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Old Order Mennonites return to church

June 6, 2020 1:54 a.m.

For the first time in weeks, kids played in the church cemetery. Nearby, a group of men in their 20s reflected on what it meant to gather again during the pandemic. “Human health is important,” one of them said. “But ultimately, spiritual health is more important.” Their order — one that shuns technology, cars and electricity — never missed Sunday services in more than 100 years, when the deadly 1918 flu pandemic interrupted worship. Then, a different virus intruded in this world apart. For nearly two months, the Old Order Stauffer Mennonite Church followed Pennsylvania’s stay-at-home order and guidelines that discouraged gatherings in houses of worship. COVID-19 forced the postponement of weddings, funerals and their bi-annual communion, a high point. While some more modern Mennonite orders in Lancaster County held services by video, the Stauffers did not. But now, it was “time to get back to work,” their bishop said. “And more so … in the spiritual sense.” It was time to resume worship, he said — though he wondered how many worshippers would come, and he still felt concerns about “offending the public and the government.”

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