Am I The Only Ex Mennonite Amish Person On Exchristian.net?

[R. S. Martin]

I'm curious if there are any other ex-Mennonite or Amish or other Anabaptist churches represented here at exChristian.net. I know there's ex Southern Baptists here by the droves but I understand Baptists come from a different tradition than the Mennonites and Amish.

 

I'm curious why we don't see more exMennonites here but so many people from other denominations. Is it because Mennonites span the full range from ultra conservative to ultra liberal? There are horse and buggy Mennonites who are more conservative than the group I come from. And there are Mennonites who are so liberal that they don't believe in hell and the historical Jesus is pretty iffy, and the concept of God is anything but fundy Biblegod. They probably don't believe in an afterlife, either. But you better call them Christian. It's who they are and they view the world through the lens of Christianity.

 

I'm just trying to get a handle on exactly how liberal this one church really is. The one lady works at the Mennonite credit union where I have my bank account. She knows that I deconverted. She also knows that I do my business at the credit union. My deconversion must not figure very importantly with her if she has not reported my deconversion. No one has told me that I should move my account to a "secular" institution. Perhaps there are other deconverts there and nobody cares. However, when I started up the account I had to put in the name of the church I was attending.

 

So it seems to be possible to be Mennonite but not be really religious. Is that why we don't see more exMennonites here? Or are they here and I just don't see them?

[pandora]

I think I've seen a few come and go, but they weren't regulars. One of my profs is an ex-Christian Mennonite.

[Franciscan Monkey]

RubySera,

 

My guess as to the main reason you don't see that many ex-Mennonites or Amish here is due to the much smaller numbers of total Mennonites and Amish people period. In the US, there are approximately 368,000 Mennonites and 200,000 Amish, whereas there are about 50 million Baptists. So there are 88 Baptists in the US for every Mennonite or Amish.

 

Respectfully,

FRanciscan Monkey

[R. S. Martin]

Okay, I didn't know the numbers for the Baptists. It's hard for me to visualize because the historical Mennonite areas I know have such high concentrations of Mennonites that there's hardly room for equal numbers of Baptists (or any other denomination) in the same area. However, if the Baptists are spread through the wide open areas between the Mennonite settlements, then we are definitely talking numbers way beyond anything comparable with Mennonites or Amish.

 

There are quite a number of modern Mennonite churches in this town. I understand Mennonites from Pennsylvania were the first white settlers to chop down trees where this city now stands. I know of at least two Baptist churches. I'd have to check the telephone directory to know--okay I pulled it out. Fifteen names under Baptist Churches. Twenty-five under Mennonite. Lutheran: 30. If counting addresses in the Yellow Pages indicates the size of denominations in a town, I now understand why the Pennsylvania German culture is so strong in this town. I didn't check--there might be other denominations between the size of the Baptists and Mennonites in this town, but there are none between the Mennonites and Lutherans. [LATER: I counted churches for the other longest lists. They appear below. This is the 2006 telephone directory.]

 

And I know from local history that them two denominations come from the same place in Europe, spoke the same dialect. In my great grandparents' day they socialized and intermarried. Up to WW2 the Lutherans spoke PA German. Less then ten years ago I talked with an old guy who spoke the same dialect with identical accent as us. The Mennonites in Lancaster County, PA, have a different accent from us. So do the Amish. But not the Lutherans in this area--the few remaining senior citizens who speak it.

 

Roman Catholics spoke it, too. They used to live in the rural area but the younger generations moved to the city and the horse and buggy Mennonites took over their farms. You can imagine that the Mennonites thought about the story of God chasing the Canaanites out of the Promised Land for the Chosen People. Of course, we were the Chosen People and the Catholics were the Canaanites. And since they had martyred our ancestors in Europe back in the 1500s, it all made sense that they got routed. UGH! This kind of thinking gave one the fuzzies alright, but even then I wondered if it was correct according to God's view, and how we could know for sure. Not the kind of questions one could ask. And God never answered.

