Conservative Mennonite Conference

The Conservative Mennonite Conference (CMC) is a Christian body of conservative evangelical Mennonite churches in the Anabaptist tradition.

The first American settlement of the Amish Mennonites — who separated from the main body of Swiss Brethren and followed Jacob Amman — was in Berks County, Pennsylvania, around 1710–1720. Soon they had settlements in Chester and Lancaster counties as well. By the middle of the 19th century, they had congregations from Pennsylvania to Iowa, as well as in Ontario, Canada. Amish Mennonite ministers' conferences were organized to serve these churches, and were held from 1862 until 1878. After the 1878 ministers' conference, three district conferences were formed: Eastern, Indiana-Michigan, and Western. Some congregations remained aloof from this conference movement, forerunners of two groups — the Old Order Amish and the Conservative (Amish) Mennonite Conference. Most of the churches in the conference movement eventually merged with other Mennonite groups. The Old Order Amish continue to worship in private homes (in the German language) and reject innovations in both worship and lifestyle. Some congregations were theologically in between the extremely conservative Old Order Amish and the more progressive conference Amish Mennonites. These churches did not join the Amish Mennonite conferences, but, unlike the Old Order Amish, were open to the use of meetinghouses, and the organization of missionary, publication, social service, and Sunday school work. Representatives of these congregations met in conference in Pigeon, Michigan, on November 24–25, 1910, and adopted the name Conservative Amish Mennonite Conference. Amish was dropped and the current name taken when a revised constitution was adopted in 1957.

Concern by some members and churches within the conference over liberalizing tendencies caused a number of congregations and individuals of the Conservative Mennonite Conference to splinter or move away from this group to join other more conservative Mennonites. The earliest group began to be associated informally together in what was called the Conservative Mennonite Fellowship beginning in 1956 with churches in Ontario, Ohio and elsewhere. In 1998, a group of leaders in the Conservative Mennonite Conference, disagreeing with a vote by the conference ministers that resulted in the wives of ministers no longer being required to wear the prayer veiling, left the conference and formed the Biblical Mennonite Alliance.

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