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As a Mennonite-Turned-Unfocused-Believer-In-Things-I-Can't-Quite-Define, I rate this thread A++, Would Rescue From Drowning Only To Be Burned At The Stake By It Later Again.
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Sep 20, 2016 19:40
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 16:52 |
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I'm sick and my brain no work good for talking right now. So here is my favorite song about syncretism. Also the only song I know about syncretism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdfht6D2y7U
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Sep 22, 2016 01:51
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A number of Jesus' parables have the broad theme of "the person you'd expect from their station in the world to be the good, righteous heroic person is actually in the wrong, and the person you'd expect to be the lowest of the low is actually the example you should be following".
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Oct 20, 2016 21:12
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I don't really have an answer but the question made me want to reread A Canticle for Leibowitz.
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Oct 31, 2016 15:58
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The only actual decent answer I've ever heard for exclusively using the KJV (aside from "I just like the language") was in an interview I heard once with the principal of a Christian school, who said they encouraged it at their school because it was a way of easing students into becoming familiar with things like Shakespeare later. In spite of growing up in a very religious house in a small midwest town in the '80s, I managed to dodge most of the worst Evangelical bullets (though I guess by no means all of them). Then again, I was raised Mennonite, which is...well, if you ask most Mennonites if they're Evangelical Protestants, they'd say "naah, we're Anabaptists, totally not the same", but unless you're among the distinct minority who are still in horse-and-buggy territory, there aren't necessarily all that many differences (though I feel like we're more at home to social liberalism than many Protestant(ish) denominations. That could just be my bias, though). The biggest doctrinal distinction these days is probably our pacifism. The Phlegmatist posted:So where's the heavy catechetical lifting? It's in the hymnals. Here's the Trinity. and here's atonement theory. Both of these are really popular hymns. I think Wesley wrote one that references the hypostatic union as well but I can't seem to find it. So they're not reciting the Nicene Creed or reading Thomas Aquinas but they're singing hymns written by people who did. Yeah, this is very true to my experience too. The Mennonite Hymnal could almost have been our second holy book. (Or third, if you count Martyr's Mirror)
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Apr 11, 2017 02:42
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Every charity I've ever had any experience with (including some religious ones) has said that the government pulling out of their work would be an absolute disaster.
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Apr 12, 2017 11:48
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The Phlegmatist posted:And not voting, I think? Maybe in some of the more isolationist Anabaptist-descended groups (Old Order Mennonites, the Amish, probably the Hutterites though I know almost nothing about them) but I don't feel like this has been a thing in the modern Mennonite church for a while now, certainly not a universal one. Although a bit of vague reading on the subject did lead me to this pretty awesome quote from a lady in Ohio: "When Mennonites vote, we are not voting for who we support to lead us. We are voting for who we would rather struggle against.".
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Apr 12, 2017 11:58
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Deteriorata posted:Maundy Thursday is a very common day of celebration even in Protestant churches. The word "maundy" derives from "mandatum" or the new commandment that Jesus gave his disciples at the Last Supper - that they love one another as he had loved them. I've heard the term Maundy Thursday before, but I'm not sure we ever celebrated it formally. We did do foot-washing like twice a year, though I was never clear about whether that was a Mennonite thing or a just-my-church thing.
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Apr 17, 2017 14:47
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The plural is "all y'all".
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Apr 18, 2017 01:50
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The thing I grew up hearing (in rural northeast Ohio) that I have never heard since is (and I have no idea how one would spell it) you'ins. I'm sure it's not something my grandmother invented but I don't think I've ever heard anyone else say it.
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Apr 18, 2017 01:57
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I would suggest making use of a little-known tradition of the Christian faith known as "forgiveness" with your (ex) pastor and getting on with your life.
