The Hutterites: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

Nobody owns anything. That is not a policy — it is the article of faith.

The Anabaptist branch that has held complete community of goods without interruption since 1528, longer than any other communal movement on earth. They live on colonies of roughly a hundred people, eat in a common dining hall, farm at industrial scale, wear made-at-home clothing, speak an Austrian dialect at home and read Luther's German in church, and divide the colony in two when it grows past about 150. There are 544 colonies in North America and no Hutterites anywhere else.

DeitiesThe Trinity, taught from the Luther Bible and the sixteenth-century Lehren — sermons written down by the first generation and read aloud unchanged ever since.

Founded1528 CE · Austerlitz and Nikolsburg, Moravia

FounderJakob Hutter

AfterlifeResurrection and judgment; Gelassenheit now is the preparation for it

TextsThe Luther Bible · Das grosse Geschichtbuch — the Hutterite Chronicle · Peter Riedemann, Account of Our Religion (1540/45)

The map

The Hutterites’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1517 CE Protestantism 1525 CE Anabaptism 1528 CE The Hutterites

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

Community of goods is not an arrangement. It is the shape of a saved life. Peter Riedemann argued in 1540 that private property is what the fall actually consists of — the taking to oneself of what God made common — so surrendering it is not generosity but repentance. Hutterites have held it without a break since 1528, which no other Christian community has managed. Go deeper — context & 1 source →

The colony divides before it grows large enough to be impersonal. At about 150 people a colony branches: the land is bought, the buildings built, the families sorted into two lists, and which list goes is decided by lot on the day. Both halves are meant to be viable, and the parent colony pays for the daughter. Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

J Jakob Hutter — the hatmaker who made the communities work, and burned for it. He arrived from Tyrol in 1533 to communities splitting over leadership and money, and in two years imposed the order of shared goods, appointed stewards, and common meals that still runs the colonies. Arrested at Klausen in 1535, he was tortured at Innsbruck and burned alive on 25 February 1536. Domain Community of goods, the order of the Bruderhof, disciplineStanding Named for, not prayed to; the Chronicle tells his death in detail Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

Gebet — half an hour every evening, in words written in the 1500s. The minister does not write sermons. He reads one of the Lehren, transcribed from the first Hutterite preachers and copied by hand for four centuries, in an early modern German the congregation understands as church language and would not speak at home. When Daily — half an hour in the church before the evening mealWho Everyone on the colony above school age Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Christianity — 10 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 10 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 10 shared ideas, a different faith Judaism — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Hutterites — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Hutterites shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

1 cited texts

Peter Riedemann, Rechenschaft unserer Religion, Lehr und Glaubens (Account of Our Religion, Doctrine and Faith), written in prison 1540-42 (rendered) where it is cited →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.