Exploring

Few know much more than that, and even fewer understand the differences between the two groups that—it must be acknowledged—appear similar to most “outsiders.” But the Mennonite church, which was founded by a former Catholic priest named Menno Simon in Friesen, Germany, in the 1530s, predates the Amish faith by more than 100 years. The Amish faith took shape in 1693 when a group, led by Mennonite Elder Jakob Ammann of Switzerland, split from the Mennonite church due to what they believed was an increasing liberalization in church discipline and a gradual slackening of strict separation from the world. Where the Mennonites value education, employ technology, and all but a few, like the Old Order Mennonites, drive cars, the Amish shun all technology, and do not educate their children beyond the eighth grade, preferring to remain separated from the larger world. The Amish have remained surprisingly much the same in lifestyle and practice since their arrival in America. However, most Mennonites have seen that it is possible to interact with the world without becoming worldly: They are then, in the modern world, but not of it.

The Mennonites were some of the first European settlers in the New World, arriving in Pennsylvania in the 1680s from Germany where they suffered persecution for their Anabaptist beliefs. Today, though, there are other parts of the country, including Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Kansas where Mennonite churches can be found in great numbers. There is one place in particular (apart from the earliest settlements in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania) where they have lived the longest in thriving numbers: That place is Virginia. The diaspora and migration of these groups began when they filtered down through Pennsylvania and into the Shenandoah Valley in search of expansive and rich farmland, beginning in the middle of the 18th century. But even then they were not in lockstep, nor all of the same ilk. There are a great many stripes of Mennonites in the Valley, from the most austere to the more progressive like those at Eastern Mennonite University, in Harrisonburg. But they share religious devotion and remain the same family-oriented and industrious people they were when they first settled in Virginia 250 years ago; inventive and astute in agrarian and food-related business, the building trades, folk-crafts, raising livestock and, above all, farming.