Anabaptist Perspectives and liberalism

[Ernie]

Adapting to institutions you patronise doesn't seem like it's setting a higher standard; if anything, it reveals one as a chameleon who will do whatever is necessary to gain influence and credibility in order to influence other institutions. I consider this a questionable thing. In my denomination, we don't dress up special for other people in terms of Anabaptist plain clothes. We were consistently the same clothes in the same settings; we don't try to pretend to be something we are not.

This is an unfair accusation, a lack of awareness, and an indication that you are quickly typing out accusations without reading carefully what Jaran wrote. An apology is in order.

Young people who don't want to wear cape dresses and other more conservative attire do not typically go to Bible schools and VS units that require this. They go to institutions that fit their current practice. For a sizeable percentage of young people to attend institutions that are more conservative than their church and adopt more conservative practices once they return home is a good sign, IMO. It is transition but it is transition in the opposite direction of what you are speaking about in this thread.
Yes, it is possible for moderate-conservatives and progressive conservatives to go the opposite direction of what those in associated churches are doing.

[mike]

In my denomination, we don't dress up special for other people in terms of Anabaptist plain clothes. We were consistently the same clothes in the same settings; we don't try to pretend to be something we are not.

The Holdeman men I see on a regular basis wear T-shirts and jeans and are basically indistinguishable from many worldly men. The Holdeman ladies and girls wear very short (knee-length at best) and very tight, form-fitting dresses and very small black kapp-style coverings. I don't take seriously critiques from Holdemans about the plain dress in other conservative Mennonite groups.

That said, I have a real problem with the inconsistency of dress expectations in my church and some similar ones. For example, men are expected to wear buttoned dress shirts in church with the collar buttoned up, and plain coats in the winter time if you want to wear a coat or jacket; while during the week in our fields and shops and places of business our men can wear T-shirts or can have two or more buttons open. All while claiming to promote the concept of separation from the world in dress, and asking our ladies to wear traditional kapp-style head coverings and cape dresses. I have a real issue with this sort of inconsistency.

[JohnH]

This is an unfair accusation, a lack of awareness, and an indication that you are quickly typing out accusations without reading carefully what Jaran wrote. An apology is in order.

Young people who don't want to wear cape dresses and other more conservative attire do not typically go to Bible schools and VS units that require this. They go to institutions that fit their current practice. For a sizeable percentage of young people to attend institutions that are more conservative than their church and adopt more conservative practices once they return home is a good sign, IMO. It is transition but it is transition in the opposite direction of what you are speaking about in this thread.
Yes, it is possible for moderate-conservatives and progressive conservatives to go the opposite direction of what those in associated churches are doing.

I guess my experience has been different. I have observed, for example, youth from a Rosedale type of church gladly go to i58 and comply with the standards there, come home, and go right back to their "normal" clothes. Same for a nearly-assimilated Charity type of church; teachers from there would comply with the school's dress code and then go back to whatever the nearly-assimilated Charity standard was once they were home. (This was admittedly circa 2018, so maybe I am out of date and things have completely changed.)

[Jaran]

Do you foresee a time when you will teach against the radio?

Podcasts? Influencers?

Watching long videos?

Wasn't part of the problem accepting the radio, which allowed those worldly influences into our homes (and minivans, and work trucks)?

Rule against radio, long video, podcasts, influencers? Not sure if the rules will change or not. Probably not. Like you describe for your church, rules don't set the culture, and it's not the rules directing our choices.

Perhaps you don't understand our background. Wellspring and it's people aren't from anti-radio backgrounds. For the founders of Wellspring, it wasn't a thing of "accepting the radio." They inherited radio-acceptance from those who went before them.

I don't know how to say this politely, but long-term, a theological podcast is simply not going to be able to catch up with the allure of worldly podcasts, shows, influencers, and so on. You are never going to have the broad appeal of something like Candace Owens or Matt Walsh or whoever it is people listen to now.

Shouldn't the stance be, "We aren't going to allow ourselves to be influenced by streaming media, social media, videos, podcasts, and influencers"? What do you do when another Anabaptist Perspectives comes along, but with an ever-so-slightly corrupted message?

Catching up to the allure of worldly podcasts and having appeal as broad as Candace Owens and Matt Walsh isn't our priority. You're on the same page with us in this regard.

