Menfolk: Your church's standards on facial hair?

[JimFoxvog]

I am told the original intent was to shun popular trends associated with a military style in the 19th century which I can appreciate.

Yes, this is very similar to the counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s, where longer hair in males was seen as a rejection of the military and business classes. I absorbed those values.

[ohio jones]

I would be very interested in Nathan's explanation. The Facebook link didn't work for me. If anyone finds his reasoning in print, please do let us know.

It took a bit since it's more lengthy than some of his reels, but here is my transcription, perhaps a little rough in the punctuation department because the presentation was extemporaneous. The guy behind the camera is named Ernie, but it's not "our" Ernie. Nathan is sitting at a table in the aisle of his store, in front of an end cap of jams and jellies which have no doubt been featured in another reel.

Ernie: I’m here at Overholt’s Farm Market in Hurricane Mills, TN. I’m gonna sit here and talk with the owner, Nathan Overholt, sipping his coffee this morning, got his microphone clipped up to his beard, couldn’t find a good place for that mike so we just clipped it up to his beard. Nathan’s okay with it so what’s been happening, Mr. Overholt?

Nathan: Well, Ernie, I’ve been hearing that there’s a few folks out there that are concerned that I’m having this mustache on my face here.

E: People are asking about that mustache, they are saying that no Amish man has a mustache, he’s not real Amish.

N: Well, that’s a really good, you know, first of all, I’m gonna try to talk a little bit about that. These are some of my suppositions, I haven’t done a full-blown research into this, but here’s what I’m thinking. So I’m gonna start with a little story. I had this gentleman one day at one of our conferences, he came up to me – now he was a very straight-laced Mennonite type guy with, well you could see he was really into, you know, [forms square with fingers] cut and dried, and he really took me to task on this. First of all he said, man, he says, I don’t understand you guys, Overholts, you guys are really like ecumenical, you’re hanging out with all kinds of people and being friends. I says, well, I’m sorry sir, I don’t mean to disappoint you, but we try to fellowship with a broad spectrum of people and try to be friends to all.

Secondly, he says, what about this [gesturing to mustache], how can you wear this thing on your top lip? And I’m like, excuse me sir – I won’t say his name – and I reached down; I said pardon me sir, and I reached down, now you know, gotta be real careful doing something like this, but I reached down and I pulled up his pant leg and I said, oh my goodness, you don’t shave your leg either. And we looked at each other and he chuckled and I laughed, and we had a little laugh, I tried to defuse that. After all, who created the hair on our bodies? After all, who says, who picks and chooses, who decides? So I started off with that. I think this is a creation principle. [interruption to wave a greeting to a customer]

And secondly, I would say that this thing ebbs and flows in our experience as Anabaptists, Amish, Mennonite people. Through history we’ve had times, high times and there’s been low times, times that we’ve been more affected by society around us. And then we try to maybe change to be more like society, be androgynous, or maybe we’re reactionary, we try to, oh! since they’re doing this, now we gotta not do this, type of thing. So it could be reaction or it could be – well, here, let me unpack this one. So most people, Amish, Mennonites feel like this, that it came from during the time of when the, like, we’re Swiss Anabaptists, and we got chased out with just the clothing on our backs, left our farms, went to the state church, and we got ran out, ran up into Alsace-Lorraine, the Vosges mountains in France, Strasbourg area, we also went up into the Palatinate, up into Germany, it was right after the Thirty Years War, everything was decimated, and so we saw these French guys with their mustaches like this [curls outer ends] and we’re like, oh! heaven help us lest we should become like the world around us here. So we’re like, maybe we should just cut this off, and so we look more distinct. And never mind that the creator made us this way. Huh. Anyhow, some people say that’s what it was.

I have also a supposition. If you look at Abraham Lincoln, pardon me for dropping his name, but you look at that generation, the 1850s, 60s, 70s, I saw some old pictures in Europe of Mennonites. It’s amazing, during that era also they were losing, or took away, their mustaches. And I’m just, it’s a curiosity thing to me, could it have been that, maybe they were trying to blend in a little more to society and so they cut it off.

E, interrupting: ...fads change, fashion changes. Usually people don’t think that the attitude of the Mennonite community changes much...

N: Oh, we do. We do. We change. So, let’s say this. So fast forward a, you know, that was kinda hypothet– we don’t know exactly, those are my thoughts. Fast forward, where we are as far as, do we allow it or don’t we, that depends on the congregation. If you have a congregation that – every congregation is, or conference is – we don’t have a pope or a central bishop that tells us what to do, we try to be, uh, as a congregation to decide our standard of practice, where we’d like to draw the line. Do we draw the line here, or here, and all of us draw lines in life, all of us decide what we want to or what we don’t want to do. So I would say that most congregations have that freedom to pick and choose where they want to draw the line. Our congregation here at Hurricane Mills, we say this is fine to use it all like God created it.

I have lots of friends who don’t have beards, some with really small beards like yours, Ernie, and, uh, well, [reaches off camera] we gotta get some, we gotta get a little bit of this here for you [camera zooms in on a tin of “Overholt Brothers Beard Balm, Big Beard Soft Heart, 100% Pure & Natural, Renews, Repairs, Restores” featuring the heads, hats, and beards of Nathan and Matthias], yeah, a little more of this for you, Ernie.

But anyhow, all jest aside, so we want to respect people wherever they are. I give the kiss of peace to all people whether they’re beards, half beards, no beards, whatever. We try to bless people, meet people wherever they are. Thank you very much, if you’ve got any more thoughts or, uh, give me a call, tell me what you think.

[JohnH]

One of the nice things about the forum reboot awhile back is that you can go back and like your own posts.

