On the Backroad to Heaven: Old Order Hutterites, Mennonites, Amish, and Brethren

by Donald B. Kraybill, Carl Desportes Bowman, Carl F. Bowman

Book Overview

On the Backroad to Heaven is a unique guide to the world of Old Order Anabaptist groups. Focusing on four Old Order communities--the Hutterites, Mennonites, Amish, and Brethren--Donald B. Kraybill and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801865654
• ISBN13: 9780801865657
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

The best book on some of the most interesting peoples around

As a person always curious about lifestyles different from my seemingly mundane existince in suburban Melbourne, the Amish and Old Order Mennonites, with their resistance to technology and extremely gentle and peaceful beliefs, have always fascinated me. Although other books, such as the "People's Place" series, actually offer a good deal of useful information about specific topics relevant to the Old Order Anabaptist groups, "On the Backroad to Heaven" is the best general work I have read about them. It goes into very good detail into the character and nature of the Hutterites, Old Order Mennonites, Amish and Brethren, including all the aspects that are well-known but also some of their rituals and methods of electing leaders that are little-known yet intriguing (e.g. the use of "lots"). More than that, "On the Backroad to Heaven" not only characterising them but also offering clear and easy-to-read comparisons. At the same time "On the Backroad to Heaven" shows not traces of trying to idealise these groups and expresses very clearly the problems they have coping with a modern world that is in many ways very hostile to the values they hold dearly. Its last part clearly shows how far removed they are from a "postmodern" culture, but yet shows what they have to offer thereto. On the whole, this is really good work. It is neither biased nor shallow, yet is extremely accessible. I would recommend it to anybody interested in cultural studies, even if not in Anabaptist groups.

A good finish, misses a few points

The book does a good job of surveying the four groups, and finishes up very strongly when considering the similarities in the groups. The contrast between the Mennonites and Amish is also very interesting. It is also perhaps the most accurate portion of the book--although he picked some fairly liberal old order Mennonite groups to describe. It would have been a little better to have picked a more traditional Mennonite group. It is perhaps at its weakest when describing the old order German Baptist Brethren. There are some very embarassing inaccuracies, including garbled German Baptist vocab (referring to family devotions as "taking the text"--a term that refers to the main sermon on Sunday for example) and considering certain very exceptional cases to be representative (a GB cheerleader, who he doesn't reveal had a parent outside the church). The glaring omission in the German Baptist section has to be that down to details such as order of worship and attitude they are extremely similar to the old order Amish--so much so that the two have cooperated on education in the past. I also found the section on gender strife among the Hutterites to be a little overstated. Hutterites wouldn't see the conflict the way Americans do, or the way the authors do. Enjoyed it a great deal.