[rescue] Look who's a slashdot weenie!

[N.Miller]

On Tuesday, July 15, 2003, at 09:51 AM, Joshua D. Boyd wrote:

> 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.

As far as the Amish go, from what my dad has said, they can pretty
well decide from about 14 yr. onward whether they are ready to be
baptized (and hence enter the church).  What they do in the mean-
time is regulated more-or-less depending on the parent.  My dad
has mentioned discussions with his family that indicate that the
incidence of birth out of wedlock as gone up a lot.  Apparently
"bundling" doesn't work quite the way it used to. ;-)

=Nadine=