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ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
 Posted: 28-08-2006 11:34 Post subject: Mennonites |
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| Quote: | Book: Horse-And-Buggy Mennonites Thrive
Saturday August 26, 2006 8:01 PM
AP Photo PARK102
By MARTHA RAFFAELE
Associated Press Writer
MARTINDALE, Pa. (AP) - In this bucolic corner of Lancaster County, Allen Hoover can use some modern conveniences approved by his church to help make his machine shop run smoothly: a telephone, a word processor and even a fax machine. But if Hoover needs to travel, driving a car is out of the question. His only options are hopping on a bicycle or hitching a horse to a black buggy.
Hoover, 45, belongs to the Wenger Mennonites, formed nearly 70 years ago by a schism among the county's Old Order Mennonites - whose simple, agrarian lifestyle is similar to the Amish in several ways - over whether to embrace automobiles. As ``horse-and-buggy'' Mennonites, the Wengers consider limited mobility essential to preserving a community in which church and family life are tightly interwoven.
``It's a culture of the old way of doing things,'' Hoover said. ``This whole culture of families working together, communities working together as a unit, would be in danger of disappearing if we would have the means of transportation.''
Bolstered by a steadfast resistance to assimilation with the outside world, the Wengers have experienced remarkable growth since their formation in 1927, according to ``Horse-and-Buggy Mennonites: Hoofbeats of Humility in a Postmodern World,'' the first scholarly study of the community.
The original community of 1,000 adults and children has grown to nearly 18,000 people living in nine states, including New York. Although they are vastly outnumbered by the nation's Amish population of around 200,000, the Wengers are growing at a faster rate, with their numbers doubling every 19 years, said Donald B. Kraybill, a sociologist of Anabaptist studies at Elizabethtown College and a co-author of the Pennsylvania State University Press book.
``There are dozens and dozens of books on the Old Order Amish,'' Kraybill said. ``What to me was curious is that this is a very significant Old Older group that's growing and is growing more rapidly than the Amish ... but has never been studied.''
Both the Amish and Mennonite religions are rooted in a 16th century movement known as Anabaptism, which called for adults to be baptized before joining the church. The Mennonites took their name from Menno Simons, a Dutch Catholic priest who broke away from his church in 1536.
Kraybill and James P. Hurd, an anthropologist at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn., spent more than a decade interviewing Wenger Mennonites, poring through source documents detailing church customs, and gathering population statistics.
A key finding was that the Wengers have high birth rates, about eight children per family, and 90 percent of the community's children become full church members through adult baptism at around 18 years old.
``My assumption was ... that it's a small group that's going to die out pretty fast,'' Hurd said. ``I found quite the opposite.''
Wenger Mennonites were originally part of an Old Order branch that split from the more progressive Lancaster Conference in 1893 over issues such as the introduction of Sunday school and the use of English during church services, instead of the German dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch.
In 1927, the Old Order would split almost exactly in half over the automobile. The opponents, who argued that accepting cars would fragment the community, became Wengers, led by bishop Joseph Wenger.
The core population of Wengers in Pennsylvania is concentrated around Martindale, an unincorporated village about 10 miles northeast of Lancaster. But over time, the population spread to other states as Lancaster County's farmland became more scarce and more expensive for young married couples starting families.
By comparison, the Amish have adapted by staying in the county, but shifting their focus from farming to small business, said Ben Martin, a bishop who oversees five of the county's 10 Wenger churches.
Martin suspects this is because the Wenger Mennonites are permitted to use tractors with steel wheels for farming, while the Amish are limited to using equipment driven by horses or mules.
``There's a higher percentage of farming in our group than the Old Older Amish,'' Martin said. ``Usually the acreage is bigger on a farm in another state ... and since (the Amish) have to plow everything with mules or horses it handicaps them a little more.''
Ivan Martin, who is not related to the bishop, is among the Wengers who have found homes in out-of-state settlements. Martin, 52, moved with his wife to Penn Yan in New York's Finger Lakes region in 1977; they were the 25th family to arrive.
``Being young, it merely looked like an adventure to me,'' said Martin, who owns a wood shop. ``It seemed as through the land was more affordable and available up here.''
