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AMISH IN SARASOTA, FLORIDA As with elsewhere in Florida, snowbirds are a regular sight here. But intermixed with the more stereotypical visitors to Sarasota, a city and county on the Gulf of Mexico coast in southwest Florida, is a large community of Amish. Like other snowbirds, the Amish come from locales with cold winters. Think central Ohio, northern Indiana and, of course, the unofficial Amish capital of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. At the height of the season, about 5,000 winter-weary Amish and Mennonites call Pinecraft, an enclave about 20 minutes from the popular St. Armand’s Circle, home. In the summer,...

Amish PAC endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump and launched billboards in Lancaster, Pennsylvania — west of Philadelphia where the Democratic National Convention is being held this week. "Pennsylvania has a good shot of going Republican in November and these billboards will certainly help by getting people registered and to the polls," said Ben King, the outreach director for Amish PAC. The goal of the billboards is to educate Amish and Mennonite voters about Trump.

The Amish are online, onscreen, and multiplying fast. In their battle with modernity, it’s tough to say who’s winning I’ve probably visited more Amish settlements than anyone. Who would venture out to the most remote corners of Montana, Maine and South Texas if they didn’t happen to be a student of Amish culture? Perhaps a peddler of pots and pans; many Amish cooks, I have noticed, gradually gave up their cast iron for stainless steel in the past 50 years... In my 25 years exploring Amish communities, I’ve witnessed changes that would be unnoticeable to the average outsider... To the...

Dr. Theresa Deisher is no stranger to science, research, and ethics. She holds a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Physiology from Stanford University and has spent over 20 years in commercial biotechnology before founding Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute (SCPI), which promotes consumer awareness about the widespread use of electively aborted fetal material in drug discovery, development, and commercialization. Dr. Deisher is an inventor with 23 issued U.S. patents. She was the first person to discover adult cardiac derived stem cells, and has been a champion of adult stem cell research for two decades. She is also founder of AVM Biotechnology, which is dedicated to the discovery,...

A Mennonite couple that owns an art gallery in Iowa has filed suit against the state's Civil Rights Commission over being threatened with punitive action for refusing to host a same-sex wedding on their property. Görtz Haus Gallery, a former church turned art gallery facility, filed a lawsuit Monday against the commission in Polk County District Court. "The Odgaards welcome all customers into the Gallery, regardless of their race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, or disability," reads the suit in part. "The Odgaards may be exposed to financial punishment and other forms of official coercion...

Two men have been arrested after a 13-year-old girl reported several males sexually assaulted her for hours and recorded the attack with cell phone cameras. Juan Lozano Ortega, 25, and Edgar Gerardo Guzman Perez, 26, were both charged Wednesday with aggravated sexual assault of a child, a first-degree felony. They were still in custody Thursday with bail set at $30,000 each, according to jail records. According to arrest affidavits, the girl ran away from where she was living in North Austin between 9 and 10 p.m. on June 29 when she was approached by a car with three males in...

HEPBURN, Saskatchewan,- A small town in Saskatchewan has voted to allow the sale of alcohol after being dry for more than a century, officials said. Hepburn, with a population of 562 residents, has no official law banning alcohol, but was founded by Mennonites, who do not drink, CBC News reported Friday. The town has not sold liquor in any of its stores for decades. However, this week, Hepburn residents voted in favor of allowing liquor sales. The town will file an application with the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority to allow a local co-op store to sell alcohol. Verna Paetkau,...

Conestoga Wood Specialties president and CEO Anthony Hahn. Photo via catholicnewsagency.com Three Mennonite Christians who own a wood manufacturing company in Pennsylvania have filed a lawsuit challenging the federal contraception mandate for threatening their right to religious freedom, reports Catholic News Agency. “Being told that we must provide a health plan that includes a provision that violates the Christian beliefs of our family and the Christian values that our company was founded on is deeply troubling,” said Anthony Hahn, president and CEO of Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation. “Forcing Americans to surrender long-standing, deeply-held principles in order to own and run...

Fresh off their Supreme Court victory allowing them to picket funerals of military soldiers, members of the Westboro Baptist Church have announced plans to picket the funerals of seven Mennonite children killed Tuesday night when their Perry County farmhouse caught fire. The children, ages 7 months to 11 years, were killed when a fire started in the home while their mother was milking cows and their father was on his milk delivery route.Their three-year-old daughter managed to escape and alert the mother, but the fire had already overwhelmed the wooden structure, police said. The group from Topeka, Kan., said the...

