Close Encounters of the Fundie Kind

[meda]

That's surprising to me because it seems shockingly progressive in some ways and kind of icky in others. On the one hand, sexual compatibility (to me) is very important in a marriage. On the other hand, if the young lady is supposed to be a virgin when she marries, isn't putting the young man in bed with her just asking for trouble? I suppose if they can't stop themselves and a pregnancy results, it's not a problem if they want to marry. But what if he rapes her? Even if a pregnancy doesn't result, would the young lady be considered 'less than' in her community? What happens then?

It really has nothing to do with being progressive about sexuality. They just dont like change. These folks are considered reactionary by other Amish, so the attitude really is more like "If my great grandparents did it, I should too". Schwartzentrubers won't put a reflective triangle on their buggies, use zippers or buttons on their clothing, and they have gone to jail rather than put a battery operated smoke alarm in their home. Interesting folks.

[LillyCat]

I'm the most liberal person I know in SC.

oh my goodness, there is a fellow liberal in this state!? i thought i was the only one :)

[clarinetpower]

I see them a lot, but an incident sticks out in my mind. A few years ago, I was at Walmart in the seasonal section at Christmas. I saw an Amish couple and their daughter, and the girl was looking at one of those electronic snowmen or Santas that dance and sing. She was in awe. They were standing back, watching, and smiling. They caught my eye and we all laughed a bit watching her. It was pretty nice. (I live in central PA, not near Lancaster.)

Most fundies I've run into don't seem aggressive to me, but I also have clean, well behaved, polite children. Two, not eleventy.

[Aurora rising]

My cousin's husband explained it as 'Our women are the ambassadors for our church' like it is their honour to be so.

Unfortunately the same for some muslim communities - the women all veiled up and the men in shorts and shirts. Very fair. :roll:

[GodsKnickers]

I live in Southwestern Ontario around many rural Mennonite areas and see Mennonites all the time at the mall and Walmart, etc. I was sitting waiting for my sister to come out of La Senza (one can only look at bras for so long) when two mennonite women with long skirts, long sleeves, head coverings, etc. walked by with their children. Daughters were dressed just like the women, long skirts and head coverings while the boys were wearing gap sweaters and jeans. I see this among the husbands and wives too, women are dressed conservatively and plainly while the men are dressed in a modern way.

Weird, I've never seen the little girls like that - sounds more like Hutterites. I'm married to Mennonite guy. Well, started off Mennonite but the family left the culture/faith when he was tiny - so I guess you could say they're Mennonite background now. When my ILs were married, my MIL was still wearing the headcovering but that all stopped shortly after she was married - she didn't have much choice until then, because her father was a big timey Bishop in the old colony church, so she had to toe the line hard. The picture below would be typical of my ILs family that are still 'practicing.' Did they have the kerchiefs or the white caps?

Perhaps it's regional though. Here, the little girls never wear the headcoverings. They don't start until in their midteens, from all appearances. The men/boys mostly dress like they shop at Lammle's and WalMart. Lots of cowboy looking shit, lot of plaid, suspenders, lol.

The Hutterites around here though, the little girls are absolute mini-mes to their mothers, with the headcoverings, etc. Like this:

Edited to add: Speaking of Hutterites, has anyone read Mary-Ann Kirkby's book, [link=http://www.amazon.ca/Am-Hutterite-Fascinating-Journey-Heritage/dp/0978340515]I Am Hutterite?[/link] Interesting read. She was also a keynote speaker at our library system's annual conference - she's quite funny, and an excellent speaker.

[anachronistic]

I did read 'I am Hutterite' a few years ago and found it fascinating. Mostly because it is the only real-life example I've ever found of pure communism that actually works.

[salsa]

2xx... Mennonites are a bit like Jewish people in that there are many different kinds and only a few of us dress fundy. I am culturally Mennonite but don't 'practise' any Christian religion. A lot of Mennonites, perhaps the majority, dress just like anybody else. I can recognize most Mennonite names, so if I know somebody well enough to ask about it, I usually find they have parents or grandparents that go/went to Mennonite churches.

