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Plain People and the Refinement of America(continued from the previous page)
Additional observations
Within each of the categories I have suggested here, there are many individual distinctions between groups. Recently, for example, the Pleasant Grove Mennonite Church, near Shipshewana, Indiana ended its affiliation with the Conservative Mennonite Conference and joined the new Mennonite Biblical Alliance. It did so because it favored the more traditional stance of MBA on matters such as dress and divorce.It is also important to remember that living Christian communities are dynamic and changing, and that any model must leave open the possibility of movement. One important example of this has been the evolution of the Beachy Amish -- nationally, but also with particular importance in the Michiana region. While the early Beachy Amish churches in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Ohio are perhaps best characterized as Old Order-oriented folks who made adaptations in their use of technology and in their practice of discipline, during the 1950s and 1960s that orientation began to change. The original Beachy Amish fellowship absorbed a group of new congregations (locally, Woodlawn Amish Mennonite was the key church) that had a different focus. Rather than modifying an Old Order lifestyle, the community at Woodlawn had a worldview that was much more akin to the nineteenth-century activists who championed Sunday schools, mission work, and other means and methods to spread their message and structure their effectiveness. Under the influence of Woodlawn and similar congregations that emerged from the 1950s "mission interests movement" among the Amish, the Beachy Amish have really left the Old Order orbit and became much more like the conservative Mennonite and Brethren groups in the upper center of the model.19 (See chart 4)
Chart 4
Conservative Menn. Conf. (1910)
Mennonite Biblical Alliance (1999)
"Sharing Concerns" [Salem Menn.
Church, etc.] (1981)
Dunkard Brethren (1927)
Mid-West Menn. Fellowship (1977)
Bethel Cons. Menn. Fellowship (1983)
Nationwide Menn. Fellowship (c.1960)
Beachy AmishMennonite Church
General Conference Mennonite Church
Church of the Brethren
Brethren in Christ
Old Order Amish
Old Order Mennonites
Old Brethren German Baptists (1939)Old
Wisler Mennonites (1907)
Old German Baptist Brethren (1881)
Brethren (1913)
A common history, a common memory
The multitude of plain churches can be bewildering-even to insider members, not to mention sympathetic outsiders looking in. While the model discussed above is one way I bring order to the potential confusion and sort things in my own mind, we may ask, Is there a larger story here? A larger history?In general, history is something many plain people care deeply about. For Old Order and conservative Amish, Mennonites, and Brethren their sources of authority and their general orientation to church and life rests on the accumulated wisdom of those who have gone before. For them events of the past, such as taking a stand for a principle or against an innovation, remain important parts of their identities. Many mainline Mennonites and Brethren, on the other hand, bemused by progresses and the ideal that the future lies ahead of us, may have a disadvantage when tending historical fires.
But what is perhaps stronger among the plain people than among other Anabaptists is not history, but memory. Memory and history are closely related, but they are not the same. History tells us what happened; memory tells us who we are. Good history can be done by an insider or an outsider; memory belongs to the group alone. Individuals can study history; memory is always relational and can never be the solo project of any one person. Memory may not always be accurate, but it is always true-that is, it is always concerned with truth.
The Jewish academic historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi has written that, despite his own deep interest in history, he believes that what holds Jews together is a common memory. There is much that he has learned and continues to learn from history, but it is in Jewish memory that his identity rests. In fact, Yerushalmi notes that in a strange way history sometimes destroys memory, as we dissect and pull apart and analyze the past.20
That is a risk that I take as an historian. But it is one that I know I am taking, and it reminds me to not lose sight of the larger questions of meaning that stand along side history-particularly the history of people of faith.
Those questions and larger meanings are what lie at the heart of memory (and faithful history), because memory is about remembering. When we remember we take broken fragments of words, images, and events and put them together into something whole-something that makes sense and has meaning. When we remember we are taking that which is dismembered and joining the members together again. In re-membering our past, we re-member who we are.
"Remember who you are," is phrase some of us may have heard growing up. My hope is that the churches represented in the model I have sketched here would not only work at their history-which is important-but would also nurture their memory and re-membering. I believe that attention to history and memory will help us to remember who we are in more than one sense of the word.
Steve Nolt gave this address at the Michiana Anabaptist Historians Fall Meeting, October 23, 1999. Steve is a member of Kern Road Mennonite Church, South Bend, IN, and teaches history at Goshen College.
Appendix:
Plain Groups in MichianaBeachy Amish Mennonite
Berea Fellowship (Bremen)
Clay Street Amish (Bremen)
Fair Haven (Goshen)
Hebron Fellowship (LaGrange)
Maple Lawn (Nappanee)
Pilgrim Fellowship (Nottawa)
Southhaven (Millersburg)
Woodlawn Amish Mennonite (Goshen)
Bethel Conservative Mennonite Fellowship
Bethany Mennonite Fellowship (Millersburg)
Conservative Mennonite Conference
Griner Conservative (Middlebury)
Maple City Chapel (Goshen)
Mount Joy Conservative (Goshen)
North Wayne (Dowagiac)
Pine Ridge Conservative (Goshen)
Riverview (White Pigeon)
Roselawn Conservative (Middlebury)
Townline (Shipshewana)
Dunkard Brethren
Goshen (Goshen)
Mennonite Biblical Alliance
Pleasant Grove (Goshen)
Mid-West Mennonite Fellowship
Bethel Conservative (Nappanee)
North Liberty (North Liberty)
Sandy Ridge (Nappanee)
Shiloh Fellowship (Constantine)
Nationwide Fellowship Churches
Grace Conservative Mennonite Fellowship (Goshen)
Ohio-Indiana Mennonite Conference (i.e, "Wisler" Mennonite)
Yellow Creek meetinghouse (Goshen)
Fairview meetinghouse (Nappanee)
Old Brethren
Goshen (Goshen)
Old German Baptist Brethren
Yellow Creek (Goshen)
Old Order Amish
approx. 103 districts (Elkhart-LaGrange-Noble Counties settlement)
35 districts (Nappanee region settlement)
Old Order Mennonite-Groffdale Conference
Blossers meetinghouse (Foraker)
Clearland meetinghouse (Wakarusa)
Yellow Creek meetinghouse (Goshen)
unaffiliated conservative congregations
Salem (New Paris)
Fairview Amish Mennonite (Nappanee)
South Union Fellowship (Nappanee)
Notes
19. Yet the Beachy Amish are not entirely at home among such peers. Others in that camp have an identity staked on differentiation from mainline Mennonites and Brethren, which is somewhat a concern, but less so, for the Beachy Amish
20. Yosef H. Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), 81-103. See also Robert N. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 152-55, on "communities of memory."
Mennonite Historical Bulletin October, 1999