Effects on other denominations page

Evangelical Mennonite

The Fellowship of Evangelical Churches was initially known as the "Egli Amish" until 1898 when the churches adopted the name Defenseless Mennonite Church of North America. In 1948 the denomination changed its name to Evangelical Mennonite Church and to Fellowship of Evangelical Churches in 2003.

Bishop Henry Egly was born on April 5, 1824, in Baden, Germany, and died of typhoid on June 23, 1890, on a farm near Berne, Indiana. He immigrated to Butler County, Ohio, at age 15, and then was baptized by Bishop Jacob Augsburger and joined the Amish church in 1841 at the age of 17. After marrying Katherine Goldsmith in 1849,12 he moved to a farm in Adams County, Indiana, near the towns of Linn Grove, Berne, and Geneva, which would remain his home base for the remainder of his life. Egly was chosen by lot to fill the office of deacon in November 1850, unanimously elected minister by his home congregation on Pentecost Sunday in 1854, and consecrated as a bishop (or elder) in 1858 by three older preachers from Holmes County, Ohio. Starting in 1854 Egly began to emphasize the new birth in his preaching, which would remain a trademark of his ministry across various Amish communities in the Midwest. The focus on the need for a conversion jarred some traditional Amish sensibilities, especially when he urged the experience upon established ministers and bishops.

Other controversial innovations included:

• A gentler application of the “bann” (1865)
• The use of church buildings (1871, though continuing the practice of an all-church meal following worship)
• The addition of Sunday school (1875), which was still a contentious issue for Mennonitesas well as Amish.

A network of people supportive of Egly’s emphases emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. The new group of “Egly Amish” held its first convention in Berne in 1883, where traditional Amish dress and grooming habits (e.g., women’s head covers and men’s beards) were firmly upheld. Conventions would become an annual event in 1895. It is hard to know how many of the changes Egly advocated originated in some way from personal experience (for example, he had been healed from a prolonged illness shortly before his ordination in 1854), and how many came from the ferment of the times and the persons with whom he came into contact. Egly was in conversation with leaders from at least four other Amish or near-Amish groups also in flux, though he chose to join with none of them: Joseph Rupp (1840-1911) of the New (Reformed) Mennonites in Fulton County, Ohio; Peter Sommer (1811-1874) of the Fairbury South Side Apostolic Christian Church; John Holdeman (1832-1900) of the Holdeman Mennonites; and Joseph Stuckey (1826-1902) of the Stuckey Amish (Central Conference Mennonites)