Commentary
What is the fastest growing religion in America? Could it be conservative protestants with their evangelical zeal? Perhaps the Mormons, who send their well-scrubbed young people on year-long mission trips as a "rite of passage" into adulthood? Maybe it’s a denomination that is following the latest "fad" — an Emergent, or Willow Creek, or "seeker" church.
If you guessed any of the above, you’d be wrong. And forget what you think you know about church growth. Real church growth — and not just "sheep stealing," or the movement of church-going people between denominations and churches — is the result of having children, and raising them solidly in the principles of the faith.
At least that’s what a pair of sociology professors believe. They’ve studied one of the fastest growing religious groups in America and they’ve found that it is one that not only hasn’t embraced the latest technology, it is literally still in the horse-and-buggy era.
This group is the Old Order Mennonites, also known as "horse-and-buggy"
or "Wenger" Mennonites after former Bishop Joseph Wenger. The group included about 200 families in 1927 when they split from other Mennonites who wanted to allow the use of automobiles.
But according to sociology professors Donald Kraybill and James Hurd, there are now 18,000 Wenger Mennonites in nine states, with most living in rural areas such as the Finger Lakes region of New York and parts of Lancaster County, Pa. And thanks to high fertility rates (more than 8 children per family) and intensive discipleship of children, the group is doubling in size every 18 years.
The Old Order Mennonites, along with the Amish, are "Anabaptists,"
so-called because they re-baptized their converts. Both groups have long eschewed modern life, and both groups today make few accommodations, and sometimes criticize the other group for the accommodations they do make. For example, Old Order Mennonites do not use automobiles, and many Amish do. But Old Order Mennonite men shave and on their farms they use electricity and tractors, whereas the Amish typically do not.
And as the families grow, so does the need for affordable farmland, causing the extended families to cover greater distances to get together for family events – and putting increased cultural pressures on them.
Now, according to Kraybill, though driving is prohibited, some families will rent vans and hire drivers in order to bring families together.
It is unlikely that the growth rates seen over the past 80 or so years will continue, but Kraybill believes that the Old Order Mennonites will continue to grow and to be an economic and cultural presence in the region. For even though they have eschewed the American habit of materialism and a cash economy, the industriousness of the Mennonites has resulted in many of them becoming wealthy – at least when land-holdings are taken into account.
And nearly 90 percent of their young people stay in the religion when they reach adulthood. These facts are likely, Kraybill said, to keep the growth rate strong for years go come.
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Warren Smith is the publisher of "The Charlotte World" and the
Evangelical Press News Service.