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 MARTINDALE, Pa. (AP) - In this bucolic corner of Lancaster County, Allen Hoover can use some modern conveniences approved by his church to help make his machine shop run smoothly: a telephone, a word processor and even a fax machine. But if Hoover needs to travel, driving a car is out of the question. His only options are hopping on a bicycle or hitching a horse to a black buggy.
Hoover, 45, belongs to the Wenger Mennonites, formed nearly 70 years ago by a schism among the county's Old Order Mennonites — whose simple, agrarian lifestyle is similar to the Amish in several ways — over whether to embrace automobiles. As "horse-and-buggy" Mennonites, the Wengers consider limited mobility essential to preserving a community in which church and family life are tightly interwoven.
"It's a culture of the old way of doing things," Hoover said. "This whole culture of families working together, communities working together as a unit, would be in danger of disappearing if we would have the means of transportation."
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