Interested in learning about Holdemans

[Ernie]

Thanks for summarizing.

I can say with confidence other Holdemans don’t believe other plain churches are part of the “one true church” (with a possible exception of a congregation we don’t know about that shares enough doctrine and practice we would easily be united with them).

However, they would say many believers in other churches are sincere and are “brothers in Christ”, but not a “brother in the faith”. I have only heard older (60+) people use those phrases with that distinction.

Just for clarification... "they" refers to some people 60+? What do those 60- believe in contrast?

I have run all these questions by other Holdemans to find out what they believe as opposed to just my own opinions.

You can occasionally find a Holdeman that doesn’t believe in an otc doctrine at all. This is tolerated provided they don’t spread it to others, promote it, and don’t have other spiritual problems. If they do lack of otc belief is often considered the root problem.

My understanding is that the national churches in Haiti and Nigeria take a much more hardline view and would consider far fewer other Christians in their national area to be “saved”. For example in Haiti they consider basically all the Catholics there not saved.

[Judas Maccabeus]

Generally speaking, the two mindsets are just too different. Holdemans are not familiar nor comfortable with a setting where people come together with a variety of practices, enter close fellowship, yet somehow still evaluate each other as faithfully living for God. I am not convinced conservative Anabaptists are actually good at doing this, but they do try to do it. But Holdemans simply can't handle it at all.

I am. We are quite good at it.

This " Holdemans are not familiar nor comfortable with a setting where people come together with a variety of practices, enter close fellowship, yet somehow still evaluate each other as faithfully living for God." It's actually a corollary of the entire "one true visible church" doctrine. Somehow, people within your movement, cannot evaluate someone with even a slightly different practice, as faithfully living for God. In other words, if you're different from us, even in areas of practice, you cannot be living for God, and hence not part of the "one true visible church."

This is, in fact, emblematic of cult like behavior. We are the only ones that have the truth, and no one else does, and no one else can, if you're different than us in any way, you're obviously an error,

[JohnH]

I am. We are quite good at it.

This " Holdemans are not familiar nor comfortable with a setting where people come together with a variety of practices, enter close fellowship, yet somehow still evaluate each other as faithfully living for God." It's actually a corollary of the entire "one true visible church" doctrine. Somehow, people within your movement, cannot evaluate someone with even a slightly different practice, as faithfully living for God. In other words, if you're different from us, even in areas of practice, you cannot be living for God, and hence not part of the "one true visible church."

This is, in fact, emblematic of cult like behavior. We are the only ones that have the truth, and no one else does, and no one else can, if you're different than us in any way, you're obviously an error,

It's not "cult like behaviour" to have a certain level of discomfort with people who claim to be following God but are (for example) perfectly comfortable serving in the military, getting involved in politics, and so forth.

It's simply a question of how big you want to draw the circle of what acceptable practice is.

[Judas Maccabeus]

It's not "cult like behaviour" to have a certain level of discomfort with people who claim to be following God but are (for example) perfectly comfortable serving in the military, getting involved in politics, and so forth.

It's simply a question of how big you want to draw the circle of what acceptable practice is.

Most conservative groups do none of those things, including virtually all moderate conservative groups. Most of those would result is the beginning of the process of removal from membership.

You can draw that circle of acceptable, practice, smaller, and smaller and smaller. Until sooner or later what you have is a dot. That is what appears to be happening here. When it becomes a dot, you begin to look at what would be arguably cult like practices.

What I am seeing described here is a dot.

[JohnH]

It's not "cult like behaviour" to have a certain level of discomfort with people who claim to be following God but are (for example) perfectly comfortable serving in the military, getting involved in politics, and so forth.

It's simply a question of how big you want to draw the circle of what acceptable practice is.

Most conservative groups do none of those things, including virtually all moderate conservative groups. Most of those would result is the beginning of the process of removal from membership.

Okay, but what exactly is the criteria for drawing this circle of fellowship?

I believe in nonresistance, but I happen to also believe in a few other things that I think are clear in scripture such as avoiding idolatry and thus photography, avoiding charging usury, and several other things that stricter Anabaptist groups do, but moderates don't. So why should we have to draw our lines to include moderate-conservatives and fundamental-conservatives?

You can draw that circle of acceptable, practice, smaller, and smaller and smaller. Until sooner or later what you have is a dot. That is what appears to be happening here. When it becomes a dot, you begin to look at what would be arguably cult like practices.

What I am seeing described here is a dot.

I think what it comes down to is that the things I think are important (and by extension the rest of my fellowship), people who are less conservative don't think is important.

I think it's entirely fine for (for example) Old Order Amish type people to feel uncomfortable fellowshipping with, for example, BMA or Keystone youth who are busy talking about the Eagles game, what games to play on their X-Box, and the latest DVDs they watched (to use an example from my own life circa 2014, and I wasn't OOA - I was just in a moderate-conservative church where people weren't doing that stuff - yet). That's what I'm talking about when I say "certain level of discomfort".

