What Do Mennonites Mean by “Plainness”? - Edsel Burdge

We're not going to just simply go with every pattern of the world, every new thing that comes down the track, every new thing that basically comes out of a fashion industry that is wanting to sell things to you and does so by appealing to your fleshly senses. And when I see—when I see Mennites picking up aspects of that, that troubles me because they're not asking themselves, "Where does this come from?" and "What is the message it's sending?" Clothes send a message. It doesn't matter how you dress; it sends a message.

You have to decide what is the message you want to send.

Welcome to this episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. We are here to discuss being plain with Edsel Birch. Welcome, Edsel. Can you introduce yourself to our audience? My name is Edsel Birch Jr., and I live in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. I am married with six children, and I have seven grandchildren. I'm a member of Shippensburg Christian Fellowship, which is a unaffiliated conservative Mennite congregation.

And I did not grow up in a Mennite home. I started attending the Mennite Church when I was 15 and was baptized when I was 17. And then I went to Eastern Mennite College and graduated with a bachelor's degree in history. Then I got a master's degree in history from Villanova University. I taught school for a number of years. I worked on a number of research and writing projects. And starting in 2012, I started working as a research associate at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, which is where I am currently. And one of my major tasks is compiling statistical data on various plain groups, particularly the Amish. When people ask me what I do, I jokingly tell them that I count Amish.

And though it is a joke, it is true. That is one of the things I do. In 2004, my book co-authored with Samuel Horst, Building on the Gospel Foundation, the Mennites of Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and Washington County, Maryland, 1730 to 1970, came out as part of the Studies in Anabaptist and Mennite History series.

And in 2004, the third volume of Documents of Brotherly Love, Dutch Mennite Aid to Swiss Anabaptists, came out, and I was one of the co-editors of that final volume in that document series. Fabulous. Thank you for the introduction.

We are here to talk about being plain. Some communities of Christians call themselves plain people. Many in our audience see themselves as plain. But we have a diverse audience, so many listening probably do not regard themselves as plain and may not be familiar with the way that we will be using the term in this episode.

So let's begin by situating and contextualizing the term and acknowledging its various definitions. Unadorned may be the most straightforward and basic definition. So those who are interested in 17th-century Puritan literature may think of plain style as being clear, brief, sincere.

Distinctive dress clothes or symbolic religious apparel may also come to many people's minds as characteristic of plainness. So let's begin with the historic development of how these various definitions interrelated over the years. Okay. Well, you know, Mennites and Amish in the, let's say here in North America, 18th, 19th century, their primary language was German, not English. And the term plain is kind of an English word. I thought I would try to find out what they used instead when they were talking German, and I haven't been able to figure that out yet. I probably have to have a good long conversation with my friend Amos Hoover, who's really a specialist on that kind of those kind of linguistic questions.

But the term plain, I think actually we can—you talked about Puritan plain style. That had to do more with a type of preaching, not the elaborate kind of high church Anglican preaching and so on, but more of a straightforward, systematic kind of presentation.

But as far as I can see, the term plain, in the sense that we talk about it as kind of lifestyle issues, that term was originally used by the Society of Friends, by the Quakers. And I just want to read to you a section from the 1804 discipline of Philadelphia yearly meeting, the section on plainness.

And this is very Quakery language, but I think actually it kind of gets to the gist of what the kind of things we're talking about when we use the word plain. It says, "Plainness. Advise that all friends, both old and young, keep out of the world's corrupt language, manners, vain and needless things and fashions, in apparel, buildings, and furniture of houses, some of which are immodest, indecent, and unbecoming, and that they avoid immoderation and the use of lawful things, which, though innocent in themselves, may thereby become hurtful. Also, such kinds of stuffs, colors, and dress as are calculated more to please a vain and wanton mind than for real usefulness. And let tradesmen and others, members of our religious society, be admonished that they be not a accessory to those evils.

For we ought to take up our daily cross, minding the grace of God, which brings salvation, and teach us to deny all ungodliness, worldly lust, and to live separately, righteously and godly in the present world, that we may adorn the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in all things, so may we feel his blessing and be instrumental in his hand for the good of others."

