News

A journey beyond the Hutterite culture

By Scott Wagar

12/17/2013

“We didn’t want to leave just to go out and do whatever. We wanted to follow Jesus Christ, which was the one common denominator in why we all left, because we didn’t have the freedom to live according to the Bible.”

These are the words of Jason Waldner, one of nine former Hutterites who have written their stories in an anthology titled, “The Nine: Our Story to Freedom,” which deals with their passage from the Hutterite community to main stream America in pursuit of their religious freedoms.

For Waldner, as a young Hutterite, it states in “The Nine” that he had one goal, to hold the most influential position in his community by becoming the secretary of the colony’s finances, which would please his desire for power and stature.

However, he found God under special circumstances and soon discovered that to serve God was more important to him than to serve money, which according to Waldner is more important to the Hutterite communities today than serving God.   

“When the Hutterites broke away from the Catholic church during the reformation in the 1500s, it was all about Jesus Christ. They had a love for Him and evangelized for Him,” Waldner said in an interview with the Bottineau Courant. “Now, the Hutterites do not evangelize anymore, they keep to themselves and the men have made their own rules instead of obeying the laws of the Bible.”

Waldner added the Hutterite community of today isn’t about religion, but about making money; and, if individuals choose to live by the Bible, life is no easy task.  

“If they go against what the Hutterites believe in the community, they go against those who do not follow what the Hutterites believe,” he said.  

For Waldner, and the other eight, to leave the Hutterite community wasn’t an easy task for them because they did not know anything of what the Hutterites call the “English” world.

“Where I grew up I felt I was from a different plant. What was normal compared to the “English” world was totally foreign to us,” Waldner said. “We didn’t know what to wear, how to grocery shop and the girls didn’t have a driver’s license because they are not allowed to get a driver’s license. We had to be taught all that.”

Although it was a difficult transition for the nine young Hutterites to learn new ways, for Waldner it was a happier time for him.

“It was joyful, I was free and all that,” he said. “It didn’t seem that hard because we wanted to do it so bad.

“As a Hutterite, you don’t speak up about the wrong stuff going on, you don’t have a voice,” Waldner added. “You are supposed to be quiet. We were desperate for change and something different and follow God’s word.”

Since Waldner has left the Hutterite colony he grew up in, he has become a co-owner of a well named construction company in Rolla, and he has married Karen who is one of the nine writers in the book.

More importantly, he is part of a ministerial group made up of the authors of where he lives out the most important goal in his life today, to spread the word of God to others, which includes being one of the nine who wrote “The Nine: Our Story to Freedom.”

“The book is a message of hope for the people who read it, because whatever people are struggling with in life there is a way out. If Jesus Christ can help us, He can help anybody,” Waldner said. “When we were totally stuck (in the Hutterite community), with no way out in that situation, we cried out to the Lord and He miraculously caused miracles to happen and opened doors to find that freedom we wanted.”

If it was difficult for a man to leave a Hutterite community, Waldner said that for a woman it was much more difficult.

For sisters, Cindy Waldner and Junia Waldner, who have each wrote their stories in “The Nine,” getting away from a Hutterite community for them as women was much more difficult than their male counterparts.

“For women, it is very oppressive. You don’t have any dreams or goals in life. For me, the biggest thing was not knowing who I was and what my purpose was in life. All I did there was to do what anybody told me to do. I have no freedom to make my own choices,” Cindy Waldner said. “The women cook and clean, work in the garden, get married and have children. That’s the biggest dream a woman can have in a Hutterite community.

“A woman cannot speak and has no vote or say in the community. They are left to be dependent on the men,” Cindy Waldner added. “The biggest thing for me was not having freedom to serve and following the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Cindy Waldner discovered God’s salvation through missionaries to the Hutterites while living with her aunt in a community away from her family. When she discovered the Lord, she stated in the book that she knew her days were numbered in the colony. And, in a short number of weeks she left the Hutterites and all their beliefs.

But as she found a new life, her old life, based on centuries of disdain beliefs, kept her back at first.

“When I left the community I felt I couldn’t get a drivers license because I didn’t think I was smart enough,” she said. “You think so little of yourself, like your world is just in a very small box; and you come to a place where you think you are not capable, that everybody else is smarting than you.”

Her sister, Junia Waldner, found herself in the same situation as Cindy Waldner. As a Hutterite, she enjoyed gardening and outdoor recreational events, but as a woman, she was told what to do by the leaders of the colony. She had no choice of what to plant in their gardens, and outdoor activities, like ice skating or going to a fair, was not allowed for her because of her gender.

As she found God, and left the colony she was part of, she found herself in her sister’s shoes, struggling with low self-esteem and trying to find her way in a new world.

However, through God’s love, the two sisters found their way.

Today, Cindy Waldner is a small business owner of a cleaning business, has her own driver’s license and owns her own car. Julia Waldner works with Cindy Waldner in her cleaning business, enjoys planting her own garden, baking and getting away to a lake to do some fishing.  

As children, they always enjoyed music. Cindy Waldner taught herself how to play on a small, toy piano. Now she owns her own piano and receives lessons.

Julia Waldner, who loves brass instruments, learned how to play the trumpet after leaving the Hutterites. And, like Jason Waldner and the other six writers of the book, the two women participate in the group’s musical ministry and spread the Word of God through music and dance.

More so, their lives are not about becoming rich in money and power, it is whole heartedly about living in God’s footsteps.

“God has blessed us so much we now can minister to others,” Cindy Waldner said.

“It is not that we dream about doing something different when we were there (at the Hutterite communities),” Junia Waldner said.

“But now, the thing that brings joy, which might not seem to be a dream to many people, is just to be able to have a relationship with anybody outside of the colony, to go to someone’s house for the evening, to bake something, and share with them the word of God and pray with them. That is what we love to do, which we were not able to do before,”

“The Nine: Our Story to Freedom” is a book of intrigue filled with knowledge about the Hutterite culture, finding strength and success in difficult times through faith in God and the ability to walk with the Lord and fear no evil, but only to have love in the purest form.   

Individuals, who would like to purchase “The Nine: Our Story to Freedom”, can do so at Dakota College at Bottineau’s bookstore or go to www.thenine9.com/index.html.