The influx of Wengers and other Mennonites has helped rejuvenate the area's farming economy, said Judson Reid of the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Yates County. For example, the number of dairy farms has more than doubled in the county over the past 20 years, bucking a declining statewide trend, he said.
``It used to be that you would see a lot of sagging barns, weeded lots, weeds overtaking buildings,'' Reid said. ``Today, you have a bucolic, manicured bread basket.''
Though Martin is far from where he grew up, he credits the Wenger church's centralized structure with keeping the larger community together and enabling it to thrive across state lines. All congregations must follow the same rules, no matter where they are based.
``Having a culture such as ours is conducive to family and community,'' he said. ``Cars seem to, I think, spread families around. That means you end up in different communities with difference church choices, and less of the guiding principles of home.''
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6039663,00.html |
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| escargot1 Joined: 24 Aug 2001 Total posts: 17896 Location: Farkham Hall Age: 4 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 28-08-2006 12:31 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | the Wengers consider limited mobility essential to preserving a community in which church and family life are tightly interwoven.
``It's a culture of the old way of doing things,'' Hoover said. ``This whole culture of families working together, communities working together as a unit, would be in danger of disappearing if we would have the means of transportation.''
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That sounds like unlawful imprisonment to me. 
The Mennonites were pioneers of restorative justice and their communities seem stable and hardworking. Having 8 children per family though does go against modern trends: families are getting smaller in all industrialised countries, mainly, it is believed, because of the increased desire of women to do something other than breed.
So why are Mennonite women having 8 children each? Could it be that they have no choice?
*cracks buggy whip* |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 28-08-2006 16:46 Post subject: |
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| There are Mennonite communities who are more advanced in their views. They get involved in human rights work, often travelling to other countries. |
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| PeniG Proud children's writer Joined: 31 Dec 2003 Total posts: 2920 Location: San Antonio, Texas Age: 52 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 28-08-2006 16:50 Post subject: |
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It is believed by whom?
Since all generalizations are false and most family decisions are made at the family level (I started to say "all," but the governments of more than one country, including my own, interfere at a wide variety of levels), explanations for family size must necessarily fall into the categories of "hypothesis" or "explanatory fable" until they are tested. Good luck testing!
One plausible semi-testable theory is that family size goes up and down based primarily on economic factors. In a service/industrial society with child labor laws, a large family is a drain on family resources; in an agricultural society with plenty of chores appropriate for children, it is an economic asset in the form of free labor.
It may also be that family A will have different expectations for their children than family B - if you want all your children to be wealthy professionals, you have fewer children in order to maximize your ability to send them to the appropriate schools. If you expect your children to be working class (and many working class people scorn professionals and the wealthy and would be embarrassed to have anything as upscale as a lawyer in the family), you can invest a lot less in their education and a lot more in sheer quantity of gene type. I've known a number of women who actively wanted families that seemed to me ridiculous in size.
Some families have a kind of sacrifice child, or "goat," who is defined as in some way not worth the resources necessary to assist them to improve their situation; these resources may then be divided equally among the "good" children or unabashedly piled onto a "golden child," so that one member of the new generation is pushed ahead of the family curve. If you accused the parents of loving the "Goat" less and the "Golden Child" more they'd be shocked and offended. An affluent family may pour astonishing resources that could be better spent into a child who in a poor family would be the goat, not only educating but rescuing him from his own folly. It won't take you long to invent other permutations on this theme from your own experience and observation - the "good child" left to fend for himself because he can do it while the "bad child" receives extra investment to compensate, etc. Which permutations are available to you depend on your family size.
Also, a farm woman who has eight children and no labor saving devices does do a lot besides "just breed." Farm women traditionally were economic powerhouses on the American family farm, generating and (sometimes by connivance and sometimes with their husbands' cooperation) often controlling a steady source of income in the form of butter-and-egg money, and contributing economically by producing goods such as clothing.
