1952 Amish and Mennonites

1952  Amish and Mennonites. Grade 3, Miss Betty Litteral; relations with Mennonites, Roman Stutzman and summer Bible school, memorization; Paul Erb and Mennonite Publishing House staff visit; writing with Paul and Roy; Andrew’s leadership with Amish Mission Interests Committee, third annual conference in Indiana; Jacob A. and Orpha Yoder and Roy L. and Ivy Schlabach families; comparing two renewal attempts: Amish mission movement and Mennonite Concern pamphlet group.

In the spring of 1952, I finished the second grade with Mrs. Violet Philips, our neighbor who lived at our end of Holmesville. She was wife the well driller Harry Philips who walked with a stiff leg. And for the third grade, I entered a new elementary school building attached to what used to be the old Holmesville High School. The last high school class graduated in 1951, the Holmesville high school students joined with Fredricksburg and soon after with the Southeast Local Schools which would include Apple Creek and Mt. Eaton. My third grade teacher was Betty Litteral, a pleasant young Millersburg woman, who had recently finished college. I think she was the only elementary teacher I had who was not a neighbor or known to our family. A Betty Jane Litteral of Millersburg, Ohio, shows up as a freshman in the yearbook of Union College of Barbourville, Kentucky, 1946, on Google.  She was probably our Holmesville teacher. I learned Miss Litteral later became Mrs. Don Bertler, a well-known real estate agent in Holmes County. 

At this point the Benton area children of families such as Feikerts (Gary), Phillips (Cynthia), Masts (Julia), and Troyers (Linda) still attended the Holmesville School, although soon they all would transfer to the East Holmes School District when it was formed. We would walk to school with the Rudy Coblentz’s boys and the Roman Stutzman’s boys. Dale was in Paul’s class, and his dad Roman was a farmer and the bishop of the Martin’s Creek Mennonite Church.

Roman Stutzman gave us our first experience with the Summer Bible School when Paul, Roy, and I attended at Martin’s Creek. Actually we earlier had the Herald Press books at home; Andrew and Mattie had thought Bible learning was so important, that that they bought the Herald Press books for us at home, but now we would join the Mennonite children. In his stationwagon, Roman would drive us over to Martins Creek with his own children. Here we learned Bible verses and sang “This is my Father’s World” every morning. I have many positive and pleasurable memories of 1950s Mennonite meetinghouse basements with their curtains for classroom walls from Martins Creek and Pleasant View near Winesburg. Sounds constantly came from the classes, and if you were not interested in your own class, you could listen to what was going on the other side of the curtain. We learned the Ten Commandments, stories and teachings of Jesus, bishop Harry Stutzman’s martyr and missionary profiles and a tremendous amount of memory work.

That said, Summer Bible School actually began on a negative note at Martins Creek. Paul, Roy and I were used to going without shoes in the summer, and a few of the Martin’s Creek boys apparently saw this al fresco style as an invitation to step on our toes, physically and surely on our egos too. We saw it as hostility, and for many years after that we called the children of Martin’s Creek Mennonite the toe stompers (die Zehe Dretter). For me, going without shoes was a cherished part of summer, and I remember during my elementary school years running around our house barefoot on the first day of May, sometimes it was still cool, but it was a sign of summer.

Anyway, most of Summer Bible School was positive, especially as we started going to the Pleasant View Bible School in the mid-fifties.  During recess we played games everyone could play such as Drop the Hanky, Red Rover and Flying Dutchman. The latter game was especially fun for its contrasts, such as having a big robust or older teacher running around the circle and holding the hand of a little child. Mary Catherine Mullet, at that time known as Girly, comes to mind. Aside from her rotund physical size, Mary Catherine’s enthusiasm went a long way as an outstanding teacher, and I remember hearing her class from several curtains away. She motivated her students to learn their memory verses and quoted them vigorously.  Of course, we all did. I had many good teachers in Summer Bible School and can name most of them Susie Mast (soon to marry my uncle Abe Schlabach), Ana Aileen Yoder, Albert Coblentz, and Roman Mullet.

Memorization was still an honored part of learning in the fifties whether in the public school or in the religious summer school. My father would quote the classic American literature such as “The Village Blacksmith” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and he knew whole sections of the King James Bible from memory. When the Mennonite Clayton F. Yake put the Summer Bible School curriculum together in the late 30s at Mennonite Publishing House, he included a strong memory element. Even a graduate school course on Chaucer had enough of the tradition remaining that I learned the first part of the prologue by memory. Now, every April when the showers return, I remember the old English lines of the sweet rains engendering the appearance of flowers. Then I think of pilgrimages, the wife of Bath, and the Pardoner, and the good-natured narrator Chaucer trotting along with them and telling us all about them and their stories. 

