Soloist, there are a couple things regarding the (Plain) Brethren groups not taking flak for their rebaptism requires which might be worth noting. One is the fact that, as they were only half-breeds in the original Anabaptist tradition anyway, they have traditionally (at least over the last century or so) had very little deliberate interaction with other Anabaptists outside of work, including moving to areas where there were not / are not a lot of other Plain folks (with the exception of the American motherland of Pennsylvania, where we all first set foot on the glorious soil of religious liberty)... Additionally, from the various Mennos I have known throughout my life, there is usually an undercurrent of disdain against the immersion/rebaptismal stance of the Brethren, though often it has usually been more of a gentle condescension than a malicious condemnation.
I grew up working with and interacting with several Holdeman families, and I guess I'd have to second Mike's comment - we covered a lot of ground and debated a lot of issues, but I never heard any of them complain about the rest of Menno-dom not interacting with them enough... For what it's worth as a bit of an anecdotal exception to my earlier comment (and I may have shared this in another thread or two on here), there WAS some back and forth between our Brethren youth and the Holdeman youth groups in California back in the 50s-70s with youth functions, singings, etc, partly due to the influence of a couple of more open-minded ministers/elders in both groups, and partly due to the fact that they were the only two groups of Plain people in California at that point...Soloist wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:24 ammike wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 8:36 amI think that the source of contention is what is sometimes called the "one true church" doctrine of the Holdemans. This idea, whatever it means, results in things such as the Holdemans not recognizing things such as baptisms and marriages performed outside of their group. I haven't been sure about whether Holdemans accept the idea salvation exists outside of their group, but there has at least been the broad impression that they may not.
I never heard of Holdemans complaining that other Mennonite groups don't interact enough with them until I heard this from Josh here on MN; I've always thought that being aloof and separate from all other groups was basically part of the Holdeman Mennonite ethos. I guess it's possible that all this time Holdemans have resented that they are kept at arm's length by other groups, while everybody else has been thinking they want it that way.
However, when the Holdeman re-emphasis on adherence to the One Church Doctrine happened in the 70s, followed by what is often referred to as the Purge of those who balked at it, there was a rather abrupt and distinct severance of relations between our youth and theirs (and their families), instigated from their end. At least, that's how members of the generation before me (both Brethren and Holdeman) explained it to me, and their stories were pretty much the same, so there wasn't a lot of room to call it revisionist history either. There were a few of us in the 90s-2000s that went back and forth, but after the 70s, the groups in general pretty well kept to themselves except for passing each other in fabric stores or at the airports and occasionally nodding politely (mostly).