 

Anyway, you can see why I had no idea that there were all that many Baptists in the land. So where are they? Am I right in that they are spread throughout the areas between the Mennonite-Amish settlements in about the same concentration that they exist within our areas? Or are the concentrations heavier where there are not so many Mennonites and Amish?

 

Numbers of Churches in the Largest Denominations in MyTown,* 2006. Population about 400,000.

 

Baptist 15

Evangelical Missionary 11

Lutheran 30

Mennonite 25

Pentecostal 12

Presbyterian 9

Roman Catholic 22

United Church of Canada 17

 

*This does not include the horse and buggy Mennonite geographical area. Any Mennonites represented in this list are modern Mennonites who live and dress like mainstream society. In the horse and buggy Mennonite area, the concentration of Mennonites is much higher.

[Franciscan Monkey]

RunySera,

 

I live in Florida, so the concentration of Baptist churches is much higher, although not as high as it was in South Carolina, where I lived for awhile. I am originally from New England, and tere were very few Baptist churches there, but a lot of Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches.

 

Just for fun, I looked in my yellow pages just like you did, and got these results:

 

Baptist (all types)

[Franciscan Monkey]

Sorry, screwed that up, anyway...

 

Baptist 41

Lutheran 13

Pentecostal 12

Presbyterian 11

Catholic 11

Methodist 8

Episcopal 8

Seventh Day Adventist 3

LDS 2

Brethren 1

 

This list didn't inlcude all denominations, of course, but you get the drift.

 

Respectfully,

Franciscan Monkey

[live and learn]

Hi RubySera,

 

I was raised as a Mennonite...until I escaped that stranglehold and moved over to the stranglehold of the pentecostals.(Smart move, huh? Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire.)

 

The church my family belonged to was more liberal than yours, but my mother leaned far to conservative side. We had to wear hand sewn dresses/no pants/no jewelry/no makeup/no haircuts/no movies/no non-Xtian music, no so many things. On the other hand, we actually had a car, and it didn't have to be all black (including all chrome parts) like our neighbors.

My grandparents on both sides were typical very Old Order Mennonites, full black bonnet-horse and buggy-black stockings-beard-hat-no buttons-Pa. Dutch. My father was required to drop out of school in 8th grade. I was a very bad girl and went to college..but a Mennonite college, at least. And once I was away from my family/church/god controlling every thought in my head, I started to try to see who I was and who I did not want to be. It was a very convulated path out. But I have over the past 30 years been able to start to leave who I was and begin to become a full person.

 

Yup, I learned to smoke both cigs and pot, drink, and swear like a sailor. I had a child out of wedlock, married a junkie, divorced, and became the rock and roll, slutty, shrink-seeing jet black sheep of the family. I've come back towards the center, not needing to be far out religious nor far out mega-sinner, recognizing that I do not want to be a person who is defined by what other people think I should be. I have the freedom to act by what I want, not by doing what other people want OR by doing the extreme opposite just to fell free of that.

 

I'd be happy to talk about any of this. Let me know if you have questions.

 

A fellow X-Menno

[The-Captain]

When I was a serious fundy I played with the idea of going Amish or something like that...... Scary that I wouldve wished that oppression on myself, but I kinda bought into the whole "being apart from the world" that started the Amish in the first place. But in my deluded state o' mind it seemed perfectly logical if I wanted to follow all the babbles good orders.

 

Dont know about ya'll but whenever I read the stories of xians doing terrible things to themselves and others in the "name o' god", I shudder b/c I can remember when I might have done much the same.

[R. S. Martin]

Hi RubySera,

 

I was raised as a Mennonite...until I escaped that stranglehold and moved over to the stranglehold of the pentecostals.(Smart move, huh? Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire.)

 

The church my family belonged to was more liberal than yours, but my mother leaned far to conservative side. We had to wear hand sewn dresses/no pants/no jewelry/no makeup/no haircuts/no movies/no non-Xtian music, no so many things. On the other hand, we actually had a car, and it didn't have to be all black (including all chrome parts) like our neighbors.