Ultimately, perhaps it just works better to choose to have your close fellowship with people who choose to be aligned with you in matters of practice, and in some matters of doctrine.

[barnhart]

Generally speaking, the two mindsets are just too different. Holdemans are not familiar nor comfortable with a setting where people come together with a variety of practices, enter close fellowship, yet somehow still evaluate each other as faithfully living for God. I am not convinced conservative Anabaptists are actually good at doing this, but they do try to do it. But Holdemans simply can't handle it at all.

I am. We are quite good at it.

This " Holdemans are not familiar nor comfortable with a setting where people come together with a variety of practices, enter close fellowship, yet somehow still evaluate each other as faithfully living for God." It's actually a corollary of the entire "one true visible church" doctrine. Somehow, people within your movement, cannot evaluate someone with even a slightly different practice, as faithfully living for God. In other words, if you're different from us, even in areas of practice, you cannot be living for God, and hence not part of the "one true visible church."

This is, in fact, emblematic of cult like behavior. We are the only ones that have the truth, and no one else does, and no one else can, if you're different than us in any way, you're obviously an error,

The idea of purity through isolation was foreign to my background. I've always associated it with the monastic traditions. When asked about some peculiar practice my mother would say "we do this to honor Jesus," not "we do this to keep a distance."

[Ernie]

Okay, but what exactly is the criteria for drawing this circle of fellowship?

I believe in nonresistance, but I happen to also believe in a few other things that I think are clear in scripture such as avoiding idolatry and thus photography, avoiding charging usury, and several other things that stricter Anabaptist groups do, but moderates don't. So why should we have to draw our lines to include moderate-conservatives and fundamental-conservatives?

And yet in this thread I have been hearing sadness and a critique that moderates and others don't include Holdeman's in their endeavors.

I don't see a way for it to be both ways.
I don't see a way for Holdeman's to draw a tight circle that excludes everyone else, and yet somehow everyone else is supposed to include them in their endeavors.

[JohnH]

Okay, but what exactly is the criteria for drawing this circle of fellowship?

I believe in nonresistance, but I happen to also believe in a few other things that I think are clear in scripture such as avoiding idolatry and thus photography, avoiding charging usury, and several other things that stricter Anabaptist groups do, but moderates don't. So why should we have to draw our lines to include moderate-conservatives and fundamental-conservatives?

And yet in this thread I have been hearing sadness and a critique that moderates and others don't include Holdeman's in their endeavors.

I’m not sad about it. I’m just pointing out it goes both ways.

I don't see a way for it to be both ways.
I don't see a way for Holdeman's to draw a tight circle that excludes everyone else, and yet somehow everyone else is supposed to include them in their endeavors.

It simply needs to be stated that it is that way. I was challenging the narrative that only Holdemans are excluding others.

Not really that much different than Old Orders who mostly do their own thing and caucus with other plain people in limited settings like MCC (which many have stopped doing).

[Judas Maccabeus]

Generally speaking, the two mindsets are just too different. Holdemans are not familiar nor comfortable with a setting where people come together with a variety of practices, enter close fellowship, yet somehow still evaluate each other as faithfully living for God. I am not convinced conservative Anabaptists are actually good at doing this, but they do try to do it. But Holdemans simply can't handle it at all.

I am. We are quite good at it.

This " Holdemans are not familiar nor comfortable with a setting where people come together with a variety of practices, enter close fellowship, yet somehow still evaluate each other as faithfully living for God." It's actually a corollary of the entire "one true visible church" doctrine. Somehow, people within your movement, cannot evaluate someone with even a slightly different practice, as faithfully living for God. In other words, if you're different from us, even in areas of practice, you cannot be living for God, and hence not part of the "one true visible church."

This is, in fact, emblematic of cult like behavior. We are the only ones that have the truth, and no one else does, and no one else can, if you're different than us in any way, you're obviously an error,

The idea of purity through isolation was foreign to my background. I've always associated it with the monastic traditions. When asked about some peculiar practice my mother would say "we do this to honor Jesus," not "we do this to keep a distance."

yes, when you get "purity through isolation" and add it to one true visible church®." it normally equals cult. I have seen that pattern over and over.

[JohnH]

yes, when you get "purity through isolation" and add it to one true visible church®." it normally equals cult. I have seen that pattern over and over.

That's not how Holdemans work, though. Holdemans simply don't esteem other Anabaptist groups as somehow "better" than other types of Christians.

For example, I send my son to a preschool run by an evangelical Christian churches and churches of Christ type of church. I am more comfortable with that than sending them to the Beachy school.

We volunteer at a soup kitchen run by an alliance of evangelical pastors in our region. We're more comfortable with that some moderate-conservative run ministry doing a similar thing.

The Holdemans are not a "cult" any more than other Anabaptist groups are. I don't think plain people should generally lob the "cult" accusation at each other.