GoodGirl,GoodGirl wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 7:14 pm We attended a very conservative Nationwide church for five (?) years. It was actually a conservative subset within Nationwide, called Mennonite Christian Brotherhood.
We are “from the world” (no religious background), and while we were slowly eased into things…
This video really made me realize what my parents must have gone through the first time they visited us, after we had been at the church for a few years.
We left the church… they would never accept us as members, although they did take in our oldest child, a son, and he married a (lovely!) girl there recently, and is currently serving the church in another country.
I have so many memories, good and bad.
To not go deep… one of my weirdest memories was having to hold up the fabric I had bought for dresses in front of a small group of people to be approved or disapproved. All the fabric was well within church standards (in fact, some ladies there already had dresses in the exact same fabric). But they wanted to make sure my husband approved of each one.
Once they suggested I have a dress made “inside out” so the teeny tiny flowers would be on the inside, not the outside, which honestly would have looked dumb~ the inside of the fabric was obviously the inside, you know?
When we finally left, I got rid of some dresses, because to use a worldly term, they were ‘triggering’ and I couldn’t wear them.
The worst they did was try to separate our older children from us, so our children could be raised in “proper” godly homes. I mean, literally they were doing everything they could to prevent me and my oldest daughter from speaking, so they could tell have more control over her life.
She has a lower IQ & I will never forget how the bishop quizzed her & denied her membership because she couldn’t define all the words he used, like ‘sanctification.’
She had taken the time to painstakingly write out her testimony & it was heartbreaking to see how cold he was to her.
To say things got crazy would be kind of an understatement.
There were (and are) some really good people there, but also some who really make me wonder.
This is meant as no insult to you, but I can tell you are "opinionated" and like to discuss and figure things out and perhaps even stir up some controversy. Ultra-conservative churches are simply not looking for people like that.
In many situations with seekers, the wife is the one "driving" and the husband follows. This is incompatible with ultra-conservative circles. (It doesn't work that well in my own circles either, but they are more tolerant of such types of marriage dynamics.)
It is also the case that their own members would be subjected to the same kind of rather ridiculous levels of inspection eg of prints/patterns. There are certain boundaries that people who grow up in the culture just "get" and it can be quite mysterious for an outsider to figure out what they are.
You might have found the "less conservative" parts of Nationwide were more pleasant for you, but a lot of seekers don't really like being in a "transitional" setting like that where things are changing and the congregation isn't seeking to try to be strict. On the flip side, it means that you, as a seeker, don't get subjected to these sort of hazing rituals.