My grandparents on both sides were typical very Old Order Mennonites, full black bonnet-horse and buggy-black stockings-beard-hat-no buttons-Pa. Dutch. My father was required to drop out of school in 8th grade. I was a very bad girl and went to college..but a Mennonite college, at least. And once I was away from my family/church/god controlling every thought in my head, I started to try to see who I was and who I did not want to be. It was a very convulated path out. But I have over the past 30 years been able to start to leave who I was and begin to become a full person.

 

Yup, I learned to smoke both cigs and pot, drink, and swear like a sailor. I had a child out of wedlock, married a junkie, divorced, and became the rock and roll, slutty, shrink-seeing jet black sheep of the family. I've come back towards the center, not needing to be far out religious nor far out mega-sinner, recognizing that I do not want to be a person who is defined by what other people think I should be. I have the freedom to act by what I want, not by doing what other people want OR by doing the extreme opposite just to fell free of that.

 

I'd be happy to talk about any of this. Let me know if you have questions.

 

A fellow X-Menno

 

The beard and no buttons makes me think perhaps your grandparents were Amish rather than Mennonite. Might that be correct? Your name "live and learn"--maybe that's a common term used by any and all cultures but the only place I heard it a lot was when I was babysitting for a modern Mennonite family. The mother worked at House of Friendship in Kitchener. You don't have to answer this, but "live and learn," Mennonite, I'm wondering if by any chance you grew up near here. Yet the way you describe the rules of your church for thirty years ago--I can't think of any group of Mennonites in the Waterloo County area that fitted that description thirty years ago. Heh, you can tell I like "guess who" games.

[R. S. Martin]

Sorry, screwed that up, anyway...

 

Baptist 41

Lutheran 13

Pentecostal 12

Presbyterian 11

Catholic 11

Methodist 8

Episcopal 8

Seventh Day Adventist 3

LDS 2

Brethren 1

 

This list didn't inlcude all denominations, of course, but you get the drift.

 

Respectfully,

Franciscan Monkey

 

Your posts are beginning to give me some perspective on the situation. On the list here, there are 110 churches, and 41 of those are Baptist of some kind. The next in size, Lutheran, is less than one third the size of Baptist. Just now I added up the churches in my list--there's 141 but the numbers are much more evenly distributed. Interesting.

[Medjool]

I was a converted Mennonite and attended a moderate-liberal Menno church in Pennsylvania. I grew up Methodist and attended a Baptist-ish college, but was entranced by the Mennonites and joined the church for several years before I finally fully deconverted altogether. I'll put it all in my upcoming extimony, but I'll say now that I truly loved my church. It was special and perhaps unique. People were so genuine and I loved the focus on this world, rather than the next life focus I'd grown up with. When I moved across the country, however, the Menno church in my new city was more of the same old church politics and god-talk I'd always known as Christianity. So I stopped attending and came to my senses. But every so often, I honestly wonder if I might still consider myself a Christian (albeit very liberal) if I still lived in PA and could go back to that church....

 

Having had glimpses of the conservative Menno world, I'm always fascinated by your views and input here.

[Celsus]

Ruby,

 

Other than you, most ex Mennonite/Amish folks seem to have problems connecting their computers to the internet. It seems to be a compatibility issue between "Amish Labs" built computers and the generally accepted standards of W3C. See this for more details. Amish Labs FAQS

[R. S. Martin]

Bruce, someone is making fun of us. We're not that stupid.

 

There are two groups of horse and buggy Mennonites in the community where I lived most of my life. The other group (not my group) uses computers and the internet for business. They have telephones but no powerlines. They generate their power with generators. They shut it all down at the end of the business day, I was told by one service man. A local high school teacher told me they are sending some of their young people to high school for training to use computers. These people are very big in small business and manufacturing. They continue using horse and buggy transportation and farm with horses. My former group farms with tractors and has powerlines but does not allow computers.

