Religion: Return to the Farm

An oval tent big enough to hold a three-ring circus was pitched last week in an Allensville, Pa. hayfield. No circus did it contain but the biennial world conference of the Mennonite Church. A plain-garbed, plain-spoken sect holding the tenets of 16th-Century Netherlander Menno Simons, the Mennonites shun attention and cities alike. At Allensville, surrounded by the rugged mountains of central Pennsylvania that hem in the fertile and tranquil Kishacoquillas Valley their ancestors settled before the Revolution, they felt perfectly at home. The 7,000 delegates came from Argentina, Tanganyika, India and all...