“Better Right Than Mennonite”:
From “Egly Amish” to the Defenseless Mennonite Church
to the Evangelical Mennonite Church
to the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches1
TIMOTHY PAUL ERDEL*
Abstract:
The gradual evolution of the nineteenth-century “Egly Amish” into
the twenty-first-century Fellowship of Evangelical Churches may be interpreted as
a classic case of the Anabaptist-Mennonite declension thesis, with evangelical
contacts and commitments serving as the catalysts for eclipsing any obvious
Anabaptist identity. The Fellowship of Evangelical Churches, for example, no
longer goes by an Anabaptist name, retains Mennonite affiliations, or maintains a
consistent peace witness. Nevertheless, a closer look at the “Egly Amish” story
may suggest a slightly more complicated history that is difficult to reduce to a
single, pessimistic thesis about the baneful effects of evangelicalism. Nor is it
obvious that sincere biblical discipleship favors only the paths mainline
Mennonites follow as over against those taken by groups, congregations, or
individuals who seem to have left mainline Anabaptist orbits.