 

I know very little about the Amish beyond general information.

[R. S. Martin]

I was a converted Mennonite and attended a moderate-liberal Menno church in Pennsylvania. I grew up Methodist and attended a Baptist-ish college, but was entranced by the Mennonites and joined the church for several years before I finally fully deconverted altogether. I'll put it all in my upcoming extimony, but I'll say now that I truly loved my church. It was special and perhaps unique. People were so genuine and I loved the focus on this world, rather than the next life focus I'd grown up with. When I moved across the country, however, the Menno church in my new city was more of the same old church politics and god-talk I'd always known as Christianity. So I stopped attending and came to my senses. But every so often, I honestly wonder if I might still consider myself a Christian (albeit very liberal) if I still lived in PA and could go back to that church....

 

Having had glimpses of the conservative Menno world, I'm always fascinated by your views and input here.

 

I look forward to your testimony.

[live and learn]

RubySera,

 

I'm from northeast Ohio, just north of the Ohio Amish country. You have a good point: my dad's parents may actually have been Amish. I have to admit I never really understood the cutoff points on the More Plain Than Thou continuum that Mennos/Amish divide themselves up into.

 

Some of the more conserative neighbors were called Whistler mennonites. I think we were Franconia conference maybe? Or General conference...wait, that's football, isn't it?

 

The repressed emotional atmosphere of that denomination primed me for the overly emotional pentacostals. Two of my older brothers got sucked into that, and in my isolation and depression it seemed wonderful. I remember telling my mother I did not want to join the Mennonite church because it was "lukewarm" and God would spit them out of his mouth, and showing her the bible verse. I was so full of it.

 

Maybe you can guess that I ended up pretty messed up in the head. For all I know the small gene pool helped precipitate the major depression that I have struggled with my whole life. I blamed myself, even as a kid, for the depression.

 

My life went something like this. I feel bad---sin is bad---the reason I feel bad is because I'm a sinner---I'm going to hell---now I feel even worse---Jesus save me---I still feel bad---I'm bad because I should now feel better, my fault for not having enough faith, Jesus would make me happy if I was really saved, and according to John 3:16 blah blah blah so I am an even worse person because I didn't have faith when I prayed so I better start the whole cycle over again. And every time around I was deeper in the hole because of each previous failure. Begging hour upon hourI for just the tiniest flicker of light from the almighty all loving monster. I wasted so much of my life and went through so much pain. Maybe I hate religion.

 

Back to the Menno thing...There are a lot of truly good salt of the earth people in the religion. I really used to like the pacifist stance of that church. But now that I work in a veterans hospital, my view has changed to some extent.

Being a pacifist is fine. But if all Americans believed that way, we'd all be royal subjects still. Or worse yet, a part of the Third Reich. It seems wrong to believe one is living the True Way, when the only reason one has the freedom to do that is because others are willing to stand up to real oppression for us. And we tell them they're going to hell for not being pacifist like us?

[live and learn]

Ooops, I forgot to tell you that my moniker "live and learn" is simply a reminder to not forget the lessons I've learned from my mistakes. Should have been a little more creative, huh?

[BlueGiant]

Other than you, and now live and learn, I haven't really noticed other ex-Amish or ex-Mennonites around here (then again, it may not have come up...). As for myself, my family on my dad's side left about 5 generations ago in NE Indiana. Apparently caused quite a stir at the time. I know some of my family has had closer ties to the Mennonite church more recently, but to what extent, I'm not sure.

 

Way I see it, I'm just continuing his work...

 

As for why there aren't more here? Well, it seems to be an unusual thing in the US at least, and probably in the rest of the world, to break religious indoctrination, if you were at the point where you were ripping out a big part of your identity (or at least changing it). Now add to that that the Mennonite and Amish populations are small, and you get a very small number of people. I would imagine that computer skills are less common in those communities as well (though you have proven my initial assumption of their nonexistence wrong, Ruby), making it less common for them to turn to an online community for support/venting/whatever the hell we come here for.

