During the second quarter of the 19th century great changes entered into American religious life. A resurgence of revivalism and evangelical fervor broke through widespread deadness in many denominations. Throughout the country, home and foreign mission boards, tract and temperance societies, church colleges and seminaries, religious literature and periodicals, and Sunday schools were founded.

The Mennonites of the Franconia Conference (MC) in southeastern Pennsylvania, in spite of their attempted isolation, also felt the impact of this new religious environment, with its new visions of opportunity and responsibility. Locally the Pennsylvania Public School Law of 1834, with its emphasis on the English language and American cultural patterns, had a profound, though quiet, influence upon traditionally minded German Mennonites, especially those of the younger generation.

In the 1840s some of the younger ministers of the Franconia Conference, including John H. Oberholtzer of Swamp, and Abraham Hunsicker of Skippack, manifested a more progressive spirit in church matters. Oberholtzer, a gifted schoolteacher and skilled locksmith, became a fervent preacher and student of the Scriptures. He organized children's meetings, printed a catechism, preached in other denominations, and refused to wear the regulation minister's coat. Because of this latter act, he and several like-minded ministers were excluded from the conference meeting in 1844. In seeking to be reinstated soon after, Oberholtzer became deeply impressed with the lack of proper procedure in conference. With no secretary, no minutes, no business nor voting procedure, irregularities were bound to occur in the applications of the old, unwritten church rules.

In the spring of 1847 Oberholtzer, encouraged by Abraham Hunsicker, drafted a conference constitution, which was unofficially accepted by a like-minded group of 16 ministers and deacons. On the following day at the spring conference Oberholtzer appeared, dressed in a regulation coat, to present his constitution, but was denied the opportunity to read it. The constitution was later printed and distributed among the ministers. At the fall conference the sponsors again appeared, asking for a committee to study the constitution. In the end, however, the conference adopted a vigorous resolution excommunicating all signers of the constitution unless they renounced it; if they did so they again would be received in love. That such controversy could occur between sincere brethren is indeed lamentable, especially since the issues involved concerned not the major doctrines of the church but rather new methods of promoting and preserving the old Gospel.

On 28 October 1847, three weeks after the decision of the conference, the signers of the new constitution met at the Skippack meetinghouse to consider their future course. After due consideration of the conference resolution favoring the "old evangelical order," they decided that such would be conscientiously impossible. Thereupon, they adopted the new constitution, and the name, "The East Pennsylvania Conference of the Mennonite Church." This Skippack meeting marks the official founding of the present Eastern District Conference.

Those who attended this historic meeting were John Hunsicker, William Landis, John H. Oberholtzer, Abraham Hunsicker, Christian Clemmer, and Joseph Schantz, as ministers, and William Gottschall, John Detweiler, Henry B. Shelly, Jacob Benner, and Samuel Kaufman, as deacons. These men represented the entire congregations of West Swamp, East Swamp, Flatland, Skippack, Schwenksville, Upper Milford, Germantown, and Bertolet's; and elements of the congregations of Worcester, Providence, Rockhill, Saucon, Springfield, Boyertown, and Hereford. The Deep Run congregation was not represented at this meeting because the division there was purely a laymen's movement. Some of the signers were absent from this meeting. All in all, the new conference started with 8 ministers, 11 deacons, and 16 congregations, totaling about 500 members, or one fourth of the Franconia Conference. Of the 70 ministers and deacons in the Franconia Conference at that time, 16 withdrew including John Hunsicker, the senior bishop of the conference, one of the five bishops functioning at that time.

John H. Oberholtzer's constitution adopted by the new conference reveals that the aims of this group were not radical, but substantially followed traditional Mennonite doctrine and polity. The method and approach, however, were new. The early activities of the East Pennsylvania Conference verified this progressively traditional policy. The traditional forms of worship and vigorous discipline were continued alongside of such innovations as children's meetings and Sunday schools in the 1850s, a conference Sunday-school union in 1876, a religious periodical, the Religiöser Botschafter, in 1852, the inward calling of ministers, ministerial support, pulpit fellowship with other denominations, and limited open communion.

A survey of the beginnings of religious groups in church history frequently reveals that the greater the birth pangs, the greater will be the growing pains. The East Pennsylvania Conference was no exception; its growing pains were severe. In 1851, the Hunsickers (John and Abraham) were excommunicated for advocating tolerance toward secret societies and more liberal interpretation of open communion than conference was willing to accept. In the middle 1850s, the emotional religion and revivalism of the Methodist style began to penetrate the northern congregations in the form of prayer meetings. Matters came to a climax in 1858 when William N. Shelly, William Gehman, and five other ministers withdrew and formed the Evangelical Mennonite Conference, one of the groups which later formed the Mennonite Brethren in Christ. The third and last controversy centered at Skippack over feetwashing. This congregation, demanding the literal interpretation of this rite, and refusing to agree with the conference's spiritual interpretation, seceded in 1859 to become an independent congregation (called popularly the Johnson Mennonite Church, because the leader and most of the ministers after him had that name). The first two of these controversies reveal that conference was unwilling to accept either a weakened liberalism or a radical revivalism, though in so rejecting them it lost both the educated Hunsickers and men of evangelistic fervor. The last controversy, on the other hand, reveals the liberal spirit of conference as opposed to the more literal spirit of the minority, though again the fellowship of a strong congregation was lost to the young and struggling conference.

