Religion: Return to the Farm

An oval tent big enough to hold a three-ring circus was pitched last week in an Allensville, Pa. hayfield. No circus did it contain but the biennial world conference of the Mennonite Church. A plain-garbed, plain-spoken sect holding the tenets of 16th-Century Netherlander Menno Simons, the Mennonites shun attention and cities alike. At Allensville, surrounded by the rugged mountains of central Pennsylvania that hem in the fertile and tranquil Kishacoquillas Valley their ancestors settled before the Revolution, they felt perfectly at home. The 7,000 delegates came from Argentina, Tanganyika, India and all North America by a variety of conveyance from trailer to airplane, at meal times ate their fill for 20¢ of tasty Pennsylvania Dutch cooking.

Quiet, pious folk, the Mennonites own no authority outside the Bible and enlightened conscience, disown war, infant baptism, jury duty and the taking of oaths. Most of them are thrifty, hardworking farmers, but lately many have entered industry. Chief problem which confronted last week’s conference was that of industrial strife, which Mennonites abhor as much as they do war.

Problem’s keynoter was the Rev. Guy F. Hershberger of Goshen, Ind., who declared: “Industrial coercion in any form, whether peaceful or not, is not scriptural.’ It usually leads to violence.” His proposed solution: a “return to the farm, where our people were always happy and successful,” backed by a development of rural cooperatives and a church-financed program to purchase farms for young couples.