Except for when I asked another soccer mom about her Mennonite name and she was a practising Mennonite and proceeded to proudly tell me how her son was a minister and had left x church for y because x had 'embraced gays'. And then she spouted that bullshit 'Love the sinner, hate the sin'. GRRRRRRRRRRrr They had even adopted 2 girls from China - fundies in disguise.

Kaitlyn Regher, Vic Toews - both Mennonite name. I have not actually met Vic, but I am not proud to be related (all Mennonites are related, we interbreed, my parents are 2nd cousins once removed).

Sorry for the thread derail. That is a VERY cool story.

What's a Mennonite name? Is it the last name, or do the first names also offer a clue?

I've known a handful of Mennonites and they come from 3 distinct "levels," for lack of a better word. Two were pastors who were moderate- to liberal. A young woman I went to college with seemed to be no different from anyone else - no head covering, wore jeans, had roles in theater productions - but didn't interact much, say, at cast parties, which she didn't stay at for very long. That may or may not be because she's Mennonite; she may just be somewhat introverted. She was a pretty quiet woman. Then there was a community of Mennonites who moved into a rural area where I lived. The women wore black kerchief-style headscarves and cotton dresses. One of the families, a young couple with two little girls, moved next door to the older couple, who I knew and used to visit. I liked the young woman for also visiting the older couple and helping out and just being part of their life.

She arranged for the school teacher to come by with the students one afternoon, and they visited and sang to them. As nice as this young woman was and as happy as she seemed to be, the children were almost expressionless. Still, it was great to hear that type of harmony (open 4ths, etc, similar to early American sacred singing - similar to the shape-note sound) living on.

[FeministShrew]

oh my goodness, there is a fellow liberal in this state!? i thought i was the only one :)

Me! Me! Me! I'm about as liberal as a straight white woman can be! And I have a friend as well as a coworker who are liberal. We're a minority, but we're here!

[StacyW]

[link=http://www.amazon.com/Mennonite-Little-Black-Dress-Memoir/dp/0805092250/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365778109&sr=1-1&keywords=mennonite+in+a+little+black+dress]Mennonite in a Little Black Dress[/link] is a sort of memoir about an unconventional Mennonite woman. I hardly remember reading it but I did like it.

[yewchapel]

Unfortunately the same for some muslim communities - the women all veiled up and the men in shorts and shirts. Very fair. :roll:

Interestingly, my experience with Muslims is the opposite - I see many more Muslim men in traditional clothing than I do Muslim women. I see middle-aged or older Muslim women in traditional clothing, but younger Muslim women IME tend to wear regular clothes adapted for their modesty needs (eg long sleeved t-shirts underneath) with a pretty hijab. However I've seen plenty of young Muslim men in traditional clothing.

[2xx1xy1JD]

2xx... Mennonites are a bit like Jewish people in that there are many different kinds and only a few of us dress fundy. I am culturally Mennonite but don't 'practise' any Christian religion. A lot of Mennonites, perhaps the majority, dress just like anybody else. I can recognize most Mennonite names, so if I know somebody well enough to ask about it, I usually find they have parents or grandparents that go/went to Mennonite churches.

Except for when I asked another soccer mom about her Mennonite name and she was a practising Mennonite and proceeded to proudly tell me how her son was a minister and had left x church for y because x had 'embraced gays'. And then she spouted that bullshit 'Love the sinner, hate the sin'. GRRRRRRRRRRrr They had even adopted 2 girls from China - fundies in disguise.

Kaitlyn Regher, Vic Toews - both Mennonite name. I have not actually met Vic, but I am not proud to be related (all Mennonites are related, we interbreed, my parents are 2nd cousins once removed).

Sorry for the thread derail. That is a VERY cool story.

I know that Mennonites range from the fairly liberal/mainstream groups to the Old Order Mennonites. Mr. and Mrs. Baker were wearing what looked like traditional Mennonite garb, but I didn't know the exact group. Even though they must have made a ton of money off the land, they still seemed to be quite simple. The garb just added to the cool, surreal atmosphere and feeling that we were speaking with historical figures come to life.