Now, I think that's a pretty good definition of plainness, all right? Even if it's not coming from a Mennite or Amish source, it's coming from an Anabaptist source. And I think that once—I think this would need further documentation—but I think that as the Mennites moved into using English more, even as they became bilingual, that this Quaker term plain and everything that it meant, because in the 18th and 19th century, Quakers were also a plain people. There was a recognition of that. I mean, they had a distinctive garb. They had sort of a similar attitude toward possessions and so on that Mennites and Amish and German Baptist people had. Even some of their garb was very similar, not exactly alike, but very similar in how they looked and so on.

And it was interesting, in the 1880s, there was an Orthodox Quaker minister from Philadelphia by the name of Joseph Elkington who spent about a year at various points, not the whole year, but at various points, visiting the Mennite churches in Franconia and Lancaster Conference. And both conferences opened up their churches for him and appointed meetings for him. And they said that they would probably not have done this for anybody other than a Quaker.

And of course, this was a plain dressing Quaker minister. And that was part of the thing that made him acceptable to these folks here. So I think that the term plain, as it's used, perhaps originated with friends. And as Amish and Mennite people began to use English more often, they kind of took that term over. In fact, I had a conversation with an old order Mennite friend of mine about this. He said, "What terms do you use?" He said, "We use plain. Even in Dutch, we use plain. We talk about—" So they've borrowed this English term plain, and in Dutch, in Pennsylvania Dutch, they use it. And I wondered, "Now, what did they do? What did they use before they had that?"

In some of the older literature, particularly I'm thinking of in the 1840s, I think it is, there is a manuscript that records essentially what is an ordnung or a set of standards, a description of how various ordinances are to be performed and so on that Lancaster Conference agreed to. And there it talks about pride when it comes to dress. It talks about no pride, no arrogance. Actually, the term is no arrogance in dress and not dressing like the world. Okay? And so even in the 1840s, and I think even before that, there's pretty strong evidence that there was a distinctive style of dress that was considered to be plain. All right?

And again, as you mentioned, it really does mean unornamented, unadorned, stripped of unnecessary things. Okay? One of the things that's very interesting, my late friend Steve Scott came across a reference in the Pennsylvania Gazette, an 18th-century newspaper. And there was an advertisement for a runaway indentured servant. And it says that he was dressed in a Mennite coat, in a Mennite coat.

So even in the 18th century, there was something about the coats that Mennites wore that was distinctive from the coats that everybody else wore. Or why would you say he was dressed in a Mennite coat? All right? So dress has always been one of the aspects of plainness. Now, as friends, as the discipline, friends discipline says, it's not just coats.

It's not just coats or clothes. It's also your houses. Okay? It's also whatever else you might own, that it not be that it basically be functional and unadorned, all right? And show moderation, even the right use of even the use of right of innocent things. Okay? So I think that's what we mean about plainness. Okay? It's stripped of its ornamentation. And the basic rationale is to avoid pride and exalting oneself and how one looks, what one's possessions are. It really does kind of have to do with the things we see. Okay? It really does.

So that's very good historical context. Today, many people regard themselves as plain. So can you give an overview of the plain landscape today? And how do various groups or communities' definitions of plainness support what they value?

Well, okay. Well, you know, that is a spectrum. And I would say that my sense is that when we look at the variety of quote-unquote plain Mennites, which going from old order to I'm not sure how far to go down with that one, I would say that there are on kind of the more progressive end of conservative Mennites, there are groups that I would describe as being conservative but not necessarily plain.

Plain, I think for a group to be plain, there still does kind of have to be a somewhat defined, particularly in dress, a somewhat defined dress. Though admittedly that for some of the groups, that is always much more noticeable and defined for the women than it is for the men. And there's variation there. If you look, for example, at the Stauffer Mennite Church or the Pike Mennites, their garb is very reminiscent. That's probably changed very little from what Mennite garb was in the 1840s when they split off of Lancaster Conference. Okay? So if you go to Lancaster County and you encounter some Stauffer Mennites, you are probably seeing a pattern that was pretty much intact in the 1840s.

Okay? Now, there may have been some change. Okay? But groups like that tend to very conservative groups like that tend to be very resistant to change. And there's also, as you compare their dress to older styles of dress, to costumes and dresses that are maybe in museums or something like that, you can see that, yeah, this is a pattern that's pretty much like it. The history or the spectrum of plain Mennites really does reflect, first of all, their background, sometimes their regional background, and what was the practice in that particular region. It reflects when in the 20th century, as the larger Mennite Church and Conservative Mennite Conference assimilated, when persons who formed new groups came out.

