John L Ruth

Author, historian, and documentarian John L. Ruth, Harleysville, Pennsylvania, is recognized for depicting the lives of Mennonites and their spiritual cousins, the Hutterites and the Amish. With family roots in Switzerland, John Landis Ruth was born in 1930 on a farm 29 miles northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and ordained a Mennonite minister at age 20. After earning his PhD at Harvard University and teaching English and American literature at Eastern University and Universität Hamburg,...See more

Author, historian, and documentarian John L. Ruth, Harleysville, Pennsylvania, is recognized for depicting the lives of Mennonites and their spiritual cousins, the Hutterites and the Amish. With family roots in Switzerland, John Landis Ruth was born in 1930 on a farm 29 miles northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and ordained a Mennonite minister at age 20. After earning his PhD at Harvard University and teaching English and American literature at Eastern University and Universität Hamburg, he turned to film documentaries on the Amish and Hutterites which have appeared on PBS and been featured on "60 Minutes." Ruth's narratives of Pennsylvania Mennonite life include Maintaining the Right Fellowship: A Narrative Account of Life in the Oldest Mennonite Community in North America (1984), The Earth is the Lord's: A Narrative History of the Lancaster Conference Mennonites (2001), and Forgiveness: A Legacy of the West Nickel Mines Amish School (3rd. ed. 2010). See less