Amish and plain in the 1960's

[Jeff Altweg]

I was growing up Amish in the 1960's , There's not a lot of people alive today that recall how really tough it was back then.....being Amish ,and other Plain folks really had to live their beliefs, as most none Amish tended to view them as simple minded ,out of touch. backwards ,etc, perhaps like Gypsies .
That's what's changed a lot since then, today,Amish are admired and looked to as the greatest in lifestyles ,the Internet is full of Amish stories , Amish this ,and Amish that ,(most of that on-line stuff is faked) ,they are admired a lot ,for how they live and prosper .
I can still recall in the mid-sixtys , going with my Dad to the nearby town, how "English " kids would gawk and stare , and shout "Santa Claus is here'" , because dad had a full Amish beard , almost no one had a beard back then, that's hard to comprehend now.
Dad would keep walking ,without responding in any way , to taunts like that, just go about his business , I admired him for that..
Wonder when that time will return , and how plain folks will take it , when that happens ....like I mention at the start , almost no one is alive now ,who recall that kind of treatment,for Anabaptists...

[readrevelations1to22]

Wonder when that time will return

I wonder if the ipad kid generation (gen a + some of gen z) will have a very different view towards plain people as they grow up? Being raised 99% indoors on the ipad and soon AI on top of that could make it harder than ever for them to relate to that way of life

[Neto]

Long beards in the mid-sixties - Hippies in Bolder Colorado.... (We had some in our MB congregation who wore a beard, especially one who was from KMB background. My grandpa had a cousin in the "Old Mennonite" congregation around 30-35 miles from us, so we sometimes visited there. I suspect that most of the men there had beards, if not all. But no one wore a 'full beard', as in uncut.)

[barnhart]

I was growing up Amish in the 1960's , There's not a lot of people alive today that recall how really tough it was back then.....being Amish ,and other Plain folks really had to live their beliefs, as most none Amish tended to view them as simple minded ,out of touch. backwards ,etc, perhaps like Gypsies .
That's what's changed a lot since then, today,Amish are admired and looked to as the greatest in lifestyles ,the Internet is full of Amish stories , Amish this ,and Amish that ,(most of that on-line stuff is faked) ,they are admired a lot ,for how they live and prosper .
I can still recall in the mid-sixtys , going with my Dad to the nearby town, how "English " kids would gawk and stare , and shout "Santa Claus is here'" , because dad had a full Amish beard , almost no one had a beard back then, that's hard to comprehend now.
Dad would keep walking ,without responding in any way , to taunts like that, just go about his business , I admired him for that..
Wonder when that time will return , and how plain folks will take it , when that happens ....like I mention at the start , almost no one is alive now ,who recall that kind of treatment,for Anabaptists...

As society grows more fractured with less of a unified core, so the pressure to conform to any single ideology or lifestyle decreases. If I had to guess about the next pinch point for Anabaptists it would be in two areas. First it may grow more difficult to sail against the modernism of human identity in areas like marriage and sexuality but it's also possible the greater danger may lie in failing to support so grand resurgence of national identity that purports to save us all from a future threat.

I can think of several examples of that caused real stress to Anabaptists in the past. The American revolution drew the lines of good and evil in such a way that God fearing colonists who wanted to "fear God and honor the king" were on the bad side. The US civil war pushed my ancestors into a very uncomfortable position of honoring a government that invades, kills your neighbors and burns your houses and barns. This put them in a less than popular position with their secular community.

WW2 posed a peculiar threat to Germanic Anabaptists because it attempted to combine national, ethnic and religious identity to unify and activate the population. This test was greater than many Anabaptists could withstand and they melted into the liquid hot flow of the spirit of the age. Even in America Germanic Anabaptists faced some pressure from society to conform to norms like accept the draft and buy war bonds. I've read of low scale hazing directed at beared Anabaptists during that time, mostly things like taunting and property damage.

Social conservative culture warriors would have me believe the imminent danger is from the intolerance of the cultural Left, and it may be so, but history says it's also possible to come from an unholy alliance of religious fervor and statecraft. The fires of persecution that drove Anabaptists out of Europe were lit by the godly.

[Neto]

As society grows more fractured with less of a unified core, so the pressure to conform to any single ideology or lifestyle decreases. If I had to guess about the next pinch point for Anabaptists it would be in two areas. First it may grow more difficult to sail against the modernism of human identity in areas like marriage and sexuality but it's also possible the greater danger may lie in failing to support so grand resurgence of national identity that purports to save us all from a future threat.

I can think of several examples of that caused real stress to Anabaptists in the past. The American revolution drew the lines of good and evil in such a way that God fearing colonists who wanted to "fear God and honor the king" were on the bad side. The US civil war pushed my ancestors into a very uncomfortable position of honoring a government that invades, kills your neighbors and burns your houses and barns. This put them in a less than popular position with their secular community.

WW2 posed a peculiar threat to Germanic Anabaptists because it attempted to combine national, ethnic and religious identity to unify and activate the population. This test was greater than many Anabaptists could withstand and they melted into the liquid hot flow of the spirit of the age. Even in America Germanic Anabaptists faced some pressure from society to conform to norms like accept the draft and buy war bonds. I've read of low scale hazing directed at bearded Anabaptists during that time, mostly things like taunting and property damage.

Social conservative culture warriors would have me believe the imminent danger is from the intolerance of the cultural Left, and it may be so, but history says it's also possible to come from an unholy alliance of religious fervor and statecraft. The fires of persecution that drove Anabaptists out of Europe were lit by the godly.