Okay? The later that they came out, probably the less plain they are going to be because they've been impacted by the assimilation that happened prior to that. Okay? And so one of the things I think that explains it's not the only thing, but one of the things that explains the plethora of various plain groups has to do with when they formed and what were the things that they were were the issues for them leaving one group and forming a new group. Okay?

And typically speaking, the more recent that has happened because they participated in some assimilation, the less plain they are. You may have already partially answered this, but how do current dress code discussions relate to historic ideas of plainness?

Well, that depends on what the conversation is.

I would say that my friend Steve Scott, who I referred to earlier, divided Mennite groups, conservative Mennite groups, into, I think, four categories. He talked about ultra-conservatives, talked about intermediate conservatives, he talked about moderate conservatives, and then he talked about fundamentalist or evangelical conservatives. And because these were a spectrum. And one of the not the only, but one of the criteria that he used in defining these various and these are types. Okay?

These are types. They're not formal groups. Okay? These are types in which formal groups fit into one of the types. But one of the criteria or one of the markers that he used is how, in a sense, plain they were, how conservative they were in their dress. Okay?

So depending which group you're part of, then the discussion will be at a different place. All right? I know of one very conservative, ultra-conservative group in my area in which the discussion is about wearing a plain black hat. That is not a discussion that most plain groups have anymore. All right?

But that is a discussion there. And there's an effort to maintain that particular practice that you don't really see in some other groups as being an emphasis. So I would say that many discussions boil down to the particulars of plain dress and how much and questions about can a practice be altered, can it be abandoned, and so on. And the other thing that I would say is that most conservative Mennites have a pattern of plain dress that is pretty much a 20th-century pattern, though it is reminiscent of an earlier pattern. It's derived from an earlier pattern. And so there has, even among the most conservative of the car driving groups, there has been change that has happened, but it is reminiscent of earlier patterns.

Like I said, if you look at the Stauffer Mennites, you're going to see something that is very much reminiscent of pre-civil war Mennites as a whole, particularly in Eastern Pennsylvania and so on, in Pennsylvania and so on, dressed.

So if historically the definition of plain was unadorned and practicality, I think use the word unadorned, not the word practicality. That's, I think, an inference I made from what you were saying. Is that still a significant priority in the conversations surrounding plainness in plain Mennite churches?

Maybe. Maybe. It depends on what the conversation is.

I do sometimes think in conversations I've heard and in even conversations I've participated in that the conversation gets taken up or revolves around particular applications of plainness and so on and not really kind of the big issue, I mean, or sort of the overarching principle of what plainness is about. For example, there are groups that in congregations I've been in where as far as their dress, doing their seem to me to be okay. You got that one nailed down pretty well. But then when you go into their houses and so on, you see something there that in my mind is not plain. Okay? It's not plain.

And that earlier Quaker way of thinking about things. And I think also an earlier Mennite, an Amish way of thinking about it is that plainness is more than dress. Plainness impacts every aspect of your life. Okay? So your dress and your houses should be kind of the same.

All right? Your possessions should reflect that. Okay? And so we are really talking here about appearances across the board, what you have and what you show. All right? And I would say that, unfortunately, I think that in too many cases, that plain the discussion around plainness has only to do with dress. And I think that's an important discussion. Don't get me wrong there. But I think also that we have, particularly among some conservative Mennite groups, we really have lost the idea that plainness is supposed to impact everything, supposed to impact the cars we drive, supposed to impact the kind of houses we build, how we decorate our houses, how we adorn our houses.

It seems to me that I've been into places where I think, "Well, these people dress plain, but they don't live plain." Whereas I think an earlier understanding would have an earlier understanding addressed that. And there are still some groups that do address that. Okay? They do address that.

They tend to be on the more conservative end of things. Okay? One of the things that we experience in the 21st century that has changed as compared to earlier centuries when some of these early conversations about plainness in the Quaker Mennite world started is that we have mass production of clothing in a way that wasn't entirely congruent with how it previously was. So can custom handmade clothing, which is often a significant part of the way conservative Mennites define plainness today, can that plausibly be regarded as plain?

