The Conservative Women Radicalizing Amish Literature

On a chilly morning this past January, the writer Lucinda J. Kinsinger strapped her baby daughter into her car seat and drove two-plus hours from her home in rural Oakland, Maryland, to Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. She was headed to a day-long women writers’ gathering at a private residence, where the atmosphere ended up being part networking event, part craft workshop, part casual mom hang (a trio of babies sat gumming toys for the duration). All clad in floor-length dresses, the 15 or so women present talked about topics that would be familiar to most writer moms, such as sticking to deadlines when domestic duties called and how to nurture a love of writing and reading in their children. But then they asked one another a question perhaps less expected: If writing was such a meaningful part of their lives, why did they avoid the topic with their church friends?

The women are all members of Conservative Anabaptist churches, and they’re part of a growing network of professional female writers intent on enhancing the quality of Plain Anabaptist literature. In Christian terminology, refers to Anabaptist sects like Conservative Mennonites, Hutterites, and the Amish. The groups share roots in Radical Reformation–era Switzerland, a period rife with religious movements whose leaders claimed that Martin Luther hadn’t gone far enough in his efforts to revolutionize Christianity. The word is derived from their founding belief that only baptisms