[geeks] Goodbye, I guess

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On Aug 30, 2007, at 1:28 AM, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 09:56:24PM -0700, N. Miller wrote:
>
>> We have those folks in the US & Canada as well, they're called
>> Mennonites.
>
> When I lived in Philly, our next door neighbors called themselves  
> "city
> Mennonites".
>
> They still followed the basic practices of their religion, but they
> were not as Wierd Al put it "technologicaly impaired".
>

There is a broad spectrum of Mennonites, from "Old Order" that are  
very similar to Amish, all the way through to "General Conference"  
who are not very different from mainstream Protestants.

Unlike Orthodox or Roman Catholic versions of Christianity, there is  
no organizational or political hierarchy that drives things - pretty  
much everything comes out of the local church and power flows up the  
chain of command rather than down it.

Thus, Mennonite churches often organize themselves into a relatively  
loose federation usually called a "conference".   Joining a  
conference is sort of like agreeing to a political party's platform -  
the churches all agree on various issues, such as ordination of  
women, dress code in the more conservative churches, etc.  A local  
church can choose to leave a conference at any time for any reason.

> There was a reality show on TV here about that. According to the show,
> Amish teenagers spend a year in the "outisde world" before they  
> marry to
> decide if it's what they want to do. This show put a bunch of Amish
> teenagers in a house with a bunch of "normal" teenagers and had  
> them do
> things and go places together.
>

Towards the end of the show one of the Amish kids studies for his GED  
despite having had formal education only to the 8th grade.  He passes  
with a grade of about 98%.  Kinda shows up the education lobby in the  
US - Amish schools are one-room school houses with virtually no funding.

Cordially

Patrick Giagnocavo
patrick at zill.net