Just because Mennonites are an identifiable subgroup doesn't mean they all live in that subgroup for the same reasons or in precisely the same way. Wife A may be an oppressed drudge, Wife B may be a brainwashed fool, and Wife C may be queen of the roost and happy as the day is long. The car restriction in one family may be welcomed as a way to keep the children under the parental wing, but in another family the aim may be to enable the warm togetherness which so many modern people complain of lacking; and a Mennonite family that produces an obvious talent may cooperate with the child, or even pressure her, to find a way gain mobility out of the group and toward self-actualization. A family may well split among those positions.
The point is that you don't know, and neither do I, what all goes on in the Mennonite decision-making process; and the people making the decisions are unlikely to be fully aware, either. How many of our own decisions can we actually tack down well? Nor is there such a thing as a uniform culture, however hard we try to make one. |
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| escargot1 Joined: 24 Aug 2001 Total posts: 17896 Location: Farkham Hall Age: 4 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 28-08-2006 17:02 Post subject: |
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Yup, I know. The 'closed' version of Mennonite society is a minority.
I really despise any form of religious fundamentalism/indoctrination though! We should be free to walk away from our god and our faith and return freely. Otherwise it's not our choice and religion becomes just another form of control. Restricting parishoners' mobility certainly smacks of that.
I also suspect that a society which expects its women to produce an average of 8 children is likely to have strict ideas of what constitutes correct female behaviour. Freedom of movement doesn't exactly fit into that picture.  |
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| escargot1 Joined: 24 Aug 2001 Total posts: 17896 Location: Farkham Hall Age: 4 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 28-08-2006 17:08 Post subject: |
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| My, Peni, don't you have a lot of time on your hands? |
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| misterwibble Great Old One Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Total posts: 355 Location: Nearby Age: 21 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 28-08-2006 17:41 Post subject: |
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| PeniG wrote: |
all generalizations are false
many working class people scorn professionals and the wealthy and would be embarrassed to have anything as upscale as a lawyer in the
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Pot:kettle, kettle:pot. |
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| escargot1 Joined: 24 Aug 2001 Total posts: 17896 Location: Farkham Hall Age: 4 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 28-08-2006 17:47 Post subject: |
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I did a dissertation on an aspect of fertility last year so I do have a faint inkling of what I'm talking about.
For example, it is a fairly well established fact that where women have more say in family planning, families are smaller. Where they have little say, families are bigger.
Of course, if women spend more time lecturing strangers on internet and less time breeding, we'll never solve the G8's longterm labour shortage problems. |
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| hedgewizard1 Work in progress
Great Old One Joined: 05 Oct 2003 Total posts: 1129 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 28-08-2006 18:24 Post subject: |
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Mennonite communities vary immensely. There are some in Kentucky that embrace technology. For example, they not only use tractors, but they have them upgraded, sometimes to point that the tractor can easily do 40 MPH on the road. In adition to farming, they do a lot of construction.
My understanding (from the Mennonites and Amish I've known, and the writings of Gene Logsdon) is that each community or congregation decides what technology is acceptable for them.
As for the book's central idea, that the horse and buggy folks are thriving, I can only suggest Living at Nature's Pace: Farming and the American Dream and The Contrary Farmer both by Gene Logsdon. His essays concerning the Amish in his area of Ohio makes it clear that bigger is not always better, that high tech isn't always the answer, and that low tech isn't necessarily primitive or backwards.
Since the article is from the Guardian, we can also be assured that they selected the most sensational parts to play up. Gotta watch those sources. |
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| Kondoru Unfeathered Biped Joined: 05 Dec 2003 Total posts: 5788 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 29-08-2006 16:21 Post subject: |
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So if you are saying car owners are liberated, and carless non liberated, where does that leave those who cannot afford them?
(says she who loves cars, is exaperated that so much of her resources goes into them, and would love to have a car as a toy and not a neccesity.) |
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| escargot1 Joined: 24 Aug 2001 Total posts: 17896 Location: Farkham Hall Age: 4 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 29-08-2006 16:31 Post subject: |
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| Cars? I thought we were still on about tractors. |
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| hedgewizard1 Work in progress
Great Old One Joined: 05 Oct 2003 Total posts: 1129 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 29-08-2006 17:22 Post subject: |
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It isn't a question of being able to afford a car or a tractor.