Following the organization of the East Pennsylvania Conference, John H. Oberholtzer vigorously championed a greater unification of Mennonites all over America. The East Pennsylvania Conference was also much interested in this movement, and in 1860 delegated Oberholtzer and Enos Loux to go to a church unification meeting at West Point, Iowa. At that historic meeting with Oberholtzer in charge, the General Conference was organized to include the East Pennsylvania congregations and the Iowa congregations. In a short time the congregations of like-minded brethren in Canada, Ohio, and Illinois joined this unification movement.

Publication activities continued through the years. Minutes, catechisms, reports, Sunday-school literature, and other papers were printed by conference at Milford Square. The Religiöser Botschafter became Das Christliche Volksblatt in 1856 and the Friedensbote in 1867, which in 1882 was merged with a western paper to become the General Conference's German periodical, Der Christliche Bundesbote, now Der Bote. In 1885, N. B. Grubb and Allen M. Fretz, with the approval of conference, founded The Mennonite, which became the General Conference English periodical. In 1895, conference published the first Mennonite Yearbook and Almanac, which later became the official conference yearbook. The Conference always had an active home mission program. Congregations organized by the Conference were Wadsworth, Ohio, in 1852; and in Pennsylvania Bowmansville in 1852, First Philadelphia in 1865, Souderton in 1893, Pottstown in 1895, Quakertown in 1899, Allentown in 1903, Perkasie in 1905, Lansdale in 1929, and Lancaster in 1946. During the first half of the 20th century years a group of congregations and missions were added in central Pennsylvania (Fairfield, Richfield, Roaring Spring, etc.) and Stirling Avenue at Kitchener, ON.

In the 1890's, Christian Endeavor societies were organized in many of the congregations, and were soon after followed by the organization of a conference Young People's Union. In 1928 a young people's retreat was organized, which after 1941 were held at Men-O-Lan Retreat Grounds near Finland, PA owned and operated by the conference. In 1896 a home for the aged was begun at Frederick, PA. A brotherhood organization for laymen was organized in 1918. An orphanage society and a women's organization were active for many years. In many of these ventures the Eastern District Conference pioneered among American Mennonites.

According to the constitution, the Conference was made up of congregations which "taking the Sacred Scripture of the Old and New Testament as the only and infallible rule of faith and life, hold fast to the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in their teaching and practice adhere to the Mennonite principles of administering baptism only on confession of faith, avoiding the use of all oaths, a life of meekness, peace, and Biblical inoffensiveness, and the practice of a Scriptural church discipline to the end of separating from the communion of believers the unrepentant and incorrigible transgressors against the laws of God."

Most of the controversial activities and methods early promoted by the Eastern District Conference were later accepted by the great body of Mennonites. The Eastern District Conference still differed in the 1950s from more conservative Mennonites in such things as the absence of detailed church rules, the absence of a prescribed religious garb, the use of a trained and supported ministry, a wider denominational fellowship, and open communion.

The 100th anniversary of the Eastern District Conference was observed in the historic Lower Skippack meetinghouse, with appropriate meetings on 26-28 October 1947. The first issue of a conference periodical, The Messenger, was published at that time.

In 1956 the conference had 4,558 members in 28 congregations, with 25 active ministers and 52 deacons. 

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The Frederick Home and Camp Men-O-Lan ministries greatly expanded after the 1950s. The Home now included enlarged nursing facilities, a number of residential cottages for older people, a community center, and more low-income apartments in the planning stage. The administrator in 1987 was Robert W. Miller. Camp Men-O-Lan, with Ray Linberger as administrator, had a year-round program of camping and retreats for all ages. The conference quarterly, The Messenger, under former editors Marjorie Geissinger and Curtis D. Bauman; had, by 1987, grown to include more news and articles from the congregations and people of the conference, the General Conference Mennonite Church, and Franconia Conference (MC).

A new effort toward coordination in the conference was made when a conference minister was appointed in 1982 in the person of David Hillegas. During the second half of the 20th century church planting was undertaken in lower Bucks County, Germantown, and elsewhere. The conference began work among Hispanic people in 1958 in Lansdale. An important inner city outreach ministry called Crossroads was active in North Philadelphia, including a community center, a food pantry, a prison ministry, 4-H clubs, and garden projects.

Perhaps most significant has been a growing cooperation with the sister Franconia Conference of the Mennonite Church, in such projects as the Germantown Church congregation and corporation, the Mennonite Heritage Center in Souderton, the Mennonite Historians of Eastern Pennsylvania, and the publication in 1984 of "a narrative account of life in the oldest Mennonite community in North America," a joint history of the Franconia Conference and the Eastern District Conference (Ruth, Maintaining). Since the division of 1847 both conferences side-by-side had gone their separate ways, each continuing to meet in conference the first weekend in May. By the 1980s they began to meet together on the first Sunday evening in May at the end of their individual meetings to sing and pray together. On Friday evening, 2 May 1986, they finally met together in conference at the Deep Run (East) congregation to consider their several common projects—the first such session in 139 years! In 1986 the conference had 4,589 members in 27 congregations with 30 active ministers.

Bibliography

Additional Information

Eastern District Conference website

Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol.p 1, p. 131-132, v. 5, pp. 252-253. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website.

©1996-2008 by the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. All rights reserved.

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MLA style: Fretz, J. Herbert. "Eastern District Conference (General Conference Mennonite Church)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1990. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 09 May 2008 <http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/E23875.html>

APA style: Fretz, J. Herbert. (1990). "Eastern District Conference (General Conference Mennonite Church)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 09 May 2008 <http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/E23875.html>