It got a little rougher than just taunting and property damage in Kansas during the WWII era. German speaking (although not 'Germanic') Mennonite men were beaten, and sometimes tarred and feathered - literally (as well as having their barns burned down).

In the Revolutionary War era there arose an internal dispute between Christian Funk and Jacob Oberholtzer after the Revolutionaries changed the wording of the Test Act to make the monetary support they were demanding from other colonists to make it a 'tax'. (Which they had no legal right to do, since they were not yet in control of the government.) Funk suggested paying the 'tax', and Oberholtzer maintained that no such thing should be done. As I understand, this caused a permanent split among the Mennonites in PA.

These same kinds of strife arose in the colonies in 'New Russia' as well, both during the Bolshevik revolution, and also during the German invasion of the Soviet Union (WWII).

These past events should prompt us to prepare ourselves for possible future conflicts, to guard against outside conflicts becoming internal conflicts.

[Soloist]

As society grows more fractured with less of a unified core, so the pressure to conform to any single ideology or lifestyle decreases. If I had to guess about the next pinch point for Anabaptists it would be in two areas. First it may grow more difficult to sail against the modernism of human identity in areas like marriage and sexuality but it's also possible the greater danger may lie in failing to support so grand resurgence of national identity that purports to save us all from a future threat.

I can think of several examples of that caused real stress to Anabaptists in the past. The American revolution drew the lines of good and evil in such a way that God fearing colonists who wanted to "fear God and honor the king" were on the bad side. The US civil war pushed my ancestors into a very uncomfortable position of honoring a government that invades, kills your neighbors and burns your houses and barns. This put them in a less than popular position with their secular community.

WW2 posed a peculiar threat to Germanic Anabaptists because it attempted to combine national, ethnic and religious identity to unify and activate the population. This test was greater than many Anabaptists could withstand and they melted into the liquid hot flow of the spirit of the age. Even in America Germanic Anabaptists faced some pressure from society to conform to norms like accept the draft and buy war bonds. I've read of low scale hazing directed at bearded Anabaptists during that time, mostly things like taunting and property damage.

Social conservative culture warriors would have me believe the imminent danger is from the intolerance of the cultural Left, and it may be so, but history says it's also possible to come from an unholy alliance of religious fervor and statecraft. The fires of persecution that drove Anabaptists out of Europe were lit by the godly.

It got a little rougher than just taunting and property damage in Kansas during the WWII era. German speaking (although not 'Germanic') Mennonite men were beaten, and sometimes tarred and feathered - literally (as well as having their barns burned down).

In the Revolutionary War era there arose an internal dispute between Christian Funk and Jacob Oberholtzer after the Revolutionaries changed the wording of the Test Act to make the monetary support they were demanding from other colonists to make it a 'tax'. (Which they had no legal right to do, since they were not yet in control of the government.) Funk suggested paying the 'tax', and Oberholtzer maintained that no such thing should be done. As I understand, this caused a permanent split among the Mennonites in PA.

These same kinds of strife arose in the colonies in 'New Russia' as well, both during the Bolshevik revolution, and also during the German invasion of the Soviet Union (WWII).

These past events should prompt us to prepare ourselves for possible future conflicts, to guard against outside conflicts becoming internal conflicts.

Wife: wow, I did not know about the World War II stuff. That would be interesting to read up on more. I just know about painting yellow lines around churches, and possibly some churches being burnt. it was really interesting listening to Chester Weaver’s talk on the Russian revolution.

[JohnH]

German culture was completely squashed through WWI and WWII (as was Italian; most of what we think of as "Italian culture" are migrants who came into the country after WWII).

On the flip side, it means my ancestors ended up completely, thoroughly Americanised, with not much left of various cultures outside of an ethnic dish or two. Oddly enough, the most preserved German/Swiss/Dutch/Austrian etc. culture you can find in America these days is amongst the Amish and other Swiss Brethren circles and Russian Mennonite background circles and Hutterite communities.

[JayP]

It never seems to end. While I agree that the world wars resulted in significant “repression” of German culture and identity in due to the world wars I think JohnH overstates it. I myself come from a Germanic family in which my parents generation were forbidden to learn German and my grandparents would not teach it, wanting their children to be Americans.
However, the vast majority of immigrants from Italy arrived prior to 1925 In cities like NY and Phila Italian. Culture was well inculcated before eWWII broke out. To this day Italian is still widely spoken in South Philadelphia.

For whatever reasons, Italian Americans did not need to prove their loyalty the way German and to a greater degree Japanese Americans did during WWII

Just fact checking

[barnhart]

In the Revolutionary War era there arose an internal dispute between Christian Funk and Jacob Oberholtzer after the Revolutionaries changed the wording of the Test Act to make the monetary support they were demanding from other colonists to make it a 'tax'. (Which they had no legal right to do, since they were not yet in control of the government.) Funk suggested paying the 'tax', and Oberholtzer maintained that no such thing should be done. As I understand, this caused a permanent split among the Mennonites in PA.

This was also a question for Virginia Mennonites. As I recall some paid and some did not. I don't think it was quite as fractious because they were dealing with far greater violence. It was more practical than theoretical. I read about some sort of examination process after the war for men caught up in it who wanted to rejoin the church. There were shades of gray as some were impressed into the Confederate Army by force.

[JohnH]

It never seems to end.

What doesn't?