The question is whether accepting the technology into the community will have a positive or a negative influence. From what I've seen, the chief concern is that a farmer able to farm more land will do so, to the detriment of himself and his neighbors.
Understand that the Amish (which I'm more familiar with) work at a slower pace, but with much more enjoyment of the work. Unlike the "English" (that's us non-Amish folks), Amish farms tend to be family operations, with everyone pitching it. So instead of one person riding a tractor all day through the fields, plowing, seeding, fertlizing, etc, the work is done by a group, with a fair amount of conversation and discussion. It makes for a closer family and community, and much more pleasant work.
Many of the Ohio Amish have a second business on their farm, usually related to maintaining or building horse-drawn equpiment. In the last 20 years or so, horse and mules have become very popular with small farmers. They're less damaging to the environment, their by-products are a positive benefit, and the horses are self- replicating.
The most financially successful farm in the US are small ones. A few acres devoted to high dollar specialty crops (organic produce, specialty produce) will out-perform any large grain or livestock operation on a dollar/per acre basis. Most big farms are money sinks, supported by govt subsidies.
My point is, despite what someone from the urban areas might think, horse drawn equipment makes perfect sense. |
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| Kondoru Unfeathered Biped Joined: 05 Dec 2003 Total posts: 5788 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 29-08-2006 20:15 Post subject: |
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Its quite the other way round in this country.
big farms thrive, small ones are absorbed. |
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| hedgewizard1 Work in progress
Great Old One Joined: 05 Oct 2003 Total posts: 1129 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 29-08-2006 20:32 Post subject: |
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Here in the US, the bigger farms aren't making it. A properly run small farm(less than 5 acres), especially one within a couple hours of a urban center, can gross $100,000 per acre each year.
This is not your typical monocrop farming, but a fairly intensive rotational system. On the other hand, anyone who can reliably deliver quality produce has a seller's market. City Farm in Chicago is selling their produce to various up scale restauaqnts (Fronter Grill, Scoozi!, The Ritz-Carlton Dining Room). Each City Farm acre produces $60,000-70,000 a year. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 24-11-2009 16:54 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Mexico's rural Mennonites feel impact of drug violence
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8369200.stm
By Kate Joynes-Burgess
Chihuahua state, Mexico
Mexico's rampant drug-related violence is making headlines, with thousands of deaths linked to the turf wars this year. But while the focus is on urban centres like Ciudad Juarez, rural communities have also felt the effects first hand.
Abraham Peters
Abraham Peters is increasingly worried for his family's future
"They have murdered Mennonite people… the drug-traffickers," says Abraham Peters, a 66-year-old retired rancher, who hails from the Protestant Mennonite sect in the agricultural heartland of Chihuahua state.
Their parents and grandparents came to Mexico in the 1920s from Canada after being promised religious freedom in return for resurrecting farmland devastated during the Mexican revolution.
Mr Peters' community is one of many caught in the crossfire as the federal government cracks down on the illegal drug trade.
Despite the comfort provided by his religion, he admits feeling increasingly "unsettled" about his family's safety. "Years ago you never heard about executions," he ponders and tails off.
Few members of his Church are talking about moving to Mennonite settlements in Belize and Paraguay as a result of the violence in Mexico, but the community is clearly concerned.
The strain shows momentarily as Mr Peters rubs his forehead before pointedly adjusting his tall, cream cowboy hat, part of the trademark attire of Mennonite men that is a visual sign of the community's commitment to preserve its traditions.
His dark blue dungarees, originally inspired by the uniforms of Mexican railway workers observed on that momentous journey down from Canada, bear a large pocket at the front.
From it he pulls out a map and points to the place where drug gangs reportedly killed a Mennonite man in Cuauhtemoc and another, closer to home, in the farming corridor outside the city's commercial hub earlier this year.
Putting down roots
Mr Peters looks wistfully upon his immaculate yet modest family home, flanked by waving cornfields. For him, this farmhouse, within the largest cluster of Mennonite colonies in Mexico, is more than bricks and mortar.
