Through the Touch of God: Child Death and Spiritual Sustenance in a Hutterian Colony

Abstract

Nestled in more than 5,000 acres of farmland in rural South Dakota, one Hutterian colony flourishes with more than 23 families and a population of 115 people. Very little is known about the ways in which Hutterites experience traumatic infant and child death on the colony. No research studies to date have explored this topic. This is an ethnographic study that utilized extended observations of the group and both individual and group interviewing in order to create a cultural portrait specifically focusing on Hutterites experiencing traumatic child death. Observations were organized into five thematic categories: 1) details of the actual death experience; 2) emotional and physical reactions to the loss; 3) familial and communal response; 4) coping and rituals; and 5) spirituality. The role of communal mourning, ritualization, and spirituality in creating a healing milieu for bereaved families is discussed.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bogdan

Biklen

(1992). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory and methods. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Cacciatore

(2009). Appropriate bereavement practice after the death of a Native American child Families in Society, 90(1), 46–50.

Cacciatore

(2010). Stillbirth: Clinical recommendations for care in the era of evidence-based medicine Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology, 53(3), 691–699.

Cacciatore

DeFrain

Jones

(2008). The couple and the death of a baby Journal of Family Social Work, 11(4), 351–370.

Creswell

J. W.

(2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Eaton

Weil

(1955). Culture and mental disorders. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Fetterman

(1998). Ethnography step-by-step (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Freese

(1994). All things in common Successful Farming, 92(10), 54–61.

Hatfield

Rapson

R. L.

Y. L.

(2009). Primitive emotional contagion: Recent research In Decety

Ickes

(Eds.), The social neuroscience of empathy. Boston, MA: MIT Press.

10.

Hofer

(1998). The Hutterites: Lives and images of a communal people. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Hofer Publishers.

11.

Hostetler

(1974). Hutterite society. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

12.

Hutterian Brethren Schmiedeleut Conference. (2006). Hutterite history. Hutterian Brethren Schmiedeleut Conference: Decker Colony, Shoal Lake, Manitoba. Retrieved 10/24/2010 from http://www.hutterites.org/HutteriteHistory/index.htm

13.

Ingoldsby

(1999). The Hutterite family in transition. Paper presented at the Communal Studies Association annual meeting, St. George, Utah.

14.

Janzen

(2005). The Hutterites and the Bruderhof: The relationship between an old order religious society and a twentieth-century communal group Mennonite Quarterly Review, 4, 506–541.

15.

Janzen

Stanton

(2010). The Hutterites in North America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

16.

Larsen

Vaupel

J. W.

(1993). Hutterite fecundability by age and parity: Strategies for frailty modeling of event histories Demography, 30(1), 81–102.

17.

Lincoln

Y. S.

Guba

E. G.

(1985) Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

18.

Morgan

(1983). Mortality changes in the Hutterite Brethren of Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada Human Biology, 55(1), 89–99.

19.

Packull

W. O.

(1999). Hutterite beginnings: Communitarian experiments during the Reformation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

20.

Peter

K. A.

(1987). The dynamics of Hutterite society. Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta Press.

21.

Pratt

(1981). Business temporal norms and bereavement behavior American Sociological Review, 46(3), 317–333.

22.

Rhodes

(2009). Nightwatch: An inquiry into solitude. Intercourse, PA: Good Books.

23.

Sosis

(2003). Why aren't we all Hutterites? Costly signaling theory and religious behavior Human Nature, 14(2), 91–127.

24.

Stahl

L. M.

(2003). My Hutterite life. Helena, MT: Farcountry Press.

25.

Stephenson

P. H.

(1983). “He died too quick!”: The process of dying in a Hutterian colony Omega, 14(2), 127–134.

26.

Stephenson

P. H.

(1997). The Hutterites In Al-Issa

Tousignant

(Eds.), Ethnicity, immigration, and psychopathology. New York: Plenum Press.

27.

Torrey

E. F.

(1995). Prevalence of psychosis among the Hutterites Schizophrenia Research, 16(2), 167–170.

28.

Van Maanen

(1988). Tales of the field: On the ethnography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

29.

Walter

(2007). Modern grief, postmodern grief International Review of Sociology, 17, 123–134.

30.

Wolcott

H. F.

(1994). Transforming qualitative data: Description, analysis, and interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.