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Apr 21, 2017 21:34
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More or less the same thing happened to my uncle when he remarried after his wife died. (There was much more involved than that, though no cheating that I'm aware of, and I have no idea if I'd change my mind about whether they were justified if I knew it all.) So, you know, I'm not wholly without sympathy. I can't help remembering that Jesus's harshest words were for hypocrites (and fig trees for some reason), though I'm not exactly Captain AllowedToThrowStones over here either. In any case, what I was getting at before is that the more you worry about getting the last word or owning your pastor with citations from the Gospels and your favorite incomprehensible German theologian, the the less happy your life will be. You're not likely to convince him he's wrong and you'll just make yourself miserable trying. That's experience rather than religion, but I've never known it not to be true.
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Apr 21, 2017 22:40
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But really, man, that fig tree had it coming. Jesus just wanted a snack and you gotta be like that?
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Apr 21, 2017 23:07
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HEY GAIL posted:the little societies he valorizes terrify me. nobody there talks about how communities like that would deal with someone who was simply different. imagine being on the outside of such a group, and how quickly the sentiment there could turn nasty... It was seriously hilarious studying Anapatist history as a Mennonite high schooler (and thus looking at sources written by and for Mennonites). Whenever we got around to Muenster it was all defensive WE'RE NOT ALL CRAZY APOCALYPSE CULTISTS (p.s. Muenster was really hosed up guys) BUT SERIOUSLY WE'RE NOT ALL LIKE THAT AT ALL HEY LET'S TALK ABOUT GEORG BLAUROCK SOME MORE. But yeah, I get romanticizing things that seem to avoid the excesses you're used to, and there's good and bad in pretty much every way humans organize themselves, but you only have to look at some of the problems that, say, the Amish have had on occasion (I don't have specific anecdotes, but one hears things) to get that, while their way of life more or less works for them, it's not all roses and buggies. Or, you know, just try growing up in a small rural town and then tell me that tiny insular communities are perfect and blameless and holy.
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Apr 27, 2017 11:56
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HEY GAIL posted:and big cities are just the same, just imagine a small town squished into a single block. i used to live in a building full of chinese immigrants and everyone on our floor would open their doors and sit in the hallways and chat in the evenings, it was a little town just thirteen stories up. small towns or deliberate communities don't make you any more virtuous, and if anything goes wrong it's harder to get help. Oh yeah, I've done both and as far as I can tell, the main difference is that big cities have more takeout options. quote:
Ahem we were always pacifists always always never mind that one time besides, they were, uh anablerptists, completely different.
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Apr 27, 2017 12:13
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I've had Blind Guardian's "Control The Divine" stuck in my head all day because of this thread. It's not a complaint.
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May 8, 2017 18:36
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Cythereal posted:Fortunately, I am not Catholic and have no desire to be. Oh hey, the Mennonite Signal* just went off. I can't really speak for anyone other than the (pretty modern, so no shunning of technology or anything like that) Mennonite church I grew up as part of, which wasn't that different from other Protestant churches, but in my experience, you can't really eliminate aesthetic expression like that, you can just redirect it. (So you can have a plain building but if there's any outlet for decoration, those decorations will be super-elaborate.) And from what I hear about some of the Amish communities around where I grew up and where friends of mine did, it's even more of an exercise in finding loopholes in The Things We Reject. Mostly it's a question of what the local bishop will allow, as I understand it, and it's not exactly consistent. Mobile phones being allowed, because they didn't involve wires being attached to the home (and sometimes only if they were kept in a location away from the home) was a pretty common thing you heard. My cousin made pretty good money while he was in high school driving Amish people around, in a van he nicknamed the Yoder Toter. Anyway, not to make My People out to be a bunch of hypocrites (though of course we are because we're, you know, people), but going back to the thing about aesthetics, I think that Mennonites (and others with more austere traditions) typically see some things as distractions from worship and it's hard for us to embrace the idea that, for others, those things aren't distracting at all. (And I'm sure it goes the other way as well.) Ultimately, I think there's beauty to be found in simplicity, and also in the elaborate, and beauty in all its forms is a gift from God. ___ It's this entire thing with weather vanes and quilts and...it's kind of hard to explain, honestly.
