How could transitional Anabaptists stop being that way?

[Praxis+Theodicy]

Jumping off of the original post, I'd say that each church has to decide if they are okay being a transitional church. I'm actually happy that I am attending a church right now where the pastor explicitly said that they want to help anyone on their walk with Christ even if the church is just one stop on their journey.

One thing I'll say is that a "one true church" doctrine is an instant "No" from me. Not gonna spend any time feeling out a church that makes this explicit or has a history of making it implicit to its members.

[Josh]

Because of this, W/F Co. is unique. They still have everybody under one roof who would nowadays be Old Order, conservative Anabaptist, evangelical Anabaptist, and liberal/progressive. In some ways they are very comparable to Holdemans and Stauffers who also never had such a division as far as I know.

No Old Order split, but lots of diversity. The difference is that, unlike other conferences, the conservatives had the majority and kept the original institution.

I would call then "Old Orders", though, not "conservatives". The dominant thinking in W/F is different than that of the modern-day conservative Anabaptist. In short, the Old Order is not trying to "conserve" the liberalism of the past, which seems to me to be what most conservatives are actually busy doing (witness Easterns and their eagerness to conserve organdy kapps, or the moderate-conservative who expresses concern that we need to be having more attendance at Wednesday-night prayer meetings and Sunday-night evening services).

[Josh]

Jumping off of the original post, I'd say that each church has to decide if they are okay being a transitional church. I'm actually happy that I am attending a church right now where the pastor explicitly said that they want to help anyone on their walk with Christ even if the church is just one stop on their journey.

Unfortunately, this kind of mindset is exactly what leads to churches whose main function is to help facilitate people walking away from Christ. I don't think the calling of the church (any church) is to help be a stop on people's journey of walking away from Christ. We should be helping people walk with Christ, towards him.

I would like to hear an Anabaptist church that is transitional, however, explictly say "We are comfortable that most of our attenders and members come from a church is more conservative/strict/plain than we are, and we are also comfortable that many of our members who leave do so to go to a less conservative/strict/plain church. We feel that moving in a less conservative/strict/plain direction is a good way to go. We feel that moving in a more conservative/strict/plain direction is a bad way to go." It would be very interesting to see what would happen if this level of honesty were embraced.

One thing I'll say is that a "one true church" doctrine is an instant "No" from me. Not gonna spend any time feeling out a church that makes this explicit or has a history of making it implicit to its members.

Of course, every church believes itself to be a true church to the exclusion of others at some level (for example, many Mennonites used to think Catholics were a false church); most evangelicals would eventually draw the line somewhere. OTC groups are just a bit more explicit about it.

[Josh]

In the valley, you have:
Progressive Mennonites
- At least 1 church part of MC-USA. This and a few other churches affiliated with other MC conferences in the 1940s and 1950s before the W-F split. The other churches are now LMC.

Evangelical Mennonites
- 2 Rosedale Network churches. Forced out in the 1960s by conservatives and left Franklin Conference because they were too slow to leave MC-USA.
- At least 8 LMC Mennonite churches originally W-F. These churches were forced out in the 1960s because the conservatives had the majority.

Conservative Mennonite (majority of members originate from original W-F Conference in the last 60 years.)
- At least 11 Washington-Franklin
- 2 EPMC (former W-F originating before and after split)
- 1 Nationwide Fellowship - a split off an Eastern congregation I believe
- Pilgrim - founded by former Eastern members; now majority former W-F
- Northeast - mostly ex-Eastern and W-F
- 7 Cumberland Valley churches - split off Franklin Conference several years after W-F split
- 4 Shippensburg Fellowship and affiliates - founding members from Cumberland Valley
- City Light Christian Fellowship (founded by ex-WF, similar to Shippensburg Fellowship?)
- Mid-Atlantic church - split off Franklin Conference in late 1970s
- a small moderate conservative church split off the Mid-Atlantic church
- a BMA church split off Mid-Atlantic church
- a small independent BMA-like church that split off a Cumberland Valley church
- a small moderate conservative church that split off a Cumberland Valley church
- BMA church - founding members from Cumberland Valley

That's the general idea. I'm sure I don't have everything right. The origin stories for many of the Conservative Mennonite groups is a bit more complicated. Many conservative Mennonites without origins in W-F moved to the area.

It is painfully obvious that W/F churches that are still very plain/conservative are indeed the origin of the majority of the rest of the conservative groups. The rest of the conservative groups seem to have no insight about this: they never stop to consider that perhaps they should embrace the positive values of W/F instead of simply being transitional groups, even as they are busy denouncing people less conservative than they are.

I would, for example, be willing to point the finger at City Light in that list: never before have I encountered a group of people with cultural barriers so thick to outsiders, yet with almost no awareness that such barriers exist. (For example, they all seem to speak with a distinct accent. Perhaps W/F people have their own accent?) Nearly every person is from a W/F background. So why have they chosen to disaffiliate from W/F? What future does the group hold? Unfortunately, we can almost reliably predict based on past experience with... every other group that has gone in this direction.

[Ernie]

Washington/Franklin Conference (W/F) is functionally an Old Order group.

