Introduction to Old Order and Conservative Mennonite Groups

Introduction to Old Order and Conservative Mennonite Groups
Author: Stephen Scott
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 223
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1680992430

This book tells a story which until now has not been available in such an interesting and comprehensive form. What holds these people together? Why are they growing in number? Where do they live? The Old Order Mennonites are less well known than the Amish, but are similar in many beliefs and practices. Some Old Order Mennonites drive horses and buggies. Others use cars for transportation. Conservative Mennonite groups vary a great deal, but in general espouse strong faith and family life and believe that how they live should distinguish them from the larger society around them. The author details courtship and wedding practices, methods of worship, dress, transportation, and vocation. Never before has there been such an inside account of these people and their lives. The author spent years conferring and interviewing members of the various groups, trying to portray their history and their story in a fair and accurate manner. An enjoyable, educational, inspiring book.

Old Order Mennonites

Old Order Mennonites
Author: Daniel B. Lee
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2000
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780830415731

Lee focuses on the Weaverland Conference of Old Order Mennonites, a group formed in 1893 and now consisting of over 5,000 members. A large concentration of Weaverland Mennonites live in upstate New York near Seneca Falls, and Lee focuses his easily readable sociological study on that community. Individual chapters deal with the worship, rituals, rules, and discipline of the group, and with a number of recent defections to a more mainstream Mennonite Church located in the same area. Lee argues that Weaverland Mennonites are held together by their practices alone, rather than by a common underlying set of beliefs. --Choice Magazine

Horse-and-buggy Mennonites

Horse-and-buggy Mennonites
Author: Donald B. Kraybill
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2006
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0271028653

Examining how the Wengers have cautiously and incrementally adapted to the changes swirling around them, this book offers an invaluable case study of a traditional group caught in the throes of a postmodern world."--Jacket.

Plain Meetinghouses

Plain Meetinghouses
Author: Beth Oberholtzer
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2017
Genre: Church architecture
ISBN: 9780764353017

Old Order Mennonites are deeply faithful, agrarian-rooted, Swiss-German Anabaptists who have called Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, home for 300 years. Their meetinghouses silently embody their religious traditions, and yet few outsiders have seen the startling utilitarian beauty of these rural structures up close. The author and photographer were allowed rare access to 22 austere houses of worship. The result is a one-of-a-kind book featuring over 300 photos and diagrams that document all aspects of the meetinghouses, from the design of their benches and buggy sheds to the arrangement of tables central to worship. As fast-growing Lancaster County encroaches on the Old Order way of life, their communities are changing. This book is a record of an extraordinary religious heritage.

On the Backroad to Heaven

On the Backroad to Heaven
Author: Donald B. Kraybill
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2002-09-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780801870897

This first comparative study sketches the differences as well as the common threads that bind these groups together.

A Peculiar People

A Peculiar People
Author: Elmer Schwieder
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2009-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1587298481

Now back in print with a new essay, this classic of Iowa history focuses on the Old Order Amish Mennonites, the state’s most distinctive religious minority. Sociologist Elmer Schwieder and historian Dorothy Schwieder began their research with the largest group of Old Order Amish in the state, the community near Kalona in Johnson and Washington counties, in April 1970; they extended their studies and friendships in later years to other Old Order settlements as well as the slightly less conservative Beachy Amish. A Peculiar People explores the origin and growth of the Old Order Amish in Iowa, their religious practices, economic organization, family life, the formation of new communities, and the vital issue of education. Included also are appendixes giving the 1967 “Act Relating to Compulsory School Attendance and Educational Standards”; a sample “Church Organization Financial Agreement,” demonstrating the group’s unusual but advantageous mutual financial system; and the 1632 Dortrecht Confession of Faith, whose eighteen articles cover all the basic religious tenets of the Old Order Amish. Thomas Morain’s new essay describes external and internal issues for the Iowa Amish from the 1970s to today. The growth of utopian Amish communities across the nation, changes in occupation (although The Amish Directory still lists buggy shop operators, wheelwrights, and one lone horse dentist), the current state of education and health care, and the conscious balance between modern and traditional ways are reflected in an essay that describes how the Old Order dedication to Gelassenheit—the yielding of self to the interests of the larger community—has served its members well into the twenty-first century.

Train Up a Child

Train Up a Child
Author: Karen Johnson-Weiner
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2007
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780801884955

Train Up a Child explores how private schools in Old Order Amish communities reflect and perpetuate church-community values and identity. Here, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner asserts that the reinforcement of those values among children is imperative to the survival of these communities in the modern world. Surveying settlements in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, Johnson-Weiner finds that, although Old Order communities have certain similarities in their codes of conduct, there is no standard Old Order school. She examines the choices each community makes—about pedagogy, curriculum, textbooks, even school design—to strengthen religious ideology, preserve the social and linguistic markers of Old Order identity, and protect their own community's beliefs and values from the influence of the dominant society. In the most comprehensive study of Old Order schools to date, Johnson-Weiner provides valuable insight into how variables such as community size and relationship with other Old Order groups affect the role of these schools in maintaining behavioral norms and in shaping the Old Order's response to modernity.

Holding the Line

Holding the Line
Author: Diane Zimmerman Umble
Publisher:
Total Pages: 224
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN:

"A historic perspective on how members of the close-knit communities and their leaders responded to the challenges posed by the intrusion of the telephone into long-standing traditions of work, silence, and visiting in the early 1900s" -- Harrisburg Patriot

A Separate People

A Separate People
Author: Isaac R. Horst
Publisher: Herald Press (VA)
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2000
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

Isaac R. Horst presents his beloved Old Order people to a group touring the Mennonite country of Ontario. In Martin's Meetinghouse, he explains church events such as baptism, counsel meeting, conference of ministers, communion, feet washing, ordinations, and funerals. At a schoolhouse, Horst tells why the parochial school system was started and how it operates. His group visits farms and shops and helps with a barn raising. Horst also shares an array of subjects he has tested with an Elderhostel, such as marriage, roles of women and men, raising children, the unequal yoke, and mutual aid. Finally, his granddaughter asks questions that let grandpa share from his experience and wisdom. This book deftly gives an insider's account of Old Order Mennonites and why they live a separate life. Yes, Virginia, life is possible without Santa Claus and TV.