Whan that Abrill with his shoures soota,

The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

But whatever memorization’s benefits in later life, it gave me mixed feelings at Pleasant View Summer Bible School. Our class had two boys, Clyde Erb and I, and the rest were girls, all of whom were veritable memory learning machines, or so it seemed to me. Unlike Clyde and me, the girls had already memorized all the verses by the second day of school, and we all needed to achieve that goal, especially to say them on the last night’s program for our parents and neighbors. So after the second day the rest of the two weeks during memory time were pure indignity for Clyde and me stammering and trying to recite the lines, while the high-speed memorizing girls gave us hints or condescendingly urged us on.

You can imagine my relief in the sixties, when public educators discovered that such rote learning was not important and for all practical purposes discontinued the practice. How and why and processes of learning were emphasized, and memory learning fell into disfavor. I suppose it was only as an adult several decades later that I recognized some value in schooling before all memory work became discredited.

Amish and Mennonites are related, and we often had a lot of relationships with the Mennonites such as attending their summer Bible school classes; they were out neighbors, religious cousins, and often provided professional services such as teachers and later physicians and attorneys. My parents Andrew and Mattie had Mennonite public school teachers in Clarence Zuercher and Roy R. Miller. Religiously, when the historian and theologian John C. Wenger held two weeks of meetings at the Berlin Mennonite Church, Andrew and Mattie attended. They had many Mennonite books in our library, sold Mennonite books at Goodwill Book Exchange, and Andrew wrote articles for the Mennonite periodicals.

In October, Andrew got a letter from Henry A. Mast of Scottdale, Pennsylvania, wondering if he and Paul Erb, the Mennonite editor of Gospel Herald, could visit the Millers on the weekend of November 15. Mast wrote that Erb “has expressed himself that he would like to have an opportunity to become better acquainted with the Amish people,” noting he had seldom been in an Amish home and never attended a worship service. Erb would return from Chicago by train on the 15^th, and Mast could go up to the Canton, Ohio, train depot to meet him, and “we were wondering if Brother Erb and myself could invite ourselves to your place for Saturday night.” Mast said the “girl who is keeping house for me lives close to Sugarcreek” so he was going to be in the area in any case. Andrew and Mattie readily agreed and two weeks later Mast was writing again, noting that he would also like to bring along two additional staffers Lois Yake and Alice Buckwalter, lamenting that “many of us here in Scottdale have very little if any first-hand knowledge of the Amish.”

We boys were eager for the meeting, and on Saturday gave the two young Mennonite women a pony cart ride with Patsy. On Sunday the Scottdale women got an additional buggy ride from the home where the worship service was held on the Weaver Ridge in the forenoon to the Emmanuel and Alma Mullet home where an Amish and Mennonite publishing meeting was held. This turned out to be kind of a marketing meeting for the Mennonites noting their publishing program and asking what services they could provide for the Amish community. In fact, that seemed a primary motivation for the entire weekend, because Yake and Buckwalter worked in sales and advertising. Andrew reported on the meeting in the Herald der Wahrheit noting the buggy ride and the interest of the Mennonite Publishing House to better serve the Amish community. But we Miller boys remembered it for the excitement of the overnight Mennonite guests and also duly recorded the visit in a letter (Roy or Paul) sent to the children’s section of the Herald.  

Writing letters to “Our Juniors” section of the Herald der Wahrheit, is the earliest remaining existence of the Miller brothers literary activity and on September 4, of 1952, I followed my older brothers’ letters with my first one: “Dear Aunt Mary and All Herald Readers: Greetings in Jesus’ name. This is my first letter to the Herald. I will be eight years old on September 15. I am in the third grade. Best wishes to all. Levi A. Miller.”  The editor Aunt Mary combined my letter with my brother Roy’s letter in which he also noted that our “school didn’t start yesterday on account of polio. It will start the fifteenth.” Our brother Paul included a letter in the same envelope with similar formulaic Christian greetings and closing. In between, Paul noted our pet pony Patsy and that his birthday is on Feb. 1, 1942, and wondered about “a twin, or someone near my age, please write and I will gladly answer.” Mattie kept a record of all her sons’ Herald letter writing in a brown notebook, writing out copies of the letters, as well as keeping account of the credit the boys got from “Aunt Mary” for sending in quizzes and word games as well as answering them. As of September 1952, our accounts were Paul 83 cents, Roy 65 cents, and Levi 10 cents.

