Where Did They Go?

[lesterb]

I guess I didn't think OJ's original post was about birth control, do I didn't make the connection that Conservative Mennos need to breed more conservative Mennos to keep up with the Old Order Amish.

It wasn't, though I can see how it could be read that way, and I don't really mind the sidebar discussion. The main point was that the sociological data doesn't support the soteriological conclusion.

OJ, I like your approach of judging theology by its fruits.

Of interest in comparing Old Order Amish to conservative Anabaptists is not birth rates, but how many young people join the church. Despite being made to wait until adulthood and heavier requirements after living a worldly life in late teens, more OOA choose to join than do CA young people.

I would ask which group produces the most Christian youth. I think this varies from area to area, but in the part of southern Ontario where I once lived, the Amish young folks were a wild, drinking and immoral bunch.

[Wayne in Maine]

Of interest in comparing Old Order Amish to conservative Anabaptists is not birth rates, but how many young people join the church. Despite being made to wait until adulthood and heavier requirements after living a worldly life in late teens, more OOA choose to join than do CA young people.

I would ask which group produces the most Christian youth. I think this varies from area to area, but in the part of southern Ontario where I once lived, the Amish young folks were a wild, drinking and immoral bunch.

If they are not baptized members of the church they are not "Christian" youth. If they repent of their wild immorality then...

[temporal1]

This thread, Page 2:

Maybe this will be the "killer" discussion that starts to bring people back.

Where did they go? I've gone into hibernation.

I would love to be part of this discussion but don't plan to be an active participant on MN.

I had decided earlier in the fall that my MD time is coming to a close and I was in the process of curtailing my time on MD due to other goals and responsibilities. My tenth anniversary would have been in December and I planned to go into hibernation at that point. With the collapse of MD, I've decided to speed up that time table.

I will be reading threads like this with interest as I have time.

Anyone is free to PM me or send me an email at anytime if you want me to read something or dialogue about something.

i've been mulling-over your words, Ernie. not easy.

i particularly appreciate the way you reach out to new members, offering tangible, real-life help for their questions, offering of yourself whenever possible.

most, if not all, new members arrive seeking answers to conservative Anabaptist questions;
on this chatty forum, it's easy (esp for new members) to be side-tracked away from those initial questions and interests. you provide a consistent message at all times, in all circumstances; this, i imagine, where ever you are, not for MD/MN, alone.

i hope you will continue to keep an eye out for MN new members, it does not appear there will be a mad rush to join! - (i.e., to continue your ministry to new seekers in that way.) i believe you accomplished untold value for Jesus Christ on MD, and trust you will continue for Him, no matter your whereabouts.

i'm glad to know you will be visiting your many friends on MN, and remain open to continued contact.
thank you. and, peace be with you.

[Ernie]

Thank you T1 for your kind words.

[HondurasKeiser]

The Stuckey Amish were named after Bishop Joseph Stuckey (1825-1902) of Danvers, IL. He parted ways with the main body of Amish in 1872, when he refused to excommunicate a member who taught universalism. Thereafter, he assisted a number of Amish congregations which were experiencing tensions due to the controversies over change. In 1889, these congregations organized as the Central Illinois Mennonite Conference (CIMC). As the name implies the CIMC experienced rapid assimilation in the last quarter of the 19th century as it moved away from an Amish identity. In 1906, there were 13 congregations in the CIMC, located mainly in IL, but a few in IN and NE with a membership of 1,363. In the later years of the 19th century Stuckey began to gravitate towards the General Conference Mennonite Church (GCMC). The Middle District Conference (MDC) of the GCMC, with churches in OH, IN, IL, MO, and IA, geographically overlapped the CIMC. The MDC was comprised of progressive Mennonites from Swiss-Brethren background, as well as a few stray Amish-background congregations. In 1906, it numbered 1,711. Both groups were following a similar trajectory of assimilation. In 1948, the CIMC joined the GCMC as the Central Mennonite Conference. In 1957 it merged with the MDC to form the Central District Conference (CDC), at which time the combined membership was 8,361. In 2016 the CDC which is part of MCUSA has a membership of 4,295. This is 1,220 more than their combined 1906 membership of 3,074, or a 40 % increase over the last 110 years. However, since the merger in 1957 the CDC membership has declined by 4067 or 49%.

