Where Are the Plain Anabaptists?

Abstract

This article discusses geographic analytical units of plain Anabaptist groups relevant for conceptualizing spatial dispersion across Canada and the United States. All plain Anabaptist groups are tied to the land, hence, the religious values, cultural traditions, and social organizations of plain Anabaptists are intimately and reciprocally bound up with geography. We discuss six geographic units of the plain Anabaptists and describe how we gathered information about their locations. These include: local church, local affiliation, settlement, region, broad affiliation, and global region. We present maps of their geographic distribution throughout Canada and the U.S., noting spatial patterns. Hence, this article provides a geographic introduction to plain Anabaptist groups, which are defined further in the next article, “Who are the plain Anabaptists? What are the plain Anabaptists?” (Anderson 2013).