CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Christian Communities (Elmo Stoll)

former residential communities led by American bishop Elmo Stoll

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ22907229 ↗
Source-derived summary

The "Christian Communities" were Christian intentional communities with an Anabaptist worldview, founded and led by Elmo Stoll (1944 – 1998), a former Old Order Amish bishop. They were founded in 1990 and disbanded some two years after Stoll's early death in 1998. At the time of Stoll's death there were five "Christian Communities", four in the U.S. and one in Canada. G.C. Waldrep calls them "perhaps the most important "para-Amish" group".

Elmo Stoll

Elmo Stoll of Aylmer, Ontario, born 1945, was ordained as an Amish minister in 1971 and as an Amish bishop in 1984. After becoming bishop, he moved the church towards more dress plainer and less use of modern technology, e. g. he forbade the use of electronic calculators. Moreover, he became an ardent preacher. He also wrote a regular column in the Amish magazine "Family Life", until he left the Amish and created the “Christian Communities”.

Editorial summary

“Christian Communities (Elmo Stoll)” enters the record as former residential communities led by American bishop Elmo Stoll. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Christian, Communities and Elmo can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1944, 1998, 1990, 1945—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Christian, Communities and Elmo.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Christian Communities (Elmo Stoll)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Christian, Communities and Elmo provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q22907229. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1944, 1998, 1990 and 1945.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Christian Communities (Elmo Stoll)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Christian Communities (Elmo Stoll) primary sources, Christian Communities (Elmo Stoll) archive and Christian research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Christian Communities (Elmo Stoll)”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Christian Communities (Elmo Stoll)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.