 

Uncommon, yes, but at the same time, I am glad to have your uncommonness here.

[R. S. Martin]

Blue Giant, as has been discussed earlier in this thread, I think the small numbers probably accounts for it. I wasn't aware that there are so few Amish and Mennonites compared to other denominations such as Baptists. In earlier posts you can see where a few of us were counting churches in the Yellow Pages. There's just a LOT of Mennonites in my own area but that seems not to be typical across North America.

 

I really like what you say about "ripping out identity." Wow! that feels like you know what you're talking about. I'm never sure how to separate that from my deconversion process. I'm sure my deconversion process would have been very much different had it not been for the huge part cultural identity played. I find myself identifying a lot with the cultural religion of exCatholics here. Some of our members here consider themselves exChristians but they still go to mass. It's like it's a part of life on the same level almost as brushing their teeth. You just don't not go.

 

This thread is doing what I had hoped--it's bringing people "out of the woodwork."

 

Live and learn, it sounds like you really went through the roller-coaster.

 

live and learn said:

 

I'm from northeast Ohio, just north of the Ohio Amish country. You have a good point: my dad's parents may actually have been Amish. I have to admit I never really understood the cutoff points on the More Plain Than Thou continuum that Mennos/Amish divide themselves up into.

 

I'm not so familiar with that culture there but it sounds like things I've read about--Frankonia Conference.

 

Or worse yet, a part of the Third Reich. It seems wrong to believe one is living the True Way, when the only reason one has the freedom to do that is because others are willing to stand up to real oppression for us. And we tell them they're going to hell for not being pacifist like us?

 

Yeah, when I was studying theology and church history at the Lutheran Seminary was maybe the first time that I was able to see it outside of the Mennonite mindset. Suddenly I was asking myself, "But these Anabaptists were a real headache! Was it really this important--this stand that they took? And the Mennonites in the 20th century--were they really so noble to be conscientious objectors?"

 

I DON'T KNOW.

 

Then I see videos of Martin Luther King's boycotts and Ghandi who peacefully overturned The System. I don't think we can make rules for all times and all places. I think we each need to do what needs to be done in our own time and place. I have such a hard time knowing how to conduct my own life that it hardly behooves me to pass judgment on others in other times and places, esp. if I cannot make a difference anyway.

[live and learn]

Blue Giant,

Your point about identity is so on the mark. I had no reference points outside of the church to build an identity from. I think that for me, my family was simply a part of the church, since religion was the only thing that was "worthwhile". Unfortunately for me, that atmosphere totally quashed my emotional development, and I have paid the price for that my entire life. Once I finally understood that there is life beyond religion, I've been able to work on "growing a self".

 

I use this forum to reinforce this separation of religion and self. Every time I log on, it's like I'm once again poking my nose out from underneath the couch and seeing a whole other world out there. Thanks one and all.

[GraphicsGuy]

When I was a serious fundy I played with the idea of going Amish or something like that......

 

Funny you should say that. As I became more and more unglued I was getting to be convinced that a communal structure away from larger society was the only way to truly avoid temptation and live a life pleasing to God. I had plans drawn up for a communal village with fallout shelters and food storage containers in case of WWIII before the rapture.

 

I'm serious...stop laughing!

[live and learn]

I wasn't aware that there are so few Amish and Mennonites compared to other denominations such as Baptists... There's just a LOT of Mennonites in my own area but that seems not to be typical across North America.

 

Mennonites/Amish cluster together, and it's interesting/horrifying how the isolation of the sect skews our perceptions. Although they often are 90% or more of a community, they represent only a very tiny fraction. If you live near Lancaster, Pa., Goshen, Ind., Harrisonburg, Va., Kalona, Iowa, northeast Ohio, or Kitchener, Ontario (correct me if I'm wrong on this one), you can expect Mennonites/Amish to be the norm.

 

One of my father's brothers moved his family from Pa. to Mississipi, then later on to Brazil, where new clusters were being formed. I guess the countryside of Pa. was just too much Sodom and Gamorrah for them.