This Summer, the Lutherans, or at least the Swiss-based Lutheran World Federation, apologized for persecuting pacifist Anabaptists 400 years ago. But given the ascendancy of Anabaptists among many U.S. evangelicals, their days as a small, persecuted minority are clearly long over. "We remember how Anabaptist Christians knew suffering and persecution, and we remember how some of our most honored Reformation leaders defended this persecution in the name of faithfulness," solemnly intoned Bishop Mark Hanson during a joint service of repentance in Germany with Mennonites from around the world. Hanson is both president of the global Lutheran group and chief prelate...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A state police report says the Alabama truck driver involved in a March crash that killed himself and 10 others in central Kentucky was talking on a cell phone. Police say Kenneth Laymon of Jasper, Ala., crossed the median of Interstate 65 in central Kentucky on March 26 and slammed into a van carrying Mennonites traveling to a wedding in Iowa.

GOSHEN, Ind. (AP) -- For more than a century, there was no playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Goshen College - a small Christian college with ties to the Mennonite Church. That's about to change. For the first time in the school's history, Goshen College will play an instrumental version of the national anthem before many campus sporting events. The decision to reverse the ban on the anthem is aimed at making students and visitors outside the faith feel more welcome, but it has roiled some at the 1,000-student college who feel the song undermines the church's pacifist message and...

GOSHEN, Ind. (Associated Press) -- For more than a century, there was no playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Goshen College _ a small Christian college with ties to the Mennonite Church. That's about to change. For the first time in the school's history, Goshen College will play an instrumental version of the national anthem before many campus sporting events. The decision to reverse the ban on the anthem is aimed at making students and visitors outside the faith feel more welcome, but it has roiled some at the 1,000-student college who feel the song undermines the church's pacifist message...

Communist Zealots: the Anabaptists Sometimes Martin Luther must have felt that he had loosed the whirlwind, even opened the gates of Hell. Shortly after Luther launched the Reformation, various Anabaptist sects appeared and spread throughout Germany. The Anabaptists believed in predestination of the elect, but they also believed, in contrast to Luther, that they knew infallibly who the elect were: i.e., themselves. The sign of that election was in an emotional, mystical conversion process, that of being "born again," baptized in the Holy Spirit. Such baptism must be adult and not among infants; more to the point, it meant that...

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday said Iran bore no hatred towards the United States as he held talks with American Christians in a rare official contact with visitors from Tehran's arch enemy. State television showed Ahmadinejad meeting with a dozen American representatives from various Christian orders who are in Iran for a week-long visit to promote peace and dialogue between the foes. "The Iranian nation does not have any feeling of hatred and opposition towards the American people and we believe that all people are respectful and given the common grounds people have, they could achieve peace and justice," Ahmadinejad...

DEARBORN - Houssein Zorkot, a 26-year-old Dearborn resident, was arraigned Tuesday in 19th District Court on multiple felony charges, including carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent — a five-year felony. Zorkot, a third-year medical student at Wayne State University, was allegedly armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and dressed in black clothing with camouflage paint covering his face when he was arrested Saturday in Hemlock Park. According to police, Zorkot was observed attempting to leave the park in a black SUV after officers had received reports of a man carrying a rifle in the area. He was placed under...

A community of a dozen Mennonite families in Quebec is ready to leave the province rather than succumb to provincial government demands that would require their children to be taught evolution and homosexuality. While the government sees its actions as nothing more than enforcing technical regulations, many view the case as intolerance of Christian faith. The community runs a small Mennonite school out of a church in Roxton Falls where eleven children in elementary grades were expected to commence studies this Fall. Subjects include reading, writing, math, science, geography, social sciences, music and French. However, they are not schooled in...

Protest shuts down clerics' visit Toronto and Regional police gather at UW in case of trouble MIRKO PETRICEVIC WATERLOO (May 29, 2007) Dozens of irate protesters yelling "shame," "murderers" and "terrorists" shouted down a Waterloo meeting last night that was intended to build peace. About 50 protesters stood around the meeting hall at Conrad Grebel University College waiting for the dialogue between Mennonites and Muslim clerics from Iran to begin. Police from Waterloo Region and Toronto, Waterloo firefighters, paramedics and University of Waterloo police were called in in anticipation of protests. They arrived around 6 p.m., winding down their operations...

Mennonites' gesture to Iran spurs protest Academics decry attempt at `dialogue' with 6 controversial Islamic scholars May 16, 2007 lynda hurst A group of Iranian-Canadian academics and artists is vehemently protesting an invitation by the Mennonite Central Committee of Ontario to six Iranian Islamic scholars to take part in a conference at the University of Waterloo this month. The Shia scholars, who are still awaiting visas, are from the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute. Its director is the controversial fundamentalist Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, spiritual adviser to Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This year, six representatives from the institute...

Huntsville, Mo. (AP) -- The grocer, the butcher, a cabinet maker and several other members of the town's Mennonite community are said to be planning to move to Arkansas over a Missouri requirement that all drivers be photographed if they want a license. The Mennonites — a plain-living sect whose members are similar to the Amish, but usually more worldly — say the 2004 law conflicts with the Biblical prohibition against the making of "graven images." "We want to respect our government. We're not trying to fight them. But we still have our beliefs," said Ervin Kropf, a bearded, overall-wearing...