[mockingbird]

I grew up about 2 hours from Amish county in Ohio but they would come up to our county hospital, I believe because it was the closest major medical center that was probably the most affordable to them. I talked to them fairly often when I worked at that hospital. I respect that they will seek modern medical care when needed.

My biggest experience with fundies was on a message board I joined, which is now largely defunct (it's still there but I guess nobody really posts anymore) due to scandals and controversial "keep sweet" policies. A large number of members were Mormon but there were also a fair number of Evangelical and non-denominational Christians. I went to a meet-up once at a girl's house, she was a few years younger than me and her family is fundy-lite. It was fun to meet people I talked to online (and the others at this meet-up were not fundy or fundy-lite), but we went around the table at one point talking about our careers or what we wanted to do as a career and I got the WORST look from the girl's mom when I said I wanted to be a doctor. heh

[GodsKnickers]

What's a Mennonite name? Is it the last name, or do the first names also offer a clue?

Well, for me, when I moved to the northern part of the province my husband is from, and met him, until that point if someone had told me their last name was Wheeler, I'd have spelled it Wheeler. Mennonites spell it Wieler.

Other examples of Mennonite surnames - Dyck, Friesen, Wiebe, Doerkesen, Enns, Froese, Gerbrandt, Goertzen, Janzen, Klassen/Klaassen, Loewen, Penner, Schellenberg, Teichroeb, Unruh, etc.

As for first names, there was a joke that went around the largely Mennonite community my husband's grandparents lived in. Went like this...

Did you hear about the new sexually transmitted disease going around LC? (LC = town they lived in)

No! What is it?

Abes. ;)

It was because there were so many men in the area named Abraham/Abe (and you probably have to sort of understand the culture/mentality of the area too, to find that amusing). In fact, before I married my husband, my dad was looking for lamb for Easter dinner one year. He was given a name out in LC and oddly the man's wife's name as well (for example Corny [Cornelius] Krahn, wife Mary). Or so we thought, until dad looked up the guy's name in the phone book. :lol: There were about 20 of them listed. A few had the listing as Krahn, C & M. But that didn't necessarily mean anything. Could be Corny and Margaret, or Corny and Maria.

Took dad forever to find the right guy. Had to phone nearly every name in the book. Turns out, sometimes you need to also ask for the guy's middle initial. ;) :lol: A lot of the older generation (and even some of the younger) of Mennonites didn't typically give middle names to their kids. So you were just Corny Krahn. So when so many are settled in the same area, they'd just take a letter of the alphabet and tack it in there. So a guy would be Corny J Krahn, but the J didn't stand for anything, like John or something. It was their way of differentiating.

And sometimes even THAT didn't help. :lol: Sometimes there were several Corny J Krahns, whose wives were named Mary and you had to know that you were looking for Corny J Krahn, whose wife was Mary N Krahn, that lived on that quarter over near the bridge, and he was missing one finger on his left hand and she drove school bus and they had 11 kids, that raised the lambs. It was crazy. :lol:

[singsingsing]

That reminds me of something they did where my grandmother lived. There were really only a few surnames, so many people had the same first and last name. They would differentiate women based on the first name of their husband. So because there were two women named Alice [Lastname], the first would be called 'Alice Lewis' (my great-grandmother) and the second 'Alice Jimmy'. My grandmother sometimes tells stories about a woman named Lilah George. One day my mother asked her who Lilah George's husband was, and my grandmother told her, George Patterson.

There were a lot of weird names around there. My grandparents insist that they knew two men named 'Jedeeaw' and 'Adayadaw'. I'm spelling them the way they sound, because I have no idea what names they're supposed to actually be.

[CPatz]

Funny/crazy anecdote: I live near Porter, TX in the Houston area. A dinosaur park which would be like a mashup of amusement park and educational theme park was proposed (thus, promising shocking theories about how old the earth is and when humans (!!) evolved). Pretty quickly a freakin' billboard for the CREATION "MUSEUM" in *OHIO* was put up not far from the proposed site. *facepalm* And don't tell me it's coincidence. I mean, the damn "museum" is in OHIO. This is in TEXAS.