What happens when another Anabaptist Perspectives comes along with a corrupted message? If you're talking about new podcasts starting that are worse than Anabaptist Perspectives, I can't say that we've given this much thought.

I suppose I should ask what direction you're going in, then.

We've moved toward more traditional Mennonite institutions, practices, and friendships, and further away from fundamentalism.

I feel like I'm on trial and am defending my church. Not sure why this is necessary, but I thought it might be worth engaging, if there was indeed an honest misunderstanding.

[GaryK]

I feel like I'm on trial and am defending my church. Not sure why this is necessary, but I thought it might be worth engaging, if there was indeed an honest misunderstanding.

Welcome to MN where nearly all moderate-conservatives are an utterly lost cause.

[JohnH]

The Holdeman men I see on a regular basis wear T-shirts and jeans and are basically indistinguishable from many worldly men.

Holdemans have never had a particularly "special" dress code, and men and women both used to be indistinguishable from their neighbours. As time went on, Holdemans have gradually had a dress code for men, namely no shorts and nowadays no athletic pants, so they're quite easy to distinguish in the summer (and likewise you can distinguish from Beachys, etc. by identifying who has on athletic pants and who is in blue jeans.)

Not that I think one or the other is particularly more godly than the other.

The Holdeman ladies and girls wear very short (knee-length at best)

At best? I haven't observed anything above the knee at Shippensburg, Mifflinburg/McVeytown, Fleetwood, or here in Ohio, and I'm not sure where else you would be seeing Holdemans in your area. Maybe all the most worldly ones congregate where you are, though.

and very tight, form-fitting dresses

I have observed the opposite: things are less tight than they used to be, and whilst that is mostly because of changing fashions, it's a change I would welcome.

and very small black kapp-style coverings.

I'm not sure what the definition of "very small" is. Holdemans didn't wear coverings in public at all 70 years ago. Note that at church on Sunday, they wear a much larger covering than most other plain Anabaptist groups would wear.

I don't take seriously critiques from Holdemans about the plain dress in other conservative Mennonite groups.

I'm not sure why my own affiliation or my own church practices should have anything to do with observations about transitionalism in other church settings. If Holdemans are having problems with immodest attire, worldly attire, transitionalism, etc., then that doesn't exactly make it a good thing for other people to do it, and it certainly doesn't mean it's a problem for me to observe it.

Overall, Holdemans have transitioned (so to speak) from indistinguishable attire compared to their neighbours to gradually become more separated in terms of appearance, such as adopting coverings outside of church and not adopting worldly dress styles, like was more common in the 50s and 60s. My mother in law's wedding dress would generally not be the kind of thing most Holdeman women would wear inside church or outside of it these days, but back then it was common. As I understand it, Holdemans diverged from worldly clothing sometime in the 1960s.

That said, I have a real problem with the inconsistency of dress expectations in my church and some similar ones. For example, men are expected to wear buttoned dress shirts in church with the collar buttoned up, and plain coats in the winter time if you want to wear a coat or jacket; while during the week in our fields and shops and places of business our men can wear T-shirts or can have two or more buttons open. All while claiming to promote the concept of separation from the world in dress, and asking our ladies to wear traditional kapp-style head coverings and cape dresses. I have a real issue with this sort of inconsistency.

I certainly don't agree with women adopting essential plain attire (cape dresses, kapp style coverings, and so forth) but men not doing something as simple as donning broadfalls and suspenders. However the suggestion to a typical conservative Anabaptist (particularly one with an Amish background) to wear distinctive broadfalls - you might as well ask him to abandon his car and get a horse and cart. One such person wrote into the Vanguard expressing how they considered no longer wearing broadfalls to be the sign of a person who has had a born-again salvation experience, which I found a bit absurd.

[JohnH]

Rule against radio, long video, podcasts, influencers? Not sure if the rules will change or not. Probably not. Like you describe for your church, rules don't set the culture, and it's not the rules directing our choices.

Perhaps you don't understand our background. Wellspring and it's people aren't from anti-radio backgrounds. For the founders of Wellspring, it wasn't a thing of "accepting the radio." They inherited radio-acceptance from those who went before them.

(Is all of your membership composed of people from backgrounds that always eagerly embraced the radio, e.g. Lancaster Conference? I was under the impression some people are from backgrounds like e.g. Beachy that would not have done so.)

