Huntsville, Mo. – The grocer, the butcher, a cabinet maker and several other members of the town’s Mennonite community are planning to move to Arkansas over a Missouri requirement that all drivers be photographed if they want a license.
The Mennonites – a plain-living sect whose members are similar to the Amish but usually more worldly – say the 2004 law conflicts with the biblical prohibition on making “graven images.”
“We want to respect our government. We’re not trying to fight them. But we still have our beliefs,” said Ervin Kropf, a bearded, overalls-wearing grocer whose market draws customers from miles around for the fresh milk, brown eggs and spices supplied by his fellow Mennonites.
Kropf said he is looking to sell his store. He said if he cannot find a buyer, he will stay in Missouri but rely on someone else to bring in his supplies, because he will not be able to hold a driver’s license without agreeing to a photo.
Around Huntsville, community members say more than a dozen families altogether are preparing to move south to Arkansas, where state law offers a religious exemption to the photo requirement.
Other Mennonite enclaves near Rolla, Springfield and Vandalia face a similar dilemma.
Missouri had an exemption similar to Arkansas’ for more than 30 years. That changed in the security crackdown after Sept. 11, 2001. Now, those who object to the photo requirement can have their pictures left off their licenses. But the photos must remain on file with the state.
Many Mennonites in Missouri find that acceptable and plan to stay put. But “there are a bunch of us who don’t want to do that,” Kropf said.
Maura Browning, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Revenue, which oversees driver’s licenses, said that while her agency is sympathetic, “we are the administrator, not the creator, of state law.”
Some community members call their Mennonite neighbors peaceful, hardworking taxpayers wrongly ensnared in the government’s war on terrorism.
“This whole business of homeland security is a farce,” said Joel Hartman, a University of Missouri-Columbia professor of rural sociology. “These people are no threat whatsoever to the larger society.”
Hartman estimated the combined Amish and Mennonite population in Missouri at 6,000 to 7,000. That number includes those who drive and don’t object to the state law.