The dinosaur park project has been derailed due to some battle over funding or something.

[farmwifegina]

Well, for me, when I moved to the northern part of the province my husband is from, and met him, until that point if someone had told me their last name was Wheeler, I'd have spelled it Wheeler. Mennonites spell it Wieler.

Other examples of Mennonite surnames - Dyck, Friesen, Wiebe, Doerkesen, Enns, Froese, Gerbrandt, Goertzen, Janzen, Klassen/Klaassen, Loewen, Penner, Schellenberg, Teichroeb, Unruh, etc.

As for first names, there was a joke that went around the largely Mennonite community my husband's grandparents lived in. Went like this...

That would be Canadian Mennonite names. In the US, you have different prominent surnames names in different communities. Lancaster Co. is full of Zimmerman (loooooootttts), Martin (loooottttttts), Stoltzfus, Stauffer, Hoover, Sensenig, Horning (side note: the official title for black bumper Mennonites is the Horning Mennonites), Rutt, Nolt, Musser, Newswanger just to name a few. The Ohio Mennonite surnames are also very common Amish surnames since you have a lot more families who have left the Amish to become Mennonite in only the last generation or so. Miller, Schrock, Yoder, Byler, Wenger are big ones there. Gingerich, Roth, Detweiler, Weaver, Swartz, Swartzentruber, Bender, Wagner, Shank/Shenk, Kauffman, Slabaugh are also pretty common. Lol, I think that exhausts my Facebook friend list with a few more off the top of my head.

[Loveday]

That would be Canadian Mennonite names. In the US, you have different prominent surnames names in different communities. Lancaster Co. is full of Zimmerman (loooooootttts), Martin (loooottttttts), Stoltzfus, Stauffer, Hoover, Sensenig, Horning (side note: the official title for black bumper Mennonites is the Horning Mennonites), Rutt, Nolt, Musser, Newswanger just to name a few. The Ohio Mennonite surnames are also very common Amish surnames since you have a lot more families who have left the Amish to become Mennonite in only the last generation or so. Miller, Schrock, Yoder, Byler, Wenger are big ones there. Gingerich, Roth, Detweiler, Weaver, Swartz, Swartzentruber, Bender, Wagner, Shank/Shenk, Kauffman, Slabaugh are also pretty common. Lol, I think that exhausts my Facebook friend list with a few more off the top of my head.

I find this whole name subject very interesting. I have a Detweiler line through my great-grandmother that goes back to the very early 18th century in Pennsylvania (Montgomery County and then York County; they never went any farther west). I'm not sure if they were Amish to start with as I haven't pushed my research back far enough yet, but they were Mennonite when they arrived in America, and on through til sometime in the 19th. I haven't figured out exactly when the ones in my particular line stopped being Mennonite; nowadays everyone seems to be United Methodists by way of either the Mennonites or the Brethren Anabaptists (I have another ancestor who was one of the founders of that movement in America--he's probably rolling in his grave at the fact I converted to Catholicism :lol: ). I'm just relieved they did eventually become Methodists; I think I'd have been a terrible Amish or Mennonite! :shock:

ETA: I hope I didn't just derail this topic; my post is probably better suited down in the genealogy section. :?

[GodsKnickers]

farmwiferegina, isn't it interesting how they're all so tied together? The history is pretty cool to read about.

We know some Kauffmans and Stauffers here, that are Mennonite. And some Stoltzfus' and Yoders who are Hutterite. Such a cross section of names that identify between the 3 original Anabaptist splits.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Today I went to an event called QED to see Richard Dawkins speak...there was one lone fundie guy outside giving out tracts about how evolution is wrong and the world is only 6000 years old, holding a large wooden cross, and yelling about how much he loves Jesus, just generally being ignored by everyone going in.

[CPatz]

Today I went to an event called QED to see Richard Dawkins speak...there was one lone fundie guy outside giving out tracts about how evolution is wrong and the world is only 6000 years old, holding a large wooden cross, and yelling about how much he loves Jesus, just generally being ignored by everyone going in.