I think it's interesting to note Edsel that the CDC has evolved into one of the most liberal conferences of Mennonites in MCUSA or anywhere. They've been at the forefront of pushing the same-sex membership/marriage issue within the denomination and their actions and refusals to discipline aberrant leaders contributed to Lancaster's withdrawal from MCUSA.

[Josh]

I would ask which group produces the most Christian youth. I think this varies from area to area, but in the part of southern Ontario where I once lived, the Amish young folks were a wild, drinking and immoral bunch.

I think we should focus on producing Christian adults, not Christian youth who half the time give up on church in their 20s and leave the whole Anabaptist thing altogether.

At the same time, running around being wild isn't good - yet if the revivalists who push the notion of the crisis conversion experience are to be believed, that is exactly what must happen before genuine conversion.

In my life I experience the worst of both worlds. Youth try to convert at a young age, become church members, and then by age 18 or so are not really following any of it anymore. If they ever do set things right it happens much later in life. Some report their first conversion wasn't really genuine.

Worst of all, quite a few end up "converting" outside of our circles and give up on things I think are important like nonresistance because their new spiritual home tells them to. And their old spiritual home just thinks since they converted at age 14, they should have been living a pure life ever since then.

[temporal1]

OP, Page 1. Revisiting 2016

In “The Inroads of Evangelicalism” presented at AIC 2015 (quoted below) and AIC 2016 (similar), the question is raised as to why there are so few conservative Anabaptists today. While this may be a good and relevant question, the context in which it is presented contains historical flaws that detract from the impact of the inquiry. Let's explore this.

(3:00) John Funk … realized that [Protestant churches] don't hold to nonresistance, the doctrine of the two kingdoms, the women were discarding the head covering, many women wore makeup in these Protestant evangelical churches …

Note that the evangelicalism being referred to here is not the Billy Graham-style post-fundamentalist movement that we now generally refer to by that name (originally called neo-evangelicalism by Harold Ockenga, but soon shortened for convenience), but the late 19th century variety with a Methodist backbone and pietist roots, exemplified in that era by Spurgeon and Moody.

… so he had an idea: What if we take Protestant evangelicalism, with all its theology, particularly its doctrine of salvation, and we add to it the various truths that the Mennonites and Amish hold, like two kingdoms, nonresistance, nonconformity, head covering, things like that. Surely this would produce the very kind of church that God wanted. It would restore New Testament Christianity if we took what the Protestants have as our foundation and we add nonresistance and that to it, then we have everything, he thought.

Well, it ended up causing the split between the Old Orders and what I call the conservative Plain churches.

This is where the inaccuracy begins. The group from which the Old Order Mennonites divided (or more specifically in Funk's case, Wisler and company were expelled from Yellow Creek, 1872) may seem conservative and plain to us, but they were the mainstream Mennonite Church of that day and were progressive enough to introduce major innovations such as Sunday school, revival meetings, higher education, and foreign missions.

On the Amish side, the Old Orders were the conservatives and the Amish Mennonites were the progressives – so progressive that by 1925 they had merged into Funk's mainstream Mennonite Church.

(6:30) Well, did John Funk's theory work? Did it go on to become the restoration of true Christianity on earth? Let's look at membership statistics, not that membership proves everything, but it's rather disturbing. At the time of the Old Order split in the late 1800s, the Old Order made up 35% of all Amish. 65% went with the Amish Mennonites. Now today the Old Order number about 125,000 members; if you're talking people, there are probably around half a million including the children.

Gameo suggests 3700 in 1900 and 50,000 in the 1950s. The Young Center, whose research I trust implicitly says 308,030 including children as of May 2016. Nowhere near half a million, though it may reach that in 15-20 years or so.