 

Ironically, one of my cousins on my mother's side moved to Australia. Turns out she's a lesbian and felt that she had to go to the other side of the world, literally, to be free to be who she is. Really sad, isn't it?

 

Another cousin was not allowed to eat at the table with the rest of us. Relegated to the kitchen. And my crazy as a loon aunt sat on the bottom step with the door closed to eat her meal. In retrospect, she may have been schizophrenic, or was it the kick in the head by the horse, or the man she loved that she was forbidden to see when she was younger? Man, it's sad to think about all that.

 

I wonder how nature vs. nurture fits in to a small sect that only reproduces from the same gene pool. I'd really be interested in finding out more on that. Any ideas?

[live and learn]

When I was a serious fundy I played with the idea of going Amish or something like that......

 

Funny you should say that. As I became more and more unglued I was getting to be convinced that a communal structure away from larger society was the only way to truly avoid temptation and live a life pleasing to God. I had plans drawn up for a communal village with fallout shelters and food storage containers in case of WWIII before the rapture.

 

I'm serious...stop laughing!

 

Trust me, not laughing here. I've got a friend who thinks it would be really cool to join the Amish. Not sure if the appeal is so much to join the Amish as such. I suspect it's more to leave behind the difficulty of making decisions for oneself.

 

-What hairstyle would look best on me? Bun and bonnet, of course. Using hairpins vs. bobby pins, that's your choice.

-What do I want to be when I grow up? Housewife and mother, of course. Your husband will make the choice of how many children for both of you, and it will be to spit out as many as possible. Good farmhands are hard to find, so whatever it takes to fill the farm chore roster. An added benefit is that you will never have to pass high school algebra, since you're going to drop out in 8th grade. And no student loans to pay, either!

-What color do I want my new car? Black on black, with extra black and/or dark grey, your choice. Course, you're going to hell for owning a car anyway, at least in this section of Goshen.

-Where should we spend vacation? What, leave the twice daily chores? Not possible. If the head of the household grants you permission, you might be able to visit your sister's family to help with the new baby. Six kids under the age of ten, huh? God sure is blessing her. Praise his name. Go ask the worldly neighbor if she will drive you there.

(Just don't ask why it's a sin to own a car but not to freeload a ride in one. God's ways are far above ours, and I'm sure he has his reasons.)

 

 

 

By the way, graphicsguy, do you live in Goshen or Elkhart? Gotta be one or the other.

[R. S. Martin]

I wasn't aware that there are so few Amish and Mennonites compared to other denominations such as Baptists... There's just a LOT of Mennonites in my own area but that seems not to be typical across North America.

 

Mennonites/Amish cluster together, and it's interesting/horrifying how the isolation of the sect skews our perceptions. Although they often are 90% or more of a community, they represent only a very tiny fraction. If you live near Lancaster, Pa., Goshen, Ind., Harrisonburg, Va., Kalona, Iowa, northeast Ohio, or Kitchener, Ontario (correct me if I'm wrong on this one), you can expect Mennonites/Amish to be the norm.

 

You're right on that. I'm in the Waterloo part of Kitchener-Waterloo. I spent most of my life in the horse and buggy community in the rural area just north of town. I would say it's an approximately 200-300 square miles of solid Mennonite country--99.999% Mennonites on the farms. In the towns the concentration is lower. That's only one of the horse and buggy settlements in Ontario. Right next to the horse and buggy Mennonite settlement is a very large Amish settlement that is almost as old.

 

I understand about your cousin feeling a need to go to the other side of the world. At one point I was contemplating the possibility of disappearing. I concluded that it would be impossible. I could never hide my horse and buggy Mennonite identity. Sooner or later it would come out. And from there it would be only a matter of time until I was traced to the "missing person" from the Waterloo County Mennonite community. Of course, it never occurred to me to leave this continent.

