501 - Amish Life Mennonite Life Hutterite Life

Amish Life
Mennonite Life
Hutterite Life
By John A. Hostetler
Scottdale, Pa. and Kitchener, Ont., Herald Press, 1983. 48 pp. each; $4.95 (paper).

These three handsome and instructive booklets are a pleasure to look at and a joy to read. Written and edited by an expert in what is often called the "left-wing" or "radical" Reformation, the pamphlets would

504 - Amish Life Mennonite Life Hutterite Life

make fine resource material for discussion groups, church school classes, and courses in religion in colleges and seminaries. The author is Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Temple University, Philadelphia, and is known for numerous studies relating to these three religious communities.

Coming out of the Reformation but unaligned with Lutheranism, Calvinism, or Anglicanism, these small but enduring church communities are belittled when designated "sects" or "cults." While mainline denominations easily accommodated themselves to the secular culture of the times, these radical Christians have continued to live and witness within their self-contained communities, apparently aloof from the local blandishments of a consumer society. Where, to pose an embarrassing question, is the true church to be found today?

These three booklets not only instruct, they challenge and confront. Speaking of the Amish, and this is mostly true for the others as well, Hostetler writes: "The Amish are a church-community, a community whose members practice simple and austere living, a conservative branch of Christianity, a family-oriented labor-intensive economic system … They are highly sensitive to each other's needs. They will move to other lands rather than take up arms or defend themselves."

The best way to review these books is to present a few of the many pictures that so graphically illustrate the texts.

Each book contains a map locating current communities in the United States and Canada, helpful bibliographies, including not only books and articles, but films, fiction, cookbooks, and crafts.

As noted, these pamphlets are published by Herald Press in Pennsylvania and Ontario, but they were printed by Science Press in Ephrata, Pa., the printers we are happy and proud to say of THEOLOGY TODAY.

Hugh T. Kerr
Princeton, New Jersey