Field Deck — companion to Dossier XX · The Anabaptists
The Church With No Address
Half a million Plain people, and one national office between them — created because a government came for their sons
✜ How to read the deck — and why one suit is empty on purposeThis is the shortest deck in the hall and the shortness is the entire finding. The Anabaptists did not
merely decline a pope; the Plain branches declined to have anybody at all who can speak for them. There
are 410,955 Amish in North America and roughly 58,000 Hutterites in 544 colonies — near half a
million people — and among the Amish there are no general conferences, no mission boards and no
cooperative agencies whatsoever. Each district of about 75 baptized members has a bishop, two to
four preachers and a deacon, chosen by lot, and their authority stops at the edge of that district.
You cannot card a man who does not exist.
♠ Spades — The Conferences. The Anabaptists who do hold nameable offices: Mennonite, Brethren, Bruderhof.
♦ Diamonds — The Interpreters. The scholars, because the Plain people will not speak for themselves in public and somebody has to.
♣ Clubs — The Plain.One card. Read the card and then read why the suit stops.
♥ Hearts — NOT DEALT. Declared empty. See the stamp.
✓ All 15 verified online 2026-07-28.⚠︎★ THE CATCH THIS DECK FOUND: the Ace is Ethiopian, and it is not close. The largest Mennonite
denomination on earth is Meserete Kristos Church in Ethiopia — about 800,000 members, grown from
ten baptized believers in 1951. That is more than double Mennonite Church USA. Anyone who pictures
this tradition as buggies in Pennsylvania has the centre of gravity on the wrong continent by four thousand
miles. ⚠︎And in 2026 that same church withdrew its invitation to host the world assembly over conflict
about links to North American churches that accept same-sex marriage; Assembly 18 moved to Tanzania.♣ IS ONE CARD, AND THAT IS THE MEASUREMENT. The Amish have created exactly one national body in
their history — a three-person Steering Committee, founded 1967 — and they created it only because
the United States was drafting their sons to Vietnam. ★ The only national office the Plain people ever
built exists solely to talk to the state, and they built it under duress.⚠︎ ♥ IS NOT DEALT AT ALL. A fourth suit would have to be padded with people whose power this pass could
not verify, or with bishops whose names are deliberately not public. An empty suit is an honest suit.⚠︎ALSO DECLARED: the International Community of Mennonite Brethren has had NO global director since
1 October 2024, when it released Elton DaSilva over a serious financial deficit; the board and regional
leaders have carried it since. A vacancy is not a card, so none was dealt — but it is not hidden either.
♠The Conferencesthe Anabaptists who hold nameable offices · eleven dealt · 11 cards
A♠DA
Desalegn Abebe
President, Meserete Kristos Church, Ethiopia
★ The Ace of this deck is Ethiopian, and the deck is not being clever. He leads the largest Mennonite denomination in the world — about 800,000 members , grown from ten baptized believers in 1951 , with more than 23,000 baptisms in a single recent year . More than double Mennonite Church USA. ⚠︎ And in 2026 his church withdrew its invitation to host the Mennonite world assembly amid conflict over ties to North American churches accepting same-sex marriage. The largest body in the tradition declined to host the tradition. In post · verified 07-28
Chief executive of the global fellowship, a Colombian based in Kitchener, Ontario . MWC is a communion of national churches, not a governing body — it can admit and it can advise, and it cannot instruct anybody. In a tradition this decentralised the general secretary is the only continuous voice, and he speaks from the global South by origin rather than from Europe or America. In post · verified 07-28
Dutch, elected at Assembly 17 in Indonesia in 2022 , taking the presidency from J. Nelson Kraybill (2015–2022) . Two decades in the Dutch Mennonite body and among European Mennonites; a decade as Deacons Commission secretary before that. ⚠︎ His term ends in 2028 — the year of the assembly that had to be moved from Ethiopia to Tanzania. In post · verified 07-28
Head of the largest Mennonite body in the United States and the first person of colour to hold the post . ⚠︎ Note the scale honestly: MC USA is roughly a third the size of the Ethiopian church on this deck's Ace. A former US Air Force officer turned Mennonite executive — which in a historic peace church is a biography worth pausing over. In post · verified 07-28
Leads the Canadian body, working through five autonomous regional churches rather than over them. Canada matters more than its numbers suggest in this tradition — the prairie provinces hold a large share of the Hutterite colonies and the Russian-Mennonite migration that reshaped North American Anabaptism. In post · verified 07-28
Canadian; came into the vice-presidency in 2022 to complete the term of Rebecca Osiro of Kenya and is listed among the current officers. A woman in the second chair of the global Anabaptist communion — set that against Dossier XIX's convention on the neighbouring shelf, which spent 2026 voting the other way. In post · verified 07-28
2026– · Executive Director, Mennonite Central Committee U.S.