Now the plain Amish Mennonites at the time of the split made up 65% of all the Amish; the vast majority went with this new Protestant fusion, half-Anabaptist, half-Protestant. So now if they did no better than the Old Orders, and here they were supposed to do better because they had found the “real way,” there would be a quarter million of Amish Mennonites today. If they did no better than the Old Orders, if they made no converts or anything, just followed in their footsteps. How many do you think there are? How many are there, like Beachy Amish or other Plain Amish Mennonites? 14,000. There should be a quarter of a million if the Amish Mennonites had done no better than the Old Orders. There's only 14,000. What's worse, the vast majority of those 14,000, probably all of them, are recent converts from the Old Orders, they're not descendants from the Amish Mennonites back in the 1800s who went away from the Old Orders; no, it's the Old Orders that keep the Amish Mennonites going. Very few can trace their lineage back to that original split, or if they trace it back, it would be on the Old Order side. In other words, this didn't work at all. In fact, the Amish Mennonites today owe their existence to the fact that they are continually replenished by recruits from the Old Orders.

While I can't argue with the migration from Old Order to Beachy, what this train of thought entirely ignores is the fact that the entire Amish Mennonite side of the 19th century division merged into the Mennonite Church a hundred years ago. If you're looking for their descendants, look in MCUSA, not in the people who identify today as Amish Mennonites.

Well, what about the Mennonites? Did they do any better than the Amish in that? In the split, only 10% of the Mennonites chose the Old Order. And today there are about 27,000 of these Old Order Mennonites. This would be like the Groffdale or Joe Wenger, the Wisler, the Horning; about 27,000 of them today, again we're talking about members.

Gameo says 5800 in 1957 and 20,000 as of 2002; Scott (1996) reports about 16,300 if I've added them up correctly, he doesn't seem to give a total. Like the Amish, I think the 27,000 may be somewhat inflated.

Since there were 9 times more Mennonites who went with the Protestant-Anabaptist fusion, there should be about a quarter million of us today if we did no better than the Old Order Mennonites did. We should number a minimum of a quarter million, hopefully we would be looking at a million or more of us. But how many are there in reality? Only 28,000, if you don't count the Holdemans. Only 28,000 conservative Plain Mennonites when there should be a quarter of a million minimum. With the Holdemans there's about 47,000.

This is where it really runs off the rails. How does the progressive Mennonite Church of late 1800s become equated to the conservative Plain Mennonites of 2015? Most of those do indeed trace their origins to the Mennonite Church side of the Old Order division, but so does the larger Mennonite Church, which numbered 112,311 in 1997, just prior to the MCUSA merger. Call the total 140,000 in round numbers, if you don't count the Holdemans.

So where are the other 200,000? Where did they go?

Quite simply, they were never born. The Old Order population today is a result of the compounding effect of high birth rates, whereas the other groups quite logically have birth rates comparable to the Protestant Evangelicals that they fused with.

To mitigate the compounding effect somewhat, dial the clock back to the 1950s. Compare the total Old Orders of 25,800 (50,000 total Amish, so let's say 20,000 baptized members, and 5800 Mennonites) to the 77,369 in the Mennonite Church. In the past 60 years, using round numbers, the Old Orders have grown by 6x and the Mennonite Church and its conservative offspring have grown by 2x. This does not necessarily illustrate that evangelicalism is ineffective (where did the 2x growth come from, after all?), but that high birth rates are extremely effective at producing numeric growth over time. Which should come as no surprise to anyone with a basic grasp of math.

Where did they go? The answer is that they followed Protestantism to the point that either they are liberal today, they may still be Mennonites but they would be liberal Mennonites, or else they no longer claim to be Anabaptists, they're just plain Protestants, or maybe not even Christians at all. I'm talking about the Mennonite Church USA, Mennonite Brethren, groups like that who are no longer Plain.

I don't know why it would be surprising that the liberal Mennonites of the late 1800s have become the liberal Mennonites of the early 2000s. What is surprising is that he fails to recognize that conservative Plain Anabaptists today are significantly more influenced by Protestant (neo-)Evangelicalism than are liberal Mennonites today.

All of these Mennonite churches are descendants of the New Testament church John Funk thought he was creating.

Well, not the Mennonite Brethren, they are a separate group of Russian Mennonite origin.

He thought he had found the answer, blend Protestantism with Anabaptism and you have the perfect church. It hasn't worked that way at all. And even among the conservative Mennonites, very often, again, their forefathers were Old Order Mennonites or sometimes Old Order Amish, very often Old Order Amish.

