The Hutterites :

Not a passing phenomenon

    While other utopian societies die, the Hutterites have grown in North America to 30,000 people, living in over 300 self-sufficient villages.

"In the world, but not of the world"

    They are a society where faithfulness to Christ's teachings is more important than self-advancement or worldly comforts. By yielding themselves completely to community, the Hutterites have rid themselves of poverty, homicide and anxiety about the future.

An enigma...a curious paradox

    Although maintaining their medieval culture, the Hutterites farm over a million acres of land in Canada and the U.S. using the most advanced farm equipment, and even computers.

450 years of Christian communal living

    Surviving incredible harassment from those around them, they have lived strict communal lives based on the teachings of the Bible. In their schools they continue to teach their children eternal values, in German, despite government regulation of education.

    This film is an extraordinary achievement. It is a sensitive and illuminating document that provides strong visual evidence for the apparent contentment and security enjoyed by people who eschew individualism in all its forms. Holding values so different from those of other North Americans, the Hutterites, as portrayed here, provide a strong case for an alternative way of life in the midst of American industrialism.

George L. Hicks, Brown University in The American Anthropologist