Miller Amish Mennonite Church (West Liberty, Ohio, USA)
The Miller (or Indiana) Amish Mennonite Church at West Liberty, Ohio, now extinct, existed from 1883 to about 1902. It was made up of progressive members of the Warye-Plank faction of the Oak Grove and Walnut Grove congregations in the Logan and Champaign counties of Ohio. The introduction of English and four-part singing, the change of Sunday school to the forenoon (leaving the afternoon open for visiting), and English sermons by visiting ministers from Indiana, who organized the congregation under the Indiana Amish Mennonite Conference, attracted many young people to their services. Locally the group was known as the "Miller people" because Bishop Eli Miller of the Clinton Frame Mennonite Church in Elkhart County, Indiana organized the congregation and ordained Samuel Detweiler as their bishop and John H. Kauffman as minister. No meetinghouse was ever built; the group used the Oak Grove and Walnut Grove meetinghouses on the alternate Sundays when the regular congregation did not meet. Leading Sunday-school workers at Walnut Grove were D. D. Yoder, Detweiler and Kauffman, and the John Fett family, and at Oak Grove the Hooley brothers, Levi and Jonas. Soon after 1890 the Hooley brothers organized one of the earliest Ohio Young People's Bible Meetings. Weak ministerial leadership and a Church of God camp meeting caused a decline in the membership. Most of the small remaining membership united with the Bethel Mennonite Church in West Liberty. A few families returned to the Oak Grove and Walnut Grove congregations during the late 1890s.
| Author(s) | John S Umble |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 1957 |
Cite This Article
MLA style
Umble, John S. "Miller Amish Mennonite Church (West Liberty, Ohio, USA)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1957. Web. 18 Apr 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Miller_Amish_Mennonite_Church_(West_Liberty,_Ohio,_USA)&oldid=89984.
APA style
Umble, John S. (1957). Miller Amish Mennonite Church (West Liberty, Ohio, USA). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 18 April 2024, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Miller_Amish_Mennonite_Church_(West_Liberty,_Ohio,_USA)&oldid=89984.
Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 692; vol. 4, p. 1097. All rights reserved.
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