Christian Communities (Elmo Stoll)

The "Christian Communities" were Christian intentional communities with an Anabaptist worldview, founded and led by Elmo Stoll (1944 – 1998), a former Old Order Amish bishop. They were founded in 1990 and disbanded some two years after Stoll's early death in 1998. At the time of Stoll's death there were five "Christian Communities", four in the U.S. and one in Canada. G.C. Waldrep calls them "perhaps the most important "para-Amish" group".

Elmo Stoll of Aylmer, Ontario, born 1945, was ordained as an Amish minister in 1971 and as an Amish bishop in 1984. As such he forced the members of his church to dress plainer and he also enforced other changes in the direction of stricter plainness and less modern technology , e. g. he forbade to use of electronic calculators. Moreover, he became an ardent preacher. He also wrote a regular column in the Amish magazine "Family Life", until he left the Amish and created the “Christian Communities”.

Elmo Stoll helped a young couple, seekers of French-Canadian background, Marc Villeneuve and his wife, to join the Amish community at Aylmer. This young man started to raise questions about several religious practices and was backed by Elmo's sons and more and more by Elmo himself. In December 1989 the ministers of the Aylmer Amish settlement met to discuss five issues, Elmo and his followers had raised: Evangelizing outside the Plain churches, the use of the English language to reach seekers, Christian community of goods (like the Hutterites), the mandatory wearing of hats for men and the question of fellowship with other plain churches. Elmo Stoll was favoring fellowship with the Noah Hoover Mennonites and the Orthodox Mennonites. No decision was made after this meeting. Elmo Stoll then explained his ideas in the Book Let Us Reason Together.

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