KEEP OLD TRADITIONS OR ADAPT?

A congregation founded to separate itself from the modern world tried relaxing its rules to retain members but lost them instead.

In Modesto, Calif., a blue-collar city surrounded by almond and peach orchards, members of one small, traditional church eschew pop culture, have no televisions in their homes and decline to vote in order to avoid societal entanglements. The clothes they wear—suit vests, black pants and white long-sleeved shirts for the men, long dresses and bonnet-like head coverings for the women—are modeled on those of their 19th-century ancestors. Their baptism ceremonies, in a lazy river on the outskirts of town, can make a visitor feel as if they had slipped back in time.

But the congregants are hardly strangers to the modern world: They include commercial farmers, engineers and accountants, many of whom are engaged in industrial agribusiness. Young members go off to college. Friendships with outsiders, though viewed with caution, aren’t prohibited. Adherents of the New Conference of the Old German Baptist Brethren try to live by an adage in apparent conflict with itself: “We live in this world, but we are not of this world.”