I learned this perspective from Edsel Burdge about 25 years ago. He wrote a book on the history of Anabaptists in the Cumberland Valley and the feel he got when interacting with W/F people was that of Old Order feeling, and it felt very different from the feel of Eastern and Nationwide.

So I don't think this is correct. They are an Old Mennonite group, not an Old Order group. They had nothing to do with the Old Order division. So riding around in a horse and buggy is a foreign concept and they know very little about the Amish cuz they aren't in their area either.

"Functionally". (For reference, Hornings are generally considered Old Order, even though they drive black cars.)

WF never participated in a split regarding the Old Orders and the Fundamentalists dividing, generally speaking, in such splits the Old Orders became the modern-day Hornings and Wengers and so forth, and the modernists became the "Old Mennonites" (who eventually underwent a conservative Anabaptist vs. modernist split; the latter are further split today between theologically-conservative/evangelical Mennonites like Lancaster Conference or MC USA's Virginia Mennonite Conference vs. theologically modernist Mennonites like the Central District of MC US or certain Church of the Brethren).

Because of this, W/F Co. is unique. They still have everybody under one roof who would nowadays be Old Order, conservative Anabaptist, evangelical Anabaptist, and liberal/progressive. In some ways they are very comparable to Holdemans and Stauffers who also never had such a division as far as I know.

The Old Order movement was a new movement in Anabaptism in that they didn't just try to not be on the cutting edge of technology (an evidence of pride) but they began forbidding certain technologies, instead of trying to use newer technologies wisely. I got this perspective from Jonas Sauder.

Hence, I have begun referring to ultra-conservatives as the New Old Orders, as they have started banning certain technologies in recent decades.

[Ernie]

"Functionally". (For reference, Hornings are generally considered Old Order, even though they drive black cars.)

Yes, as well as the Ohio/Indiana Wislers and the Markham/Waterloo Conference. What makes them Old Order is that their church meetings are nearly identical to the horse and buggy meetings (minus the German) and in some areas the two groups share the same buildings.

The groups also eschew written standards that are available in printed form to members or otherwise. They do have "conference reports" that are read off at communion time.

[Ernie]

I would, for example, be willing to point the finger at City Light in that list: never before have I encountered a group of people with cultural barriers so thick to outsiders, yet with almost no awareness that such barriers exist. (For example, they all seem to speak with a distinct accent. Perhaps W/F people have their own accent?)

Yes, W/F has its own accent, idioms, and choice of vocabulary for communicating. Other separated plain groups do as well, I think.

[HondurasKeiser]

I think the larger point (or my larger point) is that all 1st cousin marriages are bad from the point of view of genetic diversity and avoiding recessive genetic disorders. Parallel cousin pairings are slightly more risky due to the greater chance of inheriting X-chromosome recessive disorders. But all 1st cousin pairings carry increased genetic risks whether they are parallel cousin or cross cousin pairings.

In addition, when 1st cousin pairings are repeated generation after generation genetic diversity is further narrowed which makes future 2nd or 3rd cousin marriages within that group more risky as well and more the equivalent of 1st cousin marriages.

Your challenge with this statement is that first-cousin marriage is actually the norm for most of human society, and around most of the globe as well (although various taboos exist, such as what Neto has documented in Banawha society). The odd culture out is Western Europeans, who banned any kind of cousin marriage, even 2nd, 3rd, or 4th, because the Catholic Church elected to do so.

So, for whatever reason, cousin marriages actually are more "fit" (Western Europeans are showing rather poor fitness in the sense their population is declining and non-Western European peoples' populations are growing). If present trends continue, eventually everyone will be part of a cousin-marriage society. The few Western European groups that have rapidly growing populations practice cousin marriage (namely Hasidic Jews and Swartzentruber Amish).

This reminds me of a long-form essay by (I think) Scott Alexander of slate star codex/astral codex ten. Very interesting in that he explored the historical reasons for Western Europe banning 1st Cousin marriage and the consequences there of. If I can find it I’ll post a link.

[barnhart]

Jumping off of the original post, I'd say that each church has to decide if they are okay being a transitional church. I'm actually happy that I am attending a church right now where the pastor explicitly said that they want to help anyone on their walk with Christ even if the church is just one stop on their journey.

One thing a church can do to resist this trend is to evangelize and take in new members who are unchurched.

Another pushback would be to acknowledge the previous church as legitimate even if you don't agree on everything. Then the intake process should involve conversation with the previous leaders and working through the reasons for the transition with all three parties, both leadership teams and the prospective member. When churches write off other groups, they elevate themselves as the only proper authority and become vulnerable to church hoppers.

[Josh]

Jumping off of the original post, I'd say that each church has to decide if they are okay being a transitional church. I'm actually happy that I am attending a church right now where the pastor explicitly said that they want to help anyone on their walk with Christ even if the church is just one stop on their journey.

One thing a church can do to resist this trend is to evangelize and take in new members who are unchurched.

One of the problems is that a transitional Anabaptist church is about the worst possible place an unchurched person or a new believer can end up. They would be much better off at either (a) a church that is already worldly but isn’t changing much, or (b) a church that is not worldly and is comfortable not needing to try to hoover up less-worldly people and teach them how to be more worldly.

Unchurched people and new believers will be extremely uncomfortable around transitional types of behaviour.