Interested in learning about Holdemans

[Neto]

My only experience with discipline has been holding people back from lovefeast/communion, withholding the holy kiss and such like. Never seen membership taken unless someone wanted to be removed from the church roll.

Would they not also be "prevented" from "giving voice" in an ordination, or the selection of an elder, etc.?

[steve-in-kville]

My only experience with discipline has been holding people back from lovefeast/communion, withholding the holy kiss and such like. Never seen membership taken unless someone wanted to be removed from the church roll.

Would they not also be "prevented" from "giving voice" in an ordination, or the selection of an elder, etc.?

Good question. I never knew of someone being told they couldn't vote or participate in a business/counsel meeting. That said, I would imagine one would follow the other.

[Josh]

Holdemans have no concept you can “cancel” or “transfer” your membership. These are the only possible states a person can be:

#1. A non member who has never become a member. (This is most people.) This person may or may not be a born again Christian.

#2. A member who is a Christian.

#3. A member who has fallen into a sin so serious they are now spiritually dead. Excommunication is simply recognition by the church body that a person is spiritually dead.

#4. Extremely rare: someone who joined but had their membership annulled because they joined under false pretenses or was insincere. One woman claims she only joined to placate her husband to prevent him from trying to make their family join the Amish. The church accepted her story that she never sincerely was a member and was not sincere in her vows.

Some of the Amish have a very similar view to 1-3, some do not.

Now, with this view on church and membership, it simply does not work for members in good standing to go and marry non-members. The verse cited for this situation is in Ezra, when the Israelites left their “foreign wives”.

Generally in such a situation the church encourages the member to wait for their spouse to join the church too (this actually happens quite a bit). Then the member is restored to fellowship.

If they never joined and did truly want to return to church, they would be expected to separate from their “foreign” spouse, but would have an impediment to remarriage, since they have dealt treacherously with their spouse. (This is similar to what other Anabaptists expect from people who are divorced and remarried, but it primarily affects people who grow up in church and run wild, instead of primarily affecting seekers and outsiders.)

The Bible is quite clear on not being “unequally yoked” and marrying “in the Lord”. The doctrines for this come straight from old Anabaptists texts along with interpretations of scripture. As far as I can tell, this is a common feature amongst Dutch Anabaptism but absent from Swiss Anabaptism.

[mike]

#1. A non member who has never become a member. (This is most people.) This person may or may not be a born again Christian.
...

The Bible is quite clear on not being “unequally yoked” and marrying “in the Lord”.

You say that there are non-members who may be born-again Christians. Would a member of the Holdeman church who marries such a person be subject to excommunication?

[Josh]

#1. A non member who has never become a member. (This is most people.) This person may or may not be a born again Christian.
...

The Bible is quite clear on not being “unequally yoked” and marrying “in the Lord”.

You say that there are non-members who may be born-again Christians. Would a member of the Holdeman church who marries such a person be subject to excommunication?

Yes, because they should be marrying within the church. Outsiders might be Christians, might not be - it’s not for us to judge.

You seem really dedicated to the idea that a healthy church needs to promote marriage of its members to outsiders of varying lifestyle standards. How exactly do you see that working out long term?

[mike]

#1. A non member who has never become a member. (This is most people.) This person may or may not be a born again Christian.
...

The Bible is quite clear on not being “unequally yoked” and marrying “in the Lord”.

You say that there are non-members who may be born-again Christians. Would a member of the Holdeman church who marries such a person be subject to excommunication?

Yes, because they should be marrying within the church. Outsiders might be Christians, might not be - it’s not for us to judge.

You seem really dedicated to the idea that a healthy church needs to promote marriage of its members to outsiders of varying lifestyle standards. How exactly do you see that working out long term?

I see that working out very well, actually. My wife was an "outsider" to my congregation, and had varying lifestyle standards than me, but we got married, and she joined my church. It has been a wonderful 20 years. I have twelve children. The idea that each of them must find a spouse within our congregation or a specific conservative Anabaptist denomination seems really odd to me.

My wife grew up conservative Mennonite in a family of 13 children, and among the churches that her siblings now attend are conservative Mennonite, independent conservative, Beachy Amish, and others. We all enjoy each other's fellowship, all of the marriages had the blessing of the parents despite a fair amount of variety in lifestyle standards. No excommunications required. I have no problem with this at all.

As to the part of your saying that I seem "really dedicated to the idea that a healthy church needs to promote marriage of its members to outsiders," that's not what I said. You made that up. I'm simply saying that I don't understand why it must be forbidden on pain of excommunication, which is what your/the Holdeman position is.

[Heirbyadoption]

You say that there are non-members who may be born-again Christians. Would a member of the Holdeman church who marries such a person [a non-member who may be a born-again Christian] be subject to excommunication?

Yes, because they should be marrying within the church. Outsiders might be Christians, might not be - it’s not for us to judge.

...I'm simply saying that I don't understand why it must be forbidden on pain of excommunication, which is what your/the Holdeman position is.

Mike - I don't necessarily agree with it, but it does make sense to me why the Holdemans forbid marrying nonmembers on pain of excommunication. Not to beat a dead horse, but for the sake of those not involved in some of the past discussions, and because it IS still a relevant point in this discussion - It's basically the outworking of the OTC ideology, even though said ideology is usually denied or at least semantically altered to allow for ease of conscience and convenience of application. And before the ardent denials come rushing in, I say that as having grown up in an Old Order group (OGBB) where many of us were guilty of the same OTC perspective and outworking to some degree (even though we weren't quite as hardline as the Holdemans have historically been), and that is why (to your last quoted comment above) it makes sense to me that marriage outside "the Church" would be a matter of excommunication...

