chool), and Gebet (daily evening sermons). Gender and obedience are taught through patriarchal sexual constraints in work, school, and prayer. Corporal public punishment and general fear of social ostracization reinforce these.However all social control in the Hutterites is derived primarily from their religion. All laws and social mores governed by their collective interpretations of the bible. Sundays are strictly reserved for prayer, and service is held nightly at the end of the workday. The colony (those of church age, 15 and older) sits on wood benches and the council sits to the side of the preacher facing the audience. Seating is organized by sex and age; men on one side, women on the other. .An analysis of the Hutterite church service can function to highlight characteristics of their pattern of life. (Hostetler, 34) There is no real tangible church. Service is held in an unimportant and inornate schoolhouse. Sacred space is not confined to one room or one building (Hostetler, 34), rather all of which God respects can be a place of worship. Service is restful and unhurried; the hymns are sung slow and with emotion of a people that take God’s worship seriously and soulfully. The service makes visible the authority pattern of the community and the emphasis of its supernatural right. Service is used also as instruction in their discipline, faith, history, and their reason for existence. Even the post service communal meal serves as a symbol of “breaking bread with one another.” The church service reinforces the basic patterns of Hutterite life and simultaneously gives relief and depth to daily work. (Hostetler, 36)The peaceable meetings of service and post communal meal set the night for pleasant discussion and debate for new expansions or group projects. Any grievances are sought to be extinguished through passive group discussion with the preacher and council as authoritative figures whose words are carefully so...
