192 / The Crisis Years of 1915-1930

College was closed and in the month following the appearance of Volume I, Number 1, of The Christian Exponent, was therefore set in a strategic time of the crisis years. Attended by men from Kansas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Ontario the conference may be viewed as significant not merely for the Archbold community but for the Ohio Mennonite and Eastern Amish Mennonite conferences, and in all probability for the Mennonite Church at large. Daniel Kauffman's presence as editor of the Gospel Herald, the official Mennonite organ, doubtless added a wider church dimension to the occasion.

The importance of such meetings was recognized in the Report of the 1924 Eastern Amish Mennonite Conference of June 4 and 5. This conference passed the following resolution: Resolved, that we favor the holding of special meetings, where the fundamentals

of the Christian faith are intelligently taught. To this end we recommend that this Conference appoint two members who are to work in connection with a similar committee appointed by the Ohio Mennonite Conference whose work it shall be to outline a plan and cooperate with any congregations in the District desiring to hold such meetings. A. I. Yoder and S. H. Miller were appointed as a committee on this resolution.

That the Ohio Mennonite Conference continued to align itself with the Mennonite General Conference can be seen by the next resolution of the 1924 session which endorsed the 1923 position of Mennonite General Conference on modernism and "the various educational problems.

In the wake of the Fundamentals Conference a few congregations were suspended from conference membership. The Chapel and Zion congregations in northwestern Ohio had for some years not been favorable to certain regulations which they considered excessive. Apparently the issues had to do in part with the question of respecting conference regulations on dress, for in a letter dated October 10, 1924, E. F. Hartzler, Daniel Kauffman, and John Y. King (members of an investigating committee) said: "If the dress question is all that stands between you and conference, then we advise that you waive your personal opinions on this matter and do your best to maintain the standards of the Church." The same letter intimates that there may have been other differences, perhaps in regard to church polity and doctrine.' In any event the congregations and the pastors were suspended by the executive committee of the Ohio Mennonite Conference in a communi