  Here is an aeriel shot of the Court, similar in layout to the one in Sobotište.

Haban Court in Moravsky Svaty Jan.  Similar in layout to the one in Sobotiste.

Haban Court in Moravsky Svaty Jan.  Similar in layout to the one in Sobotiste.

Another view of the Haban Court from a Svaty Jan website.  You can see the chapel prominently placed in the center of the Court.  The blue circle is where I think Grandpa's house might still be standing

Below is an old photo of Grandpa's home.  The roof was a classic method of Hutterite construction, clay and thatch, which was both durable and fireproof.  It was later replaced by a shingled roof.

Grandpa's Bruderhof home

Illustration from Hutterite Society by John A. Hostetler, showing the classic thatched clay roof of the Hutterites, just like the roof on Grandpa's house

Looking into the Moravsky Svaty Jan Haban Court area from the outside.  This might be the area where Grandpa's house is located.  Unfortunately, it might be quite run down by now.

If you are interested in more Haban Svätý Ján and are on facebook, check out Habánsky dom o.z. Moravský Svätý Ján.  Translated as "Haban House", this page has old photos and interesting articles and artifacts of the Haban, including the Haban pottery.  The translations are a bit awkward, but mostly understandable.  The photo below is from the facebook page.  I was intrigued by the similarity between this photo and the one above of Grandpa's house, right down to the chickens and geese feeding in the front yard.  This photo is believed to be from the 1930s. 

So like Grandpa's house...

At this point you may be thinking, "Hey, this isn't really stalking, just good historical research."  Well, my "good historical research" into the undeveloped Haban area of Moravský Svätý Ján led me to real estate ads and online news articles about the area.  I noticed the same person's name kept popping up as a byline, as a photo credit.  The person had the same last name as Grandpa's sister Mary's married name.  I looked him up on facebook, read profiles of him on his online newspaper website.  He had pictures of himself attending the annual Habani festival they have in the Habánský dvor section of Moravský Svätý Ján.  A great grandson of Grandpa's sister? (Moravský Svätý Ján is, after all, a small town of about 2,000 people.) I did send him a facebook message, and tried emailing him at work, briefly telling him how we might be related, and if we were, asking if he had any photos of the old family home.  I have yet to hear back from him, so I won't include his name or photo. I'll just end this tour of the Haban courts with an ad for this year's Habánske Hody or "Haban Feast" in Moravský Svätý Ján.  Who knows?   Our maybe cousin may show show up again in the photos.  New opportunities for stalking...

Party like a Haban...music, pie, ceremics

*Don't panic at the size of the pictures. If you click on a photo, it will come up in a larger format.

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.

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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.