A Guide to the Literature on the Hutterites

1989 annual meeting of the National Historic Communal Societies Association in Yankton, South Dakota, noted that in relatively recent times there has been a veritable explosion of scholarship on the Hutterites. 1 Fifty years ago, Hostetler observed, there was apparently only one book on the Hutterites; 2 now they number in the dozens, if not hundreds.Fifty years ago one might have located a handful of articles on the Hutterites; today they number in the thousands.Several scholars-dozens, perhaps -have made the Hutterites the main focus of their work; dissertations, books, and articles appear frequently; even Hutterites themselves have become active in producing literature, with a number of Hutterite authors (most prominently Paul Gross, a Dariusleut minister in Espanola, Washington) publishing works which carry the Hutterite witness to the rest of the world.The proliferation of scholarship has been so great that the newcomer to the literature is likely to be swamped by it all.As with any subject, some works are better than others; many are readily accessible, but some useful materials are quite obscure.The literature is sufficiently diverse that no one today could ever locate all of it.This article is intended as a guide through the maze of Hutterite