Simply put, the basic underlying assumption is that anybody who has committed to (in some cases, "vowed" to) the group (generally referred to as "the Church") is Christian, even if they move between congregations within "the Church" (the convenience of being in a conference, but that's another topic). Ergo, the only way to consistently maintain said view of "the Church", including in applications of discipline, communion, the salutation, ordination, voting, and yes, even MARRIAGE, is to treat EVERYONE outside of the group in the same way, as not being part of "the Church", regardless whether they profess and live as Christians or whether they do not.

What this means is that, in reality, the claim of "not judging" others is utterly fallacious, due to the created dichotomy by which "the Church" views (and therefore implicitly judges in treatment if not in word) everyone outside of "the Church" in the same way - as non-Christians,. An extension of judgment of one group of individuals and not to others serves to grant the second group the opposite judgment, rather than simply extending them a freedom from judgment - to claim otherwise is demonstrably dishonest. When a judgment of one individual grants him/her the recognition and rights of a Christian in "the Church", then a failure/refusal to extend that recognition to others (in this case, nonmembers) also makes that judgment of Christian identity to be contingent upon a commitment to the group/"Church"; therefore we see the other side of the coin, where a judgment exists against ALL who have NOT made that particular commitment, and therefore they are considered ineligible for marriage "in the Lord" because they are ALL outside of "the Church."

Mike, does that make sense why I say it's simply the logical outworking of OTC ideology?

[mike]

Yes, because they should be marrying within the church. Outsiders might be Christians, might not be - it’s not for us to judge.

...I'm simply saying that I don't understand why it must be forbidden on pain of excommunication, which is what your/the Holdeman position is.

Mike - I don't necessarily agree with it, but it does make sense to me why the Holdemans forbid marrying nonmembers on pain of excommunication. Not to beat a dead horse, but for the sake of those not involved in some of the past discussions, and because it IS still a relevant point in this discussion - It's basically the outworking of the OTC ideology, even though said ideology is usually denied or at least semantically altered to allow for ease of conscience and convenience of application. And before the ardent denials come rushing in, I say that as having grown up in an Old Order group (OGBB) where many of us were guilty of the same OTC perspective and outworking to some degree (even though we weren't quite as hardline as the Holdemans have historically been), and that is why (to your last quoted comment above) it makes sense to me that marriage outside "the Church" would be a matter of excommunication...

Simply put, the basic underlying assumption is that anybody who has committed to (in some cases, "vowed" to) the group (generally referred to as "the Church") is Christian, even if they move between congregations within "the Church" (the convenience of being in a conference, but that's another topic). Ergo, the only way to consistently maintain said view of "the Church", including in applications of discipline, communion, the salutation, ordination, voting, and yes, even MARRIAGE, is to treat EVERYONE outside of the group in the same way, as not being part of "the Church", regardless whether they profess and live as Christians or whether they do not.

What this means is that, in reality, the claim of "not judging" others is utterly fallacious, due to the created dichotomy by which "the Church" views (and therefore implicitly judges in treatment if not in word) everyone outside of "the Church" in the same way - as non-Christians,. An extension of judgment of one group of individuals and not to others serves to grant the second group the opposite judgment, rather than simply extending them a freedom from judgment - to claim otherwise is demonstrably dishonest. When a judgment of one individual grants him/her the recognition and rights of a Christian in "the Church", then a failure/refusal to extend that recognition to others (in this case, nonmembers) also makes that judgment of Christian identity to be contingent upon a commitment to the group/"Church"; therefore we see the other side of the coin, where a judgment exists against ALL who have NOT made that particular commitment, and therefore they are considered ineligible for marriage "in the Lord" because they are ALL outside of "the Church."

Mike, does that make sense why I say it's simply the logical outworking of OTC ideology?

Yes, absolutely, and I agree with what you are saying. I understand very well how the Holdeman marriage position is an outworking of the One True Church ideology, and what I should probably have said is that I understand it as such but don't agree with it.

I find interesting that Josh allows for the possibility of outsiders being born again Christians (something I think rank and file Holdemans would likely agree with) while saying that a member marrying such an outsider is worthy of being excommunicated. This gets at the question of what Holdeman Mennonites believe about salvation outside of their group, which ends up being a little more flexible than one might think, but at the same time shows the rigidity of their OTC view.

[Ken]

The Holdemans are free to establish whatever membership rules they want. I don’t have any argument with any of it.

However as someone who actually married outside my faith (or denomination) I do have some personal experience with this issue and in our case it was mostly pushback from my wife’s faith (Catholic) not mine that we mostly had to deal with.

I would just point out that the scriptures are replete with stories of people marrying outside of their particular clan, tribe, or faith. It was common and accepted and is probably as old as history itself. The story of Ruth, to cite just one example. The Bible is full of examples of Israelite men marrying foreign women of every sort. None of it seems to have required any sort of priestly pre-approval.

[Ernie]

I find interesting that Josh allows for the possibility of outsiders being born again Christians (something I think rank and file Holdemans would likely agree with) while saying that a member marrying such an outsider is worthy of being excommunicated. This gets at the question of what Holdeman Mennonites believe about salvation outside of their group, which ends up being a little more flexible than one might think, but at the same time shows the rigidity of their OTC view.

Wouldn't most conservative Mennonite churches excommunicate someone who married a born again Christian woman who wore pants, didn't cover her head, was supportive of Christians being involved in the military, etc.?