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Jun 19, 2017 16:04
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Also, my mom helped out with cleaning our church while I was growing up, which meant that my sister and I did as well, and trust me, ain't nothing strips away what little mystique a place of worship might otherwise have like cleaning its bathrooms does.
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Jun 19, 2017 16:10
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In that vein, check out Martyr's Mirror sometime, especially the woodcut illustrations (which are the source of my avatar).
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Jun 21, 2017 12:10
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I grew up with the New International Version but I think the NRSV is a better 'modern' translation. King James for the beauty of the language. There are a lot of translations online at places like Bible Gateway, so you can compare and see which you like best.
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Jul 1, 2017 16:00
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I watch and enjoy Doctor Who and know waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much about it and yeah, all anyone really needs to know is, well, nothing, but the slightly more than nothing version is that it's a fun family TV show about the adventures of a time-traveling alien space wizard who is going to be portrayed by a wonderful actress next year.
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Jul 17, 2017 14:02
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On the subject of Judas (broadly), I'll just say that Andrew Lloyd Webber is someone whose work I find very uneven but that I will defend Jesus Christ Superstar to the death.
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Aug 4, 2017 11:50
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The other unforgivable sin is being an out-of-season fig tree.
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Aug 6, 2017 00:24
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The whole thing about being a sinner saved by grace is that both things are true. Don't get all up yourself because of how amazing you are, because you aren't. But don't get all down on yourself about how you are so damned that no one could possibly love you, because also you aren't.
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Aug 8, 2017 00:04
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Going back to the question of Protestants and ritual, at least the Protestants I've been exposed to (so mostly of the Anabaptist flavor, though I suspect this wouldn't be an alien experience to, say, an American Baptist or a Methodist), eschewing the specific rituals and liturgies of the Catholic and Orthodox faiths isn't turning your back on ritual entirely so much as it is substituting one set of rituals and traditions for another. I think the last time this was brought up, hymns were mentioned, and I absolutely do think that (in the case of the faith I grew up in) the Mennonite Hymnal (as we used to call it in the Before Times, I still think of the version that was introduced twenty-some years ago as the 'new' Hymnal) is functionally our second holy book. Not in the sense that it's divinely inspired scripture, but in the sense that it's an essential part of our worship experience and even our identity as Mennonites. The superficial trappings change, but I think we all have those things we consider an essential part of worship, and the fact that we have those things is significant, even if the specific things vary widely.
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Aug 22, 2017 02:12
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Losing Paul would mean losing First Corinthians 13, which, no.
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Aug 31, 2017 10:53
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StashAugustine posted:Btw where/when is the story in your av from? That's Dirk Willems, an Anabaptist martyr from the Netherlands in the 1500s, probably the most famous one. The scene depicted is of him turning back during an attempted escape from prison while running across a frozen lake to rescue the pursuing guard who'd fallen through the ice. This led to his being recaptured and eventually executed. The image is from the illustrated version of Martyr's Mirror, which is chock full of heartwarming stories like this one.
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Aug 31, 2017 19:54
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Welp, off to conquer Münster, I guess.
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Sep 15, 2017 20:52
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System Metternich posted:Sorry to all Presbyterians, Independants, Quakers &c., but I simply couldn't not post this According to my girlfriend, I'm an ammonite, so, checks out.
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Sep 25, 2017 18:28
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 16:52 |
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I'll, uh, just drop this here. (I guess for the first time, I thought I'd posted it before but that was probably another thread.) It's an open letter from a former Mennonite pastor in his 90s, and the reason he's a former pastor is because he performed a wedding ceremony for his son and another man. He doesn't bear the church any ill will at all that I can see, but he's very clear that he doesn't see the rejection of (in this case) gay people as being compatible with the example set by Christ and by that set by leaders of the early church. It's one of the more inspiring things I've read in some time. docbeard fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Oct 8, 2017 |
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Oct 8, 2017 10:16
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