[rescue] Look who's a slashdot weenie!

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 12:24:37PM -0400, Brent B. Powers wrote:

> One of the key things people miss, though, is that the teens are not
> members of the church until they reach their majority. Specifically,
> they often take a year 'off' before committing to the church and
> community; during which year there is no small amount of
> experimentation with drugs, sex, and muscle cars (in some order). I
> seem to recall that the percentage of men who, after that year, do
> join the church is over 80....

My understanding is that that is generally an acurate description of the
Amish.  Mennonites tend to allow membership earlier, at least the non
old order ones.  Also, it seems to be rare indeed that a non-old order
Mennonite church would disallow ownership of muscle cars, if someone
wanted to own one.  Obviously, drugs and sex are discouraged, but happen
anyway.  One doesn't hear stories of large groups of Mennonite kids
getting in trouble, but that's probably because if they are getting in
trouble it is with other kids, and nobody takes as much notice of
Mennonites anyway.