It is the only home he has ever known, where he has worked the land and raised cattle since boyhood.
Abraham Peters' parents
Abraham Peters' parents moved to Mexico in the 1920s
Built by his father, Isidro - a first generation Mennonite migrant from Canada's Saskatchewan province - the house is also Mr Peters' birthplace, where he still lives with wife, Catarina, and Maria, the youngest of their eight children.
All speak the Low German or Plautdietsch language of their forebears, and only the men learn Spanish.
Two of his sons have taken over the family farming business in Cuauhtemoc, where they are already training up the next generation. Others have purchased agricultural land in Mennonite settlements in the north of Chihuahua.
Putting down roots is rare in Mennonite history, which has been punctuated by periodic mass migration.
Originating in the Netherlands, these followers of 16th Century Anabaptist Menno Simons, a radical Protestant reformer, relocated to Russia in the 1770s and then to Canada in the late 19th Century.
They fled persecution for their refusal to participate in military action or swap their Germanic dialect for the host language.
A 7,000-strong community moved to Mexico between 1922 and 1927 after negotiating temporary fiscal benefits, autonomy over education in their mother tongue and exemption from military service.
Economic success
Since then their numbers have swelled to some 60,000 in Chihuahua's 25 Mennonite colonies, while smaller settlements are found in Durango, Campeche, Zacatecas and Tamaulipas.
Unlike fellow Anabaptists the Pennsylvania Amish, Mexican Mennonites have steadily modernised agricultural techniques in response to the harsh realities of their environment, where drought is a regular threat.
Cheese production in Chihuahua state, Mexico
Mexican Mennonites dominate local cheese production
Authorities estimate Mennonite farmers account for at least 60% of the state's agricultural produce, supplying staples such as corn and beans. Nicknamed "vendequesos" or "cheese-sellers," Mennonites make 80% of the region's cheese and some 70% of its dairy produce.
Since Mexico's financial crisis of 1994, they have invested collectively in an exclusive credit union where only Mennonite shareholders are permitted. By safeguarding access to credit, the community has managed to partially insulate itself from the global financial crisis. Good harvests in 2008 and 2009 have also helped.
But these economic achievements have attracted the attention of organised criminal gangs, putting Mennonites at risk of armed robbery, kidnap and extortion.
Katharine Rempenning, director of the state government's Mennonite Outreach Programme, dismissed talk of any mass exodus over fear of violent crime, but admitted some members of the community "were thinking of leaving Mexico".
Crime prevention
Chihuahua's minority Christian groups are still reeling from the 7 July murder of Mormon anti-crime activist Benjamin LeBaron, and his neighbour Luis Widmar.
We don't know what future awaits us - only God knows
Abraham Peters
Mr LeBaron rose to prominence after his own brother was abducted in May this year. Mennonite groups joined Mr LeBaron's peaceful protests against a wave of kidnappings affecting both communities.
Ms Rempenning, a Mennonite of Russian extraction, is concerned that her community's culture of being "open to others" makes members more vulnerable to becoming victims of crime.
Giving advice on crime prevention - "most importantly, kidnapping" - is a priority for her department, which has an annual budget of 500,000 pesos (US $38,258).
Meanwhile, Mr Peters suggests some threats to Mennonite values are coming from within.
"There are Mennonites involved in the drug [trade]… in distribution," he alleges.
Uncertain future
While Cuauhtemoc is one of Mexico's fastest growing urban centres, there is also sense of abandonment.
Mr Peters, who in his retirement has been taking tourists around Mennonite country, says he has hardly received any overseas visitors this year because of security fears, compounded by the H1N1 swine flu outbreak in April.
Busloads of Canadians and Americans no longer visit the city's Mennonite Museum for the same reasons.
"We don't know what future awaits us," Mr Peters states with a tone of acceptance. "Only God knows."
But for this Mennonite at least, his future is in the land of his birth. "We are Mexican now," he proclaims as he clasps his hands together for emphasis. "Mexicans and Mennonites are like this!"
"We don't know what God wants with Mexico… but yes, we will stay, yes we are going to pray very much and come together."
This peaceful religious community could be facing its biggest test yet |
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