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The Old German Baptist Brethren, the Dunkard Brethren, and the Old Order River Brethren dress plain, but they allow patterned fabrics, and they do not press their children to wear traditional garb if they are unconverted. In these groups Brethren women wear head coverings, but these women have a keen sense of the coverings' scriptural origins (1 Corinthians 11:5, 13) and wear them as symbols their attitude toward the church body. As one woman explained it, "It's a point of submission to God, to my husband, and to the community." Plain dress was abandoned by most of the Church of the Brethren beginning in the 1920s.

Mennonites, who number over 340,000 in several denominations—making up 43 percent of all American Anabaptists—may be the most diverse group of all. Some migrated from Germany and Switzerland starting in 1683, while others hail from 19th-century Holland and Russia. And in recent years, Mennonite missionaries have birthed churches in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Many Mennonites have embraced modern technology and evangelical forms of Protestant Christianity, but fully 30 percent of them hold, in some form, to traditional ways.

Old Order Mennonites, who comprise about 7 percent of the Mennonite population, have many of the marks of Amish traditionalists—rejection of higher education and technology, rural and separatist living. But even Old Orders themselves disagree over whether they can drive cars, and they have thus suffered divisions. On the other end, those belonging to the largest denominational body, the Mennonite Church, construct churches in urban and cosmopolitan areas as well as rural countryside, and few retain any vestiges of plain dress. This denomination supplies seminary education and Sunday school materials, and has numerous conference structures and gatherings to deal with issues demanding national attention. Other Mennonite bodies include the Mennonite Brethren Church, the Evangelical Mennonite Church, and the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite.

Unlike Amish and traditional Brethren, Mennonite men have not traditionally worn beards. They have argued that a beard is a mark of fallen man after Adam's sin. Others do not wish to be associated with the modern hippy movement, and still others have argued that the beard would associate them with other plain people lacking any spiritual depth. One man simply objected, "Half the sincere Christians I know don't have beards. They're women!"

Steven Gertz is Assistant Editor of Christian History & Biography.

Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christian History & Biography magazine.
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