They're not the same: Amish drive horse-drawn buggies; some Mennonites do, others use cars

Plain People is an umbrella term for various Amish and Old Order Mennonite groups who set themselves apart from the modern world in different ways.  

The groups are offshoots of the Anabaptist movement launched in 1527, which was itself a fringe movement of the Protestant Reformation. Differences between Amish and Mennonites are not always easy to identify.

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"Mennonites represent such a wide spectrum of groups,” said Steven Nolt, author of “A History of the Amish” and a senior scholar at Elizabethtown College in central Pennsylvania.

Here, however, are some general differences:

Clothing

Amish dress in a distinctive old-fashioned garb. The men grow beards. Some Mennonites choose a similar style of dress, but others do not. Some Mennonites are not visually distinct at all.

Transportation

Almost all Amish use horse-drawn buggies. There are, however, car-driving, English-speaking so-called Amish-Mennonites, also known as Beachy Amish (after early leader Moses Beach). Some Mennonites also depend on horses for transportation, but most drive cars.

Language

Amish — except for the Beachy Amish — speak a German dialect as their first language. While some Mennonites speak the same German dialect, most speak English.

Education

Amish end their formal education with the eighth grade. Some Mennonites also end their formal education with eighth grade, but others continue their studies. Some Mennonites, for example, have gone on to teach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Worship

Amish worship at the homes of members, rotating from one home to another, rather than in a church or meeting house. The Mennonites who drive horses and buggies worship at "simple white-frame church meeting houses" that don't have steeples or stained glass windows, Nolt said. The meeting houses "usually are surrounded by horse-tying racks and sometimes with long sheds in which horses can be stabled in the cold. ... Inside the meeting houses have simple wooden benches and a table (not a pulpit) behind which the ministers sit and around which the song leaders sit."