You mean people making their own clothes? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I think so. So, well, let me just go back and look at this. All right. There's this myth. Okay? There's this myth. People love myths. They just love them. And the thing about myths is that they serve a very didactic purpose. Okay? But there's this myth that plainness came into the Mennite Church in the 20th century through Western revivalists like John S. Kaufman and A.D. Wanger and stuff. He's from Virginia, but those kinds of people. This is when we begin to see people going to more of a defined plain style and so on, women putting coverings on and everything like this and so on. That's a myth because it wasn't something new.

As my friend James Lowry used to say, "Do we think that the old orders were looking in through the windows at the revival meetings and picking up the fact that they should dress plain?"

Okay. Oh, no. They weren't there at those revival meetings listening to John S. Kaufman or Daniel Kaufman, whoever, advocating plain dress. Okay? There's something intrinsic there that isn't part of the tradition and so on. Now, what you do have happening actually in the 19th century, and it is a result of industrialization.

Industrialization, first of all, in this country hit the cloth-making industry. Okay? And all of a sudden, cloth, which was produced in a very laborious process of hand looms, weaving pieces of cloth, I mean, you just did not have a lot of clothes unless you were a very wealthy, wealthy person. Okay? You did not have a lot of clothes.

Styles for ordinary people did not change that way, even in general society. Okay? But with the Industrial Revolution, and all of a sudden, all this machine-woven cloth, cloth becomes much more readily available. The other nice thing is that they can actually do some things with it. They can print it. They can put nice little flowers on it and everything like that.

And so this becomes much more available. Cloth becomes much more cheaper. And you will see a corresponding, how shall we say, increase of fashion. Okay? Now, there was always fashion. Okay? But fashion was almost always the purview of the wealthy, of people who had lots of money and could afford lots of clothes. All right? Because the cloth had to be handwoven. It had to be cut out by hand. It had to be sewn with a needle and thread. But in the 19th century, we have all of a sudden this new technology in which cloth is woven on machines, and we have sewing machines. And so it becomes much more easy. And we begin to have mass-produced, ready-made clothing.

All right? And so it's at this particular point, I think probably in the, let's say, toward the end of the first third of the 19th century, that clothing becomes much more readily available and that plain people have to deal with this issue of clothing.

Okay? Of clothing. Now, most clothing still in the 19th century is produced at home. Okay? Most of it is. Unless you're really well-to-do and you go to a tailor and you have a tailor or a dressmaker make your clothing.

But that's sort of the exception. Again, that's for something for the people who are really well-to-do. And it's at this particular point that you begin to see, I think, begin to see kind of a shift in Mennite communities, particularly as clothing becomes more clothing becomes much more easily accessible. And you have, particularly among Mennites, not so much among the Amish, but among Mennites, you have this distinction between young people who are not part of the church and how they dress and how their parents dress. And then you also have, I think, a development simply in particularly some quarters, particularly in the western states, somewhat in Virginia, even interestingly enough, some in Franconia area, lesser degree in Lancaster, very lesser degree in my area in Washington, Franklin counties.

And so you begin to have people who are their dress is not traditionally plain, or it may have altercations to it. There's this very interesting story in the 1890s. Katie Martin, who later on married J.D. Bronk, the songwriter and hymnologist and so on, she tells a story about when she was when Bishop Michael Hearst, who's the deacon I forget who the deacon was, came and visited her prior to her baptism. The style in the 1890s was for women to have these kind of mutton chop sort of shoulders and so on in their dresses and so on. And she tells the story that they said to her, I think one of the either the bishop or deacon just kind of pinched the thing and said, "We'd like to see a little less of these."

And so when so it's interesting when you look at pictures of plain-dressed people in the 19th century and early 20th century, how much current fashions influence plain dress. All right? And you see that today. All right? You see that today. I mean, they might have a cape, but you might also see these mutton chop shoulders. Okay? What's really curious in the 1920s is when you see cape dresses that look like they're flapper dresses. They have these long waists that go down to about the hips and so on. You see pictures of them. It's really odd. It's really very odd. But technically, they have a cape on, but it's really trying to imitate a then fashion and style.

And society in general, particularly as communication becomes more advanced, as styles change and so on, they have impacts and so on. And I think actually that what is happening with some of these revivalists who are they are convinced that it's necessary for us to be a plain people and that what's happening in their advocating this and then in some cases, people picking up on it is that it's bringing back into prominence. It's just simply an earlier practice that was this is just the way it was. Okay? But changes had happened, and now there's an attempt to reverse some of the changes. Most of those were not in the long run successful. Okay? I mean, some of them were, but most of them were not in the long run very successful.

