The MBs adopted a lot of evangelical practices like full immersion baptism, highly emotional protracted meetings and so forth. It has been obvious they have continued in a progression to a nearly complete evangelical identity into the present day.Neto wrote: ↑Sat Jan 28, 2023 2:57 pmAs a former MB, and a student of the history of both the Dutch "baptism-minded" in general, and also specifically of the MB church's doctrine & history, I do not find these statements to be true, unless some terminology is being used differently than I suspect. I'll only speak for my own people, and admit that the Old Colony Mennonites are a severe distortion of the early 'Dutch Mennonite' beliefs and practices, and that the MB conference has also lost much of its original focus, but this all came about in the last 40 years or so, certainly not in the colonies, at their beginning.Josh wrote: ↑Sat Jan 28, 2023 1:56 pm In a place like Kansas this is rather different, although most Mennonite Brethren are best described as Dutch Mennonite background people who adopted evangelical doctrines in the 19th centuries in Ukraine.
To get a better feel for what Dutch Anabaptism is like, one can take a peek at Old Colonists, or at Holdemans from Kansas or Canada. These people are legitimately "Mennonites".
With Old Colonists you can still see some pre-evangelical practices in action, which seem bizarre to us, like church every other week and leaving younger children at home on church days.