Again, simply not historically accurate. Some individual members may have come from the Old Orders, but the groups as a whole are overwhelmingly from the Mennonite Church, mostly by way of the Conservative Movement (Scott, ch. 8) of the mid-late 20th century. The exception is CMC, which does have Old Order Amish roots, but I doubt he's including us in the “conservative Plain Anabaptist” category anyway.

None of us should be comfortable with this. We've got to find some better way. ... It should cause us to search our hearts, our beliefs, and our history.

It should indeed. But a loose grasp of the history only serves to cast doubt on the other conclusions.

Where did my readers go? Did anyone make it all the way to the end?

[temporal1]

This 2016 topic has 4+ pages of great discussion.
This, by Wade, is fitting for Fathers’ Day:

Shed our children?

I agree. But yet disagree - I believe it is a paradox.
I know it got redirected but I believe a key to seeing this issue has to do with birth control and why it is used.

Anabaptist using birth control have already shed their potential children! - but what for?
And what "escalator" have they jumped onto?

In grade 10 social studies class in public school Mr. Campbell the vice principal repeated over and over with a condemning tone, "poverty breeds." "Poverty breeds," it is one of those things that was said so forcefully that it really stuck with me. Even with not become a Christian over a decade later it stuck in my subconscious and was always there nagging at me. But why did this matter? "Poverty Breeds?....!"

It was nothing to my parents to call me and my sister "accidents," openly. Many times I heard them say that if they would have a third "kid," they would have named it "Oops!" (I do believe they are grateful for us.)

Continually we are told to stop having "kids," and sometimes boldly by people we hardly know...(We aren't having goats - if anything we would like to have "little sheep or lambs.") I am told very often that their is a "fix" for our problem. A vasectomy means you are broken and not fixed at all - I tell them...

I could go on and on at the things said, gestured, and done but I have already said too much...

Mr. Campbell was wrong is what I say and I have come to find through all the worldly influences we have been around that it is in fact wealth that helps encourage selfishness. And selfishness says I want this and I want that and children hinder me from doing what I want...

Maybe Mr. Campbell was right if we want to say that, "the poor in spirit breed."

We don't breed because of a goal to have many children, we don't breed because that is the Anabaptist thing to do, we don't breed to keep the church going and growing and we don't breed because we are stricken with poverty. In my opinion - God's children breed because they love and the thought of hindering giving life because of any means not directly related to a major health concern is purely selfish... But yet Christ died (a major health concern) so that we could be born!

It is related to the wealth of Christian's and the infection of selfishness that typical comes along with it has just moved in slowly over the years and therefore for the most part undetected... But for us - we left the world and have no desire to go to a church that puts us right back in it.

To even shed our children and make disciples of all nations - first we need to have faith in letting God direct us in having them... And that takes viewing them like God does - as a blessing and gift - not a hindrance. Yes, when we have a lot of children - they are work and yes it is taxing and yes we are ridiculed and yes we go without things that others have and etc. But isn't that what we are told in scripture that the Christian life is like? Preaching of the cross...

Rejection of God's blessings is repulsive and worldly - I would think any Christian would agree with that...
With every blessing comes responsibility and His grace is sufficient to see us through but unfortunately our humanity is saying we want the blessings from God - of course, but our flesh is saying but we don't want the responsibility...

Wealth and ease says I reject the blessing because I have in fact rejected the responsibility and therefore I am going to fill that void with something carnal.

The only way off the escalator is to be spiritually minded...
I need help in this but I will not look for help to the wealthy in this world
and neither will other people coming from it that our looking to follow Christ.

Last night when me and my two sons washed the dishes(a man's job in our home) - I was slightly annoyed that my two year old had to pull up a chair right close to me and ask for his scrubber to help when he kept dumping water all over. That dripping of water onto my sock just isn't a nice feeling and the dishes went slower as well.

But oh Lord help me to see these precious ones like you see them.
I am so grateful my two year old would rather stand beside me bumping elbows doing [chores] and mostly making more of a mess than he is helping, with my ten year old on my other side excited he gets time with dad, than them playing with toys or worse yet - never having been born.

And to think that Hindu doctor came out with our two year old(the day he was born) with the excitement of an old buddy praising God that He had cared for my family and that it is to His credit that my wife and the baby survived.

Praise God for His love and blessings and each responsibility that comes with them.