Mennonite life

MARTINDALE, Pa. -- 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. Both groups embrace a simple, agrarian lifestyle similar to the Amish in several ways -- but disagreed over whether to embrace automobiles. As "horse-and-buggy" Mennonites, the Wengers considered limited mobility essential to preserving a community in which church and family life are tightly interwoven.

Now, it seems, that decision has helped the Wenger community grow.

"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."

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 group of 1,000 adults and children has grown to nearly 18,000 people living in nine states. 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 Order 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.