Donald B. Kraybill, Ph.D.

Distinguished College Professor and Senior Fellow,
Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies
Joint appt., Sociology and Religious Studies departments

The Young Center, Elizabethtown College
One Alpha Drive, Elizabethtown, PA 17022

Email: kraybilld@etown.edu      Fax: 717-361-1443
 


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Horse-and-Buggy Mennonites:
Hoofbeats of Humility in a Postmodern World

Donald B. Kraybill and James P. Hurd

Pennsylvania State University Press

2006 / 312 pages / 51 illustrations

In this first-of-its-kind study of the Wenger Mennonites, Kraybill and Hurd—a sociologist and an anthropologist—use cultural analysis to interpret the Wengers in both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They systematically compare the Wengers with other Mennonite groups as well as with the Amish, showing how relationships with these other groups have had a powerful impact on shaping the identity of the Wenger Mennonites in the Anabaptist world. As Kraybill and Hurd show, the Wengers have learned that it is impossible to maintain a truly static culture, and so examining the ways in which the Wengers cautiously and incrementally adapt to the ever-changing world around them is an invaluable case study of the gradual evolution of religious ritual in the face of modernity.