 

My father's cousin also went to Australia. I don't know why. I know of a few people who said they had to physically leave the community to learn who they were in their own right before healing could take place. Not all of these people left Christianity; just the Plain People. Doing mission work on another continent, moving to another state, that sort of thing where they got totally away from anyone who knew and valued them based on their bloodlines and family history/religion was what they needed. For me, living in the city seems to be what I need.

 

I'm in a part of the city where I seldom see Plain People--about once a year on average. Flashbacks are triggered a lot by other things but that would happen anywhere.

 

I wonder how nature vs. nurture fits in to a small sect that only reproduces from the same gene pool. I'd really be interested in finding out more on that. Any ideas?

 

I've been part of discussions on this and I find it traumatic--too unsettling. I am who I am. Maybe I should be someone else, maybe I should never have been born. I struggle with depression. Tell a person with chronic depression who has wished most of their life to be dead that they should never have been born. These are my people. They have hurt me like none other can. Yet I love them. They are part of me. I'm raging mad at them. I want sympathy and support on one hand so I can rage against how they hurt me. On the other hand, they have major problems brought on by themselves by their religion, one of which is a small gene pool. Some say they're going to die out in a few generations because of it. I say that's bogus.

 

These people have survived small gene pools for thousands of years. They may be up against a crisis but they'll survive again. If worse comes to worse, they'll team up with like-minded communities in other parts of the continent with whom they haven't bred in a hundred or more years. Some small obscure sects will die out--they know it--it is "God's will." It's happening today. These people are farmers and they understand gene pools. What works with animals works with people. They know that. What they are unsure about is whether it's right. Well, actually, they are sure that it's not.

 

In the meantime they will put up with severe birth defects and heriditary illnesses because they think it's God's will. This is only one of the serious problems they face that I feel needs to be dealt with. I feel totally helpless to do anything about any of the problems that I see. My life's mission remains to strike a death blow at the foundation of fundamentalist Christianity. But at the moment I haven't a clue how to do that.

 

Those are my ideas on that.

[The-Captain]

When I was a serious fundy I played with the idea of going Amish or something like that......

 

Funny you should say that. As I became more and more unglued I was getting to be convinced that a communal structure away from larger society was the only way to truly avoid temptation and live a life pleasing to God. I had plans drawn up for a communal village with fallout shelters and food storage containers in case of WWIII before the rapture.

 

I'm serious...stop laughing!

 

Trust me, not laughing here. I've got a friend who thinks it would be really cool to join the Amish. Not sure if the appeal is so much to join the Amish as such. I suspect it's more to leave behind the difficulty of making decisions for oneself.

 

-What hairstyle would look best on me? Bun and bonnet, of course. Using hairpins vs. bobby pins, that's your choice.

-What do I want to be when I grow up? Housewife and mother, of course. Your husband will make the choice of how many children for both of you, and it will be to spit out as many as possible. Good farmhands are hard to find, so whatever it takes to fill the farm chore roster. An added benefit is that you will never have to pass high school algebra, since you're going to drop out in 8th grade. And no student loans to pay, either!

-What color do I want my new car? Black on black, with extra black and/or dark grey, your choice. Course, you're going to hell for owning a car anyway, at least in this section of Goshen.

-Where should we spend vacation? What, leave the twice daily chores? Not possible. If the head of the household grants you permission, you might be able to visit your sister's family to help with the new baby. Six kids under the age of ten, huh? God sure is blessing her. Praise his name. Go ask the worldly neighbor if she will drive you there.

(Just don't ask why it's a sin to own a car but not to freeload a ride in one. God's ways are far above ours, and I'm sure he has his reasons.)

 

 

 

By the way, graphicsguy, do you live in Goshen or Elkhart? Gotta be one or the other.

 

 

Further proof that we were certified nutters

[GraphicsGuy]

By the way, graphicsguy, do you live in Goshen or Elkhart? Gotta be one or the other.

 

What? No, neither. I live in Canada in the province of Alberta!

 

We have Hutterites here...another Amish-like sect that I really have no clue about...