The Courts and the Colonies

Anyone thinking the secular courts can solve a church conflict should read this book before launching such action. It is a sobering cautionary tale.

Anglicans Online:
[The Courts and the Colonies] was riveting, and we found it hard to put down each night when time came to turn off the light and catch forty winks.

Rod Janzen, School of Humanities, Religion and Social Sciences, Fresno Pacific University:
The Courts and the Colonies is an informative discussion ... It is a valuable addition to Hutterite studies specifically ... more generally the book has important things to say about the legal status of all communal religious societies in North America.

J. Mark Ramseyer, Harvard Law School:
A good read.

Donald B. Kraybill, Senior Fellow, The Young Center for Anabaptist Studies at Elizabethtown College and author of On the Backroad to Heaven:
This landmark study explores the irony of pacifist Hutterites using the courts to solve an internal conflict. It is a major contribution to scholarship on Anabaptist communities. Carefully researched and judiciously fair, Esau’s study provides a rare view inside Hutterite life and conflict.