  

I later discovered that these early financial numbers may be some indication of our relative wealth the rest of our lives. But to my brothers’ credit, including the infant David, financial numbers seldom interfered unduly with our relationships. Whatever stress our later relationships brought regarding arguments in theology, culture, and politics, these early shared experiences seemed to go a long way in our life-long friendships. Or as Paul sometimes reminded us four score years later; he’s getting a little late in life to go out looking for new friends, let alone looking for new brothers.

Andrew and Mattie were continuing their farming and raising their five little sons, but Andrew was especially involved in the Amish mission movement and in his writing. One could hardly overstate Andrew’s prolific literary output during this year. Writing mainly in German, his short articles and news items appear in almost every issue of the bi-weekly Herald der Wahrheit. Andrew also helped organize the national Amish mission conference at the Clinton Christian Day School near Goshen, Indiana, on August 17-19. Both he and Mattie attended, Andrew giving a speech on “Requirement of Missions.” He gave a “hearty amen” that “mission work does not always mean service in a foreign country; but it does mean that we must know Christ and know that we are His.” This would be a frequent refrain for Andrew that we should be missionaries here at home where we live.

Mennonite Central Committee representative Christian L. Graber also spoke telling of his recent trip to Europe, describing Mennonites who had escaped the Soviet Union and were still in camps in Germany and of the PAX boys who were working in Germany, noting the poverty of the war-devastated Germans. “A [German] man earns as much in one day as one [in] the U.S.  earns in a few hours.”  He also told of work in Greek villages where there was much poverty. “They were torn up by Communists.” He concluded: Let us keep in mind to do good unto all men if we want to be clear before God. We need prayers, workers and money.” The Soviet Communist surge was a backdrop for political evil, as well as a kind of cautionary challenge for missionary zeal. Willie Wagler of Hutchinson, Kansas, concluded a sermon with the question: “Who spreads his belief the most—a Christian or a Communist?”

Andrew read scripture (Romans 8:1-11) at another session, and two of Andrew and Mattie’s relatives were also a vital part of this conference. Jacob A. Yoder of Sugarcreek, Ohio, was a minister who gave a testimony one evening. He was Andrew’s first cousin, and his wife Orpha was Mattie’s first cousin, and we used to call him Orpha Jake. Jacob was a devout man who shared many of my father’s Christian convictions, and we used to visit them quite often; furthermore, they had young children about our age such as James, Edith, Albert, Edwin, and Robert. What fascinated me about Orpha was her ability to nurse her little ones, even after they could walk and talk. One time we were all sitting in the living room, and one of her toddlers came running to her, asking for a drink. Without missing a beat Orpha obliged, and the little one slurped happily until he bit her nipple. Then she gave him a friendly slap and told him to get going, na gehts du.

Mattie’s brother Roy L. Schlabach was clearly the keynoter of the conference, although in traditional modesty, no such designation appeared on the program. Already on the first day, he gave a short testimony or reflection on “thinking and hearing of the Anabaptist Vision,” urging his listeners to recapture the Apostolic and Anabaptist vision. Then he gave the concluding sermon of the conference on “The Need of Mankind” as well as the benediction. For the conference planners having Uncle Roy, as we used to call him, on the program was an important move in giving their new mission project some legitimacy in the Amish community. Roy was already a respected young minister and writer, well-known in Holmes County circles as well as in the larger North American Amish community.

My mother’s favorite brother was like Andrew, literate in both German and English. And like Jacob and Orpha, Roy and Iva Schlabach also had children about our age: Emma, Clara, Rob(1945-2011), and Levi.  Both Roy and Jacob would come and speak at the local Amish Christian Fellowship meetings which my father organized on Sunday afternoons, as a follow-up to the national conference. However, this year may also have been a high water mark in these three families’ participation in the Amish mission movement, for within two years each family’s moved in different and distinct directions. Roy and Iva decided to stay rooted in the Amish church; Jacob and Orpha cast their lot with the fledgling Bethel Fellowship or Beachy church, and Andrew and Mattie joined the Mennonite church. In many ways the three families’ decisions were paradigmatic of what became of the movement as well as their offspring.      