In any case, my point is that the problem isn't that people are listening to Rush Limbaugh, which is not really much of a problem anymore, but the problem is drinking from worldly streams, which would indeed include the radio but now includes a panoply of other media. Once you embrace things like social media, political polarisation is inevitable. You might as well tell people who go to the beach to be careful not to get wet. The entire point of social media is to create engagement by courting controversies, which is not exactly something the Christian should want to pursue.

(And before anyone claims MennoNet is social media, MennoNet was not created with the express purpose of increasing the amount of hours people spend on it so that they would watch more ads by stoking a news feed of controversial posts, so no, it's not like Facebook, Twitter/X, Reddit et al. at all.)

We've moved toward more traditional Mennonite institutions, practices, and friendships, and further away from fundamentalism.

I'm glad to hear you at least think you're moving that way, which at least means you would consider moving in that direction to be a good thing. I hope you can eventually find yourselves on a path towards such things in all areas of Christian life.

I feel like I'm on trial and am defending my church. Not sure why this is necessary, but I thought it might be worth engaging, if there was indeed an honest misunderstanding.

I'm sorry to make you feel that way - however, I do think lukewarm, worldly, barely-conservative "plain" Anabaptism has quite a bit to answer for. I ask because I care and I care about the people still trapped inside of it. I would invite all of you to simply set the world aside, leave your worldly practices, and embrace what you see many of your brethren doing. In your case, I think you could find a few of them a short drive up the road.

And no, that doesn't mean you have to join my denomination. It does mean you need to wholeheartedly embrace following Christ, which might indeed mean leaving your video camera, your monetised social media accounts, and your network of parachurch donors behind.

[Jaran]

I feel like I'm on trial and am defending my church. Not sure why this is necessary, but I thought it might be worth engaging, if there was indeed an honest misunderstanding.

Welcome to MN where nearly all moderate-conservatives are an utterly lost cause.

My opinion is that the church, including moderate-conservative Mennonite churches, belong to Jesus. I don't have reason to believe that Jesus has given up on his church, so I don't plan to abandon hope of redemption and growth where there's brokenness. Not sure I can concede that it's as broken and beyond hope as JohnH seems to think it is.

[Jaran]

Adapting to institutions you patronise doesn't seem like it's setting a higher standard; if anything, it reveals one as a chameleon who will do whatever is necessary to gain influence and credibility in order to influence other institutions. I consider this a questionable thing. In my denomination, we don't dress up special for other people in terms of Anabaptist plain clothes. We were consistently the same clothes in the same settings; we don't try to pretend to be something we are not.

This is an unfair accusation, a lack of awareness, and an indication that you are quickly typing out accusations without reading carefully what Jaran wrote. An apology is in order.

Young people who don't want to wear cape dresses and other more conservative attire do not typically go to Bible schools and VS units that require this. They go to institutions that fit their current practice. For a sizeable percentage of young people to attend institutions that are more conservative than their church and adopt more conservative practices once they return home is a good sign, IMO. It is transition but it is transition in the opposite direction of what you are speaking about in this thread.
Yes, it is possible for moderate-conservatives and progressive conservatives to go the opposite direction of what those in associated churches are doing.

Thank you, Ernie.

[JohnH]

I feel like I'm on trial and am defending my church. Not sure why this is necessary, but I thought it might be worth engaging, if there was indeed an honest misunderstanding.

Welcome to MN where nearly all moderate-conservatives are an utterly lost cause.

My opinion is that the church, including moderate-conservative Mennonite churches, belong to Jesus. I don't have reason to believe that Jesus has given up on his church, so I don't plan to abandon hope of redemption and growth where there's brokenness. Not sure I can concede that it's as broken and beyond hope as JohnH seems to think it is.

The church belongs to Jesus, but some worldly institutions and systems, such as The Episcopal Church, the Unitarian-Universalists, and the much of the transitional conservative Anabaptist church systems, are indeed broken beyond hope except for hope in Jesus who can rescue people despite them being caught in such systems.

Overall, transitional Anabaptism isn't leading people into more Christian lives, saving the lost, spreading the gospel to our neighbours, or raising up the next generation of faithful disciples. It functions a lot more like an ethnic social club. I have nothing against ethnic social clubs, but I don't confuse them with Christ's church, even though one often finds faithful Christians at my local gardening club, the Ruritan association, and so forth.