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The Mennonite Quarterly Review

Following these indicators, the Shipshewana congregations are at one
end of a continuum and the LaGrange districts at the other. Although
the relationship between severity of church discipline and rates of

defection is not perfect, clearly there is a tendency in that direction.³⁰
There appears to be a direct relationship, or at least an indirect one,
between defection and Ordnung. The Shipshewana and Clinton
congregations--clearly the most progressive--clearly have a greater
percentage of defectors than do other congregational clusters in the
settlement. In contrast the LaGrange churches have made the fewest
concessions to modernity in agriculture and in laxity of discipline, and
they have the settlement's lowest percentage of defectors.

30_{. As Marc A. Olshan has recently pointed out, it is very difficult to place churches}
within a particular settlement in a neat continuum from highest to lowest in Ordnung; see
his "Affinities and Antipathies: The Old Order Amish in New York State," paper presented
at the American Anthropological Association Meetings, New Orleans, Nov. 28-Dec. 2, 1990.