This collection of three lectures by Ian Kleinsasser, a Canadian Hutterite, is a remarkable volume. To understand why, it may be helpful to contextualize the Hutterites, a communal Anabaptist group whose origins run to the 1520s in central Europe. Migrations across the centuries took them eastward into Ukraine and then in the 1870s to what is now South Dakota. During World War I and the Red Scare that followed, Hutterites faced sharp opposition as German-speaking pacifists whose communalism was tagged as communist. As a result, most decamped to Canada. Hutterite life continues to be marked by adherence to traditional dress and customs, a distinctive dialect and piety, and collective economics. Formal education has rarely been encouraged beyond the primary level, and although the first generations of Hutterites developed a sizable corpus of theological writings, Hutterite teaching in recent centuries has emphasized adhering to tradition over critical reflection.

That context highlights one reason this volume is significant. In these lectures tracing Canadian Hutterite history from 1919 to the end of the twentieth century, Kleinsasser offers a homegrown analysis of the Hutterite experience and a rare example of Hutterite scholarship. True, Kleinsasser comes from the relatively progressive Hutterite branch known as Schmiedeleut I (the others being Schmiedeleut II, Dariusleut, and Lehrerleut), a fact he acknowledges as a potential source of bias. He is also a graduate of a special program offered at Brandon University to provide tertiary training for Hutterite schoolteachers. At points, Kleinsasser offers an apologetic for education, even saying that his coreligionists “ought to lament the fact that we have to a large extent failed to take up and pass on the pens of the great scribes” of the sixteenth century who launched the Hutterite movement (34).

As an insider, Kleinsasser quotes from and cites Hutterite documents not readily available to scholars outside the colonies, which is another reason this book is significant. For example, he provides new insight into the complicated and sometimes frustrated relationship between the Hutterites and the Bruderhof, the latter being a Christian communal group begun in Germany in 1920 by Eberhard Arnold that sought, and for a time maintained, a formal relationship with the Hutterites. As well, Kleinsasser interprets the still painful Schmiedeleut schism of the 1990s. Not a neutral observer, Kleinsasser nevertheless is able to offer a complex, multistage interpretation of the division that reveals latent tensions between U.S. and Canadian Hutterite colonies, ideological differences among the several Hutterite branches, and theological debates over morality and spirituality. These factors nuance and reshape the narrative of the division commonly circulated by the media that centered on financial conflict and the role of outsized personalities.

Kleinsasser's essays reflect his devotion as a loyal Hutterite, but they are by no means a parochial history. To a remarkable degree, Kleinsasser presents the Hutterite experience in the context of wider Canadian history. In the first and second lectures, for example, he devotes considerable space to the impact of the Great Depression on the colonies, documenting serious economic struggles, inter-colony inequality, and subsequent efforts on the part of colonies to file formal articles of incorporation. One remarkable source from the time is a folk song whose lyrics convey acute financial pain and suggest a longing to return to South Dakota. The second lecture delves into the midcentury efforts of the government of Alberta, and to a lesser degree Manitoba, to legally limit the establishment of new Hutterite colonies through legislation such as the Communal Properties Act of 1947 and the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement of 1957 (which existed until 1969). These confrontations brought the various Hutterite branches together and also nudged them to cultivate political patrons. One such ally, the Liberal member of Parliament Herbert Gray, Canada's first Jewish cabinet member, was, according to Kleinsasser, “the first person to give serious consideration to the religious aspect” of Hutterites’ refusal to participate in the Canada Pension Plan and other welfare state programs, which they saw as undermining the mandate of the church to care for its own (86). Gray facilitated their exemption in 1974. Kleinsasser's treatment of the 1980s is similarly contextualized, giving attention to the decade's crisis of commercial agriculture that was sparked by high interest rates and encumbered debt, conditions from which Hutterite colonies were immune.

The lectures have been nicely edited into essays and include footnotes documenting sources, including those in private colony hands. Not surprisingly, the focus in disproportionately on Kleinsasser's own Hutterite branch, the Schmiedeleut. It may be some time until we have similar publications from the other groups. Until then, we can hope for more research and publication from Kleinsasser, offering insights into his part of the Hutterite world and presenting a model of sectarian reflection and engagement with history and tradition.