★ Took office this month. Began July 2026 as Ann Graber Hershberger retired; associate executive director since July 2024, with two decades in community development and programme management. MCC is the tradition's relief and peace arm and its most visible work in the world — the thing Anabaptists are known for in places that have never heard the word Mennonite. In post since 07-2026 · verified 07-28
Leads one of the three historic peace churches — Anabaptist in conviction and Pietist in ancestry , from Schwarzenau in 1708 rather than Zurich in 1525. They practise trine immersion and the full love feast with footwashing , and they belong in this dossier because the peace position and the believers' church are held identically. In post · verified 07-28
Indonesian-American, of Maranatha Christian Fellowship in Reseda, California; appointed by the Executive Committee. Indonesia holds one of the largest Mennonite populations outside Africa and hosted the 2022 world assembly — another reminder that the treasurer of world Anabaptism is not a European. In post · verified 07-28
From Burkina Faso ; serves as the fifth MWC officer, his title updated to Continental Adviser . The office exists because a global communion with no hierarchy still needs someone who can speak for a continent — and the fact that the fix was an adviser rather than a bishop is the tradition in one word. In post · verified 07-28
Leads the communal movement founded by Eberhard Arnold in Germany in 1920 , which took up the Hutterite pattern of full community of goods — no private property at all — and now runs communities on several continents. He became senior elder after Johann Christoph Arnold's death in 2017 . ⚠︎ Leadership is formally shared among elders; he is the visible one, which is not the same as being the only one. In post · verified 07-28
♦The Interpretersbecause the Plain people will not speak for themselves · three dealt · 3 cards
A♦DB
Donald B. Kraybill
Distinguished Professor & Senior Fellow Emeritus, Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies
★ The world authority, and the reason anyone outside the Plain communities understands them at all. Born 1945 ; began teaching sociology at Elizabethtown in 1971 and had no interest in Amish studies until 1984 . Author of The Riddle of Amish Culture , The Puzzles of Amish Life and What the Amish Teach Us . He supplied the vocabulary this dossier's Field F is built from — including the observation that the Amish do not ask whether a technology is modern but whether it will cost them their community. Emeritus, still working · verified 07-28
Director, Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies · Professor of History & Anabaptist Studies
Kraybill's named successor as the Young Center's senior scholar, and now its director. Author or co-author of sixteen books on Amish, Mennonite and Pennsylvania German life, and co-author with Kraybill and Johnson-Weiner of The Amish — twenty-five years of joint research, and the standard reference. In post · verified 07-28
Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of Anthropology, SUNY Potsdam
The third of the trio behind The Amish , and the linguist of the group — her work on Pennsylvania Dutch, Amish schooling and the lives of Amish women covers the ground the male scholars reached last. A tradition that will not appoint a spokesman is described to the world by three university professors, none of whom belongs to it. Emerita, still publishing · verified 07-28
♣The Plainone card · and the reason the suit stops is the finding · 1 cards
A♣CB
Christ Blank
Chairman, Old Order Amish Steering Committee
★ The only nameable national office in Plain America, and it exists because a government came for their sons. The Steering Committee was created in 1967 out of concern over the draft and conscientious-objector alternative service during Vietnam . Three people. It negotiates with the federal government on labour law, photo identification, workers' compensation, insurance and Social Security. Blank is a Lancaster County farmer and accountant who does tax work for Amish clients. ⚠︎ The source for his chairmanship is undated; the office is verified, the currency of the holder is marked REPORTED rather than claimed. Reported · office verified 07-28
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · not confirmed
Re-checked 2026-10-11: no source names Christ Blank as chairman of the Old Order Amish Steering Committee. The only named chairman found is A. S. Kinsinger (1979 congressional record). Keep the office unsourced.
⚠︎ Why the ♣ suit stops at one — and why ♥ was never dealtThere is no King of Clubs because there is no King of Clubs. Among 410,955 Amish there is
no general conference, no mission board, no cooperative agency and no head of anything. A district of
about 75 baptized members ordains a bishop, two to four preachers and a deacon by lot — the name
is drawn, not campaigned for — and that man's authority ends at his district's boundary. He does not speak to
the press, does not attend assemblies, and in most settlements would regard being named on a page like this one
as a fault. The Hutterites are only slightly different: three Leut, each with its own council of
elders, roughly 58,000 people in 544 colonies, and no single elder over all three.
This deck could have manufactured a fuller hand. It would have required naming men who have not sought to
be named, or inventing an authority that does not exist. ★ The empty seats are the most accurate thing on
this page: this is what a church looks like when it has genuinely refused to build a centre, and it has refused
for five hundred years while every other tradition in this hall was building one.
15 cards · 11 ♠ · 3 ♦ · 1 ♣ · ♥ NOT DEALT · all verified 2026-07-28. Rank = the weight of the office. Ace = the summit of that kind of power. Only the living, only those holding power now. The shortest deck in the hall. Nothing was cut to make it short — there was never more to deal. ✠ No sword, no oath, no centre — and they are still here ✠
