Religious rules make steel-wheel ordinance controversial
By Jean Caspers-Simmet
Date Modified: 11/04/2009 1:34 PM
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Agri News staff writer
CRESCO, Iowa -- Driving tractors with steel wheels is a religious issue for Old Order Groffdale Mennonite Conference members, said Donald Kraybill, a sociologist and senior fellow at Elizabethtown College's Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies in Elizabethtown, Penn.
Kraybill prepared a statement to be read at Monday's hearing in Cresco on the Howard County Road Protection Ordinance that bans steel wheel vehicles on hard-surfaced roads.
"Contrary to what some people may think, the practice of farmers in the Groffdale Conference to place steel cleats on tractor wheels is not just an old tradition," Kraybill wrote. "It is an explicit religious practice by virtue of the fact that it is a church regulation."
Kraybill has researched and written extensively about Amish and Mennonite groups. In the book "Horse-and-Buggy Mennonites: Hoffbeats of Humility in a Postmodern World," which he coauthored with James Hurd, he looks at the "riddle of the tractor tire."
Kraybill explained that the Groffdale Conference began in 1927 in eastern Pennsylvania in a division of the Old Order Mennonite Church. The more change-minded group (today known as Weaverland Mennonite Conference) allows members to buy and drive automobiles. Groffdale Conference rejected automobiles and continued to use horses and buggies.
When the Groffdale Conference accepted the use of tractors for farm work, it did so with the understanding that tractors could only have steel wheels, Kraybill said.
"The Groffdale Conference church fears that accepting rubber tires on tractors will lead to use of the tractor for transportation and eventually to the use of cars, which in turn will lead to breaking up their close-knit communities," Kraybill wrote.
Placing steel cleats/wheels on tractors is a religious regulation because it reflects the Groffdale Conference's long-standing religious belief and is supported by numerous scripture passages, Kraybill wrote.
The practice of steel wheels is part of the Ordnung, the rules and regulations of the Groffdale Conference Church, which applies to all baptized members, Kraybill said. The Ordnung is a set of understandings approved by all the ordained ministers to apply biblical principles to practical situations the the Bible doesn't directly address.
Church leaders have struggled with the steel wheel issue over the last 20 years and "have repeatedly affirmed and upheld the use of steel wheels," Kraybill said.
"This is not a matter of individual choice or freedom," Kraybill said. "Members in good standing must abide by the Ordnung, including the use of steel cleats/wheels on their tractors. Members who disobey this ruling and refuse to comply will face excommunication."
Kraybill said that the use of steel cleats/wheels is a religious practice and is protected by the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution which says that, "Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion."
"Members of the Groffdale Conference Church live in eight states other than Iowa and these states have found ways to accommodate this sincerely held religious conviction," Kraybill said.