Many Hutterites have made the big leap from the world of the colonies to the surrounding “worldly” world their elders have warned them against.
That’s made the dominant Hutterite names, like Kleinsasser, Hofer and Waldner, easy to find in the phonebooks of the cities of Western Canada.
Some recent defectors from the Hutterite lifestyle are well known, such as Danny Kleinsasser, a successful entrepreneur and hog industry official who lives near Winnipeg.
But there has also been a trickle of people going the other way and they have added a few unusual sounds to the traditional roster of Hutterite surnames.
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“We’re pretty diverse,” said Hutterite Tom McAdams, a custom project management specialist at the Crystal Spring colony south of Winnipeg.
McAdams joined the colony at the age of 13, when his parents joined. Growing up in the psychological pressure-cooker of a Hutterite colony where there is little privacy or room for individuality didn’t make life easy, McAdams admits.
“It was tough. I was a teenager, so I wasn’t exactly in the best shape for making the move. I was rebellious.”
“It took a while, but I made it through.”
Now he thinks the adjustment was worth it.
“I enjoy it. I can’t think of many places I’d rather live, between the lifestyle and the location and the people. And the religious reasons, especially.”
Hutterites have not traditionally attempted to engage the outside world. They have done little to convert outsiders and strenuously resist the encroachments of the outside world on their colonies.
The desire for separation from society’s vices led groups like the Hutterites to take up farming because farming allowed for social self-isolation.
This isolation allowed Hutterite communities to retain their faith and sense of righteousness, but has also caused some non-Hutterites to view them with suspicion.
Accusations against Hutterites for alleged questionable business practices, alcohol abuse and a host of other practices are widespread in Western Canada. A lascivious tale about Hutterites employing men from nearby towns to inseminate colony women is rampant in Western Canada. It is a legend Donald Kraybill, an expert in Anabaptist studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, describes as false.
But the isolated social situation of colonies makes the development of malicious myths easy to understand, he said.
“The Hutterites are so different in economics, culture and isolation that they provide ripe context for the transmission of myths among outsiders and the myths provide a means of criticizing and debunking the Hutterites so they don’t look like saints, and to help outsiders feel better about themselves,” said Kraybill.
McAdams thinks some Hutterites who leave the colonies go around telling negative stories about their society. Especially if they have had a falling-out with people on the colony before they left, they are likely to exaggerate the negatives or accuse the colony of wrongful conduct.
But while the divide between colony and outside society is still great, social tensions between the two are generally not great.
And McAdams said there are times the dividing wall comes down and the two sides don’t seem so opposed.
“During the 1997 flood (of the Red River Valley) a lot of misperceptions were cleared up, because a lot of Hutterites came to help with the sandbagging,” said McAdams.
“People saw us helping, because we’re pretty visible in our black clothes. However it was before that, afterwards we were a lot closer with the local people.”
