Governance Differences between Mennonite Brethren and Swiss Brethren?
Posted: Thu Feb 29, 2024 12:39 pm
Neto brought up intriguing information in another thread:
I am interested in a listing of the differences between these two heritages. Is there more information on this topic?Neto wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2024 10:10 am
Another major difference is that the church governance in at least the MB conference is markedly different than that of any Swiss Brethren background congregation to which I have been exposed (admittedly, almost entirely Beach Amish-Mennonite and its off-shoots, of which our congregation is an example). I also do not know how far this goes back in even the MB history, let alone in the larger "Russian Mennonite" fold. (However, I suspect that the early MBs - which started in 1860 - were a bit more like your typical top-down authority structure, with some mix of congregationalism. Then I would also suspect that the Colony Gross Gemeinde was basically purely authoritarian, like the typical Amish-Mennonite congregations here in Holmes County, but this is not something I have studied in particular.)