I personally believe in Jesus and think He would be very offended to see this guy using the cross (considered a sacred symbol) like some propaganda tool whilst yelling his personal beliefs at people.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Yes, I did think that the regular kind of Christian would find it very offensive, especially cause it had a wheel at the bottom and one point he was pushing it along like Jesus carried the cross...its like he thought he was Jesus.

[MamaJunebug]

To Amish/Mennonite naming: Don't know if it's still true, but years ago we were told that a generation gives their kids the same middle initial.

So the dad could be Conrad A. Yoder, and everyone would know that Conrad B. Yoder was his son, and Conrad C. Yoder was the first guy's grandson.

My family was pretty darned unimaginative (or just plain traditional, depending on my mood!) about names, and there were usually two, sometimes three, of every given name at any family gathering. That progressive initial would've been handy then and in future for genealogists!!!

[itaintmebabe]

Yes, I did think that the regular kind of Christian would find it very offensive, especially cause it had a wheel at the bottom and one point he was pushing it along like Jesus carried the cross...its like he thought he was Jesus.

Several times when I was vacationing in Montrose, CO, I'd see a guy with a cross just like that walking down Townsend Ave (Hwy 550). Usually on a Saturday morning IIRC.

I mean, you wouldn't want to make it too authentic and hard to drag along, so the little wheel made it easier. I think the guy was an attention whore.

[Loveday]

To Amish/Mennonite naming: Don't know if it's still true, but years ago we were told that a generation gives their kids the same middle initial.

So the dad could be Conrad A. Yoder, and everyone would know that Conrad B. Yoder was his son, and Conrad C. Yoder was the first guy's grandson.

My family was pretty darned unimaginative (or just plain traditional, depending on my mood!) about names, and there were usually two, sometimes three, of every given name at any family gathering. That progressive initial would've been handy then and in future for genealogists!!!

You're not kidding. :? I've also found that a lot of my Pennsylvania German ancestors gave all their sons the first name of Johann and then a different name. Unfortunately, all the brothers in several 18th century generations gave their sons the same 'different' name, so I often find three or four 'Johann Conrads' and 'Johann Michaels' and 'Johann Peters', all cousins, to try and untangle. :angry-banghead:

[GodsKnickers]

To Amish/Mennonite naming: Don't know if it's still true, but years ago we were told that a generation gives their kids the same middle initial.

So the dad could be Conrad A. Yoder, and everyone would know that Conrad B. Yoder was his son, and Conrad C. Yoder was the first guy's grandson.

My family was pretty darned unimaginative (or just plain traditional, depending on my mood!) about names, and there were usually two, sometimes three, of every given name at any family gathering. That progressive initial would've been handy then and in future for genealogists!!!

My father-in-law's middle initial is J. It doesn't stand for anything. None of his 16 siblings have middle names either. Most of the older ones have left well enough alone as far as middle initials/middle names go, but the younger ones, for the most part, have all chosen either an initial to represent a middle name or have chosen a middle name for themselves, though I don't know of any that have made it 'official.'

My FIL made his official and had stuff amended. He found early on, when applying for loans and such, that there was another guy with the same name nearby, with shitty credit, etc, and they apparently kept mixing them up, so he chose 'J' and had things amended.

My FIL's family is huge - 17 kids - almost Duggar sized. My FIL is the second oldest. My husband is a month older than the youngest of FIL's siblings and there are several that are only 2-5 years older, so they have relationships that resembled more of a cousin thing than an aunt/uncle thing, as they grew up together. We've had a couple of repeats as names go, in the extended family, which of course, is gargantuan, but very few. A couple of Johns, but they're a generation apart. A couple of Ann/Annes but one was a marry-in. Aside from that, I can't think of any others, off the top of my head, but I'd have to sit down and go through all the families to be certain if there were any other repeats but I can't keep them all straight anymore. Too many of the next generation are marrying and having their own kids now, and we rarely see them all in one spot, so it's hard to keep track.