Gave you another one. Isn't it fascinating to consider that, in some of the more conservative groups such as the one yours came from, those who are most strongly against allowing men to let their beards grow are more likely to forbid their wives and daughters to have shaved legs? The forbidding beards is one of those small burrs that I struggle not to let become a sore.

They essentially have a philosophy that women should never cut / remove / shave any hairs, but that men should definitely do so.

There is a certain amount of inconsistency since I doubt their men are shaving their legs, armpits and so on.

For an outsider perspective, I don’t see much utility in a culture that promotes women shaving their legs, armpits and so forth and teaches that women are less feminine, less attractive, disgusting and so on if they don’t do so. Particularly in our Anabaptist culture where armpits and legs are often (mostly) covered.

Hutterite women typically wear a white “peasant” type shirt with a jumper style dress over top of it - a simple, modest, and traditional style. They also are often not on the habit of shaving their armpits, which is perfectly acceptable.

Faith Builders had a lot of heartburn about this and enacted a dress code that their shirt sleeves weren’t long enough due to the visible armpit hair. Moderate conservatives generally aren’t offended by very short shirt sleeves on women.

This is another example of how “less conservative” Mennonite groups are actually just as strict and authoritarian - they simply pressure people to be more conformed to the world.

[mike]

I would be very interested in Nathan's explanation. The Facebook link didn't work for me. If anyone finds his reasoning in print, please do let us know.

It took a bit since it's more lengthy than some of his reels, but here is my transcription, perhaps a little rough in the punctuation department because the presentation was extemporaneous. The guy behind the camera is named Ernie, but it's not "our" Ernie. Nathan is sitting at a table in the aisle of his store, in front of an end cap of jams and jellies which have no doubt been featured in another reel.

I have lots of friends who don’t have beards, some with really small beards like yours, Ernie, and, uh, well, [reaches off camera] we gotta get some, we gotta get a little bit of this here for you [camera zooms in on a tin of “Overholt Brothers Beard Balm, Big Beard Soft Heart, 100% Pure & Natural, Renews, Repairs, Restores” featuring the heads, hats, and beards of Nathan and Matthias], yeah, a little more of this for you, Ernie.

Slick marketing!

[Heirbyadoption]

One of the nice things about the forum reboot awhile back is that you can go back and like your own posts.

Yea, our ability to rationalize whatever traditional practices we appreciate is quite something, isn't it?
Also would be quite something to attend church with folks who have removed all facial hair...

I am told the original intent was to shun popular trends associated with a military style in the 19th century which I can appreciate. I have room for local churches to raise standards to witness against local threats. But it needs to be coupled with a clear minded determination to avoid traditionalism where a practice cannot be re- evaluated and it becomes necessary to create fragile quazi scriptural justifications to avoid changing it.

"Fragile quasi scriptural justifications - now there's a mouthful (and a thread-worthy discussion ). In keeping with the OP, my church fellowship's polity/standard on facial hair (updated about 5 years ago or so) currently says the following (document available at [url]www.https://ogbbc.org/resource/faith-practice-document/[/url]:

"In harmony with Scripture, we uphold gender distinction in appearance. Brethren avoid long hair and following after the world’s styles and fashions in grooming. When the beard is worn, it is to be worn with humility, not conforming to the fashions and trends of the world. The absence of the mustache, while a matter of tradition, is preferred among us."

Our male constituency would probably be %60 bearded, %40 bare-faced, as we've never technically required the beard (even in our Old Order days) of any brothers outside of the ordained ones... We "full-bearded" (mustache-included) folks would probably comprise only 10-15% of the bearded folk at this point, as beards with mustaches were more or less verboten prior to our excommunication from our previous conference.

[mike]

"In harmony with Scripture, we uphold gender distinction in appearance. Brethren avoid long hair and following after the world’s styles and fashions in grooming. When the beard is worn, it is to be worn with humility, not conforming to the fashions and trends of the world. The absence of the mustache, while a matter of tradition, is preferred among us."

That's a nice, humble way of putting it. I wish we had the humility to say things like that about some of our traditions, and the flexibility of allowing people to make their own choices when it comes to traditions that really have no basis in scripture, like that of forbidding the beard or mustache.

But I think the reason we don't typically have rules that state preferences without making a hard and fast rule is that you may as well not say anything at all about it if you're not going to forbid it. Heiry, do you see that 10-15% of men wearing mustaches as a growing number? How large would that number need to become before it would be hard to say any more that the absence of the mustache is preferred?

Parts (maybe all at this point?) of the former Pilgrim conference are an example of a conservative Mennonite church that recently reversed its prohibition of the mustache, and a friend of mine observed that it is miraculous how many previously clean-shaven Pilgrim men gained "convictions" for the beard overnight. One of these guys had a Sunday night devotional for us the other night, and the same friend told me he is still recovering from Duck Dynasty having devotions at church.

My son has said he would grow a beard if the mustache was allowed. I can sympathize with that idea, although when we joined our current church, it would have been pretty difficult for me to completely get rid of my beard. Just whacking my mustache was bad enough. But going from wearing a beard one's whole adult life to being clean shaven is a real change- your face feels absolutely naked.

[barnhart]

" Fragile quasi scriptural justifications" - now there's a mouthful (and a thread-worthy discussion ). In keeping with the OP, my church fellowship's polity/standard on facial hair (updated about 5 years ago or so) currently says the following (document available at [url]www.https://ogbbc.org/resource/faith-practice-document/[/url]:

"In harmony with Scripture, we uphold gender distinction in appearance. Brethren avoid long hair and following after the world’s styles and fashions in grooming. When the beard is worn, it is to be worn with humility, not conforming to the fashions and trends of the world. The absence of the mustache, while a matter of tradition, is preferred among us."

I like this.