UNITED IN SEPARATION. On the Common Roots of Pennsylvanian and Transylvanian Anabaptism
UNITED IN SEPARATION. On the Common Roots of Pennsylvanian and Transylvanian Anabaptism

Summary/Abstract: The history of 17th and 18th century Anabaptism provides a unique link between the religious and cultural histories of the United States and Hungary. The common roots and shared traits of American and Hungarian Anabaptism, however, have received little scholarly attention in either country – except for isolated references in somewhat esoteric journals such as the Mennonite Quarterly Review or in Hungarian books on pottery and ceramics. Hence, in this essay I aim to shed some light on the Anabaptist connection, as it is much more than a marginal cultural oddity. The survival of the Amish in the United States and the extinction of the Habán communities in Hungary exemplify the different possibilities for the conservation of traditions in these two cultures. Thus, studying them entails breaking out from the domains of ethnography or religious history. These groups offer lessons about retaining values in our modern world, and teaching us, as John A. Hostetler, author of several definitive works on the American Anabaptists, observed, “a different form of modernity”.

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