After the conference, the mission newsletter notes the unmarried young people had a “singspiration” while the young mission leaders went into another building for a business session. Here they elected Andrew A. Miller to chair a committee to plan next year’s event and take care of any business until the next meeting. The September Amish Mission Endeavor newsletter, a conference report, summarized the talks of the conference. Andrew on behalf of the committee, in an afterword, noted that however “smooth going” the conference may have seemed to most, it also had some “uneven places,” especially for the conference planners. Apparently, one well qualified speaker from Iowa was prepared to give a presentation on “The Missionary Zeal of the 16^th Century Anabaptists,” and was overlooked, “much to the regret of the committee.” And finally, Andrew mentioned that the “language question,” whether to speak in German or English, was left optional to the speaker, and apparently this left some participants grumbling. In traditional humility, Andrew concluded: “If we can have some forebearance with one another, we believe that we can go on, in spite of our imperfections and failures.”                   

The conference made numerous references to Harold S. Bender’s “Anabaptist Vision” (1944). Oral tradition had Goshen College's dean Harold S. Bender attending one of the sessions himself, including commenting to Roy L. Schlabach that he hopes the Amish mission movement does not “throw out the baby with the bath water” in its renewal and outreach zeal. During 1952 some of Bender’s students were meeting in Amsterdam in the first session of what was to become the Concern pamphlet group. Seven Mennonite graduate students, relief workers, and missionaries met for a week, and for the next decade issued occasional pamphlets on church renewal and the church’s role in society. Like the Amish renewal group which was informal by nature, the Concern group was informal in structure by conscious design. The Concern young people saw the Mennonite church becoming too Protestant, developing hierarchical institutions and strong conferences and bishops. Although there was no formal structure to the seven original members of the Concern group, and the pamphlets did not even have an announced editor until number five in 1958, all said the spirit behind the movement was the young Wayne County intellectual John Howard Yoder (1947).

If the young Amish were motivated by mission, the Concern group was trying to re-capture the nature of the church in the local congregation. Both the Amish mission movement and the Mennonite Concern group voiced a sharp critique of their traditional North American communities. The Concern people called them Corpus Christianum, equating these communities with what they saw as the fall of the Christian church in 312 AD, when the emperor Constantine united the early New Testament Christian movement with the Roman Empire. The Amish Mission Movement people would have heartily agreed. As with most young movements, both were often ambivalent and even in rebellion about their inherited ministerial leadership, their elders.

Neither group would begin a new church body or conference (closest being perhaps a Reba Place in Chicago and a Bethel Fellowship in Berlin), but both movements by the sixties and succeeding decades had significant ideological influence on the traditional Amish and Mennonite churches. The immediate effect for the Holmes County Amish was a tremendous conservative and traditional reaction with the beginning of the Dan Weaver affiliation this same year (1952). Nonetheless, in succeeding years the main body of Amish eventually adopted elements of the mission movement’s emphasis on personal morals, Bible study and outreach, especially relief efforts. For the Mennonites, a non-conference (Benton’s Zion and Hartville’s Roman Miller) conservative reaction would also begin about this same time. Nonetheless, in the succeeding years, Mennonite church life would also incorporate Concern group ideals of diminishing authority from the conference, especially limiting the traditional power of bishops, and giving this power to the local congregation, spawning small groups, and reducing the legitimacy of pastors, especially professional pastoral leadership.

Much of this chapter is from memory and conversations with family members. Information on third-grade teacher Betty Litteral came from classmate Melinda Gales Boekel in an e-mail June 6, 2015. Andrew A. Miller’s correspondence with Henry A. Mast of Mennonite Publishing House concerning the Scottdale staff visit appears in his files at the Archives of the Mennonite Church (AMC), Goshen, Indiana. Andrew’s report on the Scottdale editors’ visit appears the Herald der Wahrheit (December 15, 1952, pages 738-39); we brothers (Roy, Paul and I) also wrote a report on this visit in a “Dear Mary” letter which appeared in the Herald (January 1, 1953, page 29). My first “Dear Mary” letter appeared in the Herald der Wahrheit (October 15, 1952, page 635). I reviewed copies of Herald der Wahrheit at the Ohio Amish Library, Berlin, Ohio. The report of the 1952 Amish mission conference appears in Amish Mission Endeavor, Conference Report (Special Issue, September, 1952) in Andrew’s files at the AMC. Other of Andrew’s activities are reported in Amish Christian Fellowship Bulletin which he published in December, 1952, also in his files of AMC. Harold Bender’s attendance and cautionary quote regarding the Amish mission movement comes from a Rob R. Schlabach telephone conversation May 20, 2010, as he recalled it from his father Roy L. Schlabach. The Mennonite Concern project comes from a Laurelville Mennonite Church Center reunion of six of the seven original Concern participants (John Howard Yoder did not attend) which Rodney Sawatsky and I convened March 1-3 of 1990; papers appeared in Conrad Grebel Review (Volume 8, Number 2, Spring, 1990).