[rescue] Look who's a slashdot weenie!

[N.Miller]

On Tuesday, July 15, 2003, at 09:00 AM, Joshua D. Boyd wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 10:49:08AM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:
>
>> If Bill will forgive the off-topic query, what exactly is the 
>> difference
>> between Amish and Mennonites?  Is it a case of "All Amish are
>> Mennonites, but not all Mennonites are Amish"?
>
> Nope.  Amish are not Mennonite, nor vice versa.
>
> Amish and Mennonites both are anabaptists (they don't practice
> infant baptism).  My recall is that they both were started early in the
> anabaptist movement.  They historically got a long fairly well.  They
> both were persecuted in Europe (where they didn't support either state
> churchs or the catholic church), so they settled together in the US in,
> I believe, the late 1600s.

Some Amish families have complete lineage books from the time
they came to the US.  My family's original last name was Valentine.
I can't recall for sure the year they came over here, but I *think*
it was in the early 1700's.

> Certain old order Mennonite groups can seem very Amish like, in that
> they dress extremely plainly and drive horse and buggies.  Others old
> order groups are less extreme, but would still stick out from society 
> in
> general quite a bit.  It is my opinion that old order Mennonites are
> severely in the minority compared to more modern Mennonites, who are
> rapidly blending in more.

Amish also vary in their "modern" aversions.  And, to the outsider,
some of it seems kind of specious.

For instance, Amish in interior New York don't generally speak
English at all and avoid fraternizing with non-Amish, while my
dad's family, in Ohio and Pennsylvania speak Low German and English,
and sometime even have jobs in factories or run businesses (my
grandfather was a cabinet maker in addition to running a farm).

As far as the modern aversions--my grandfather died after having
open heart surgery--he had one of the best cardiologists in the
area.  In the 1980's, a pay phone was installed on my great-
uncle's property (a cluster of Amish families lived around there)
--it couldn't be in a house, but it was ok to use it.  He also
used a kerosene powered tractor on his fields, with all-metal tires,
and a kerosene powered engine was used to pump water into the
gravity cistern once a day.

My dad's brother, on the other hand, was forced to paint over the
very nice wainscoting panelling that he put in his dining room as
the church elders deemed it too 'fancy'.

I never really got it myself.  Apparently, neither did my dad,
as he left the Amish church when he was 16.  I suspect he had
a big fight with his dad over continuing high school.

=Nadine=