At Anabaptist Perspectives, our ambition or our vision is to encourage allegiance to Jesus' kingdom. How does being plain support such allegiance? If so, what way of being plain? Well, going back to the thing from the Society of Friends Discipline, it talks about the fact that there's something when it comes to pride.

Okay? These are all manifestations of pride, and pride is not a good thing. Okay? Now, pride can also be something that can be manifested in different kinds of ways. But one of the things that's interesting about an Anabaptist perspective I hesitate to use the term Anabaptist, but sometimes you're stuck with it.

You guys ought to get another name. I wish we all would just jetson the term Anabaptist and find some other term. Right? It's why when people ask me what I am, I tell them I'm a Mennite. I prefer that than saying I'm an Anabaptist. But anyhow, that's just a beef of mine.

But among Mennites and Amish, okay, pride I think if you talk about if you talk about pride by if somebody's reformed and they talk or Calvinist, they talk about pride. They're talking about an inner condition primarily. If you think about it in a Pietistic kind of way, it's an inner condition. Now, I don't think anybody would deny that it's an inner condition. Okay? But to me, the genius of quote-unquote, I'm going to use the term Anabaptism. Okay? The genius of Anabaptism is that it does not separate the inward disposition from the outward life. And so if you see pride being expressed in a person's the way they live, the way they dress, what their houses are like, then one can, I think, pretty well assume that they are proud.

There's something inside of them that is proud. Now, one can be proud and hide things too. One can be proud about being plain, which is curious, isn't it? But one of the things I would notice and I got this idea actually from Theron Schlaibel. He talks about the fact that when it came to humility, that Mennites and Amish objectified it. Okay? They made it an objective reality, not just simply a disposition of the heart. Okay? And so an objective reality that expresses itself in various ways. Okay?

And so I think that that still has a that's still a valid way of looking at things. Okay? Pride is the original sin. Okay? As John M. Brennaman talks about in his tract, Pride and Humility, I think the spiritual roots of not patterning ourselves at the world, as Paul said, "Be not conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Okay? The patterns of the world, okay, are an opposition to godliness, and they express themselves not only in inward dispositions but in objective ways. And I think plainness is an effort to deal with that reality. And the other thing that I think also that perhaps today we have lost somewhat is that, particularly when it comes to, I think, about how some of our houses are built and how they're decorated and so on, is the idea that we are actually not identifying with the elite in the world.

We are not patterning ourselves after elite, but we are finding a common, ordinary, simple—though I hesitate to use the word simple because some people run with that—way of life. Okay? In a sense, it's almost impoverishing ourselves. Okay?

Forgive me if I misunderstand you, but you seem to be an apologist for plainness. Most Christians are not practitioners of plainness. So I'm curious how you would make the case for plainness to believers who aren't presently plain.

No, that's a good question. Yeah, I guess I could say I'm an apologist for plainness.

Well, I guess the question that I would address is when you look at how let's just simply take dress, for example. Okay? When I see some—and this is kind of indirect what you're dealing with—when I see some young Mennite guys cut their hair where they have these really, I think, what they call tight and high haircuts, it's really shaved kind of on the side, and it's this top stuff here. And so I thought, "Where did that come from?"

I do not know. Where did that come from? Well, it comes from the world. It comes from the fashion industry. So it does. And it's a look, and it conveys a message. All right? It really makes an appeal to our visual appeal to us. Okay? It calls attention to somebody's looks. Now, that changes. And that's the thing about fashions. It changes. Okay? And what's really in now or what's really attractive and appealing to the senses now may change. But there's often some similarities to it. Okay?

And so the question I often want to ask people is, "Where did that come from?" And the people who invented it or came up with that particular way of, let's say, cutting your hair or that particular way of dressing, okay, what was motivating that? It was not a desire to serve God. It was not a desire to be modest. It was not a desire to not call attention to your body.

Okay? But it actually comes out a desire to accentuate all that. All right? And that's what drives the whole fashion industry. Okay? So to me, now, as far as the particulars of how it works itself out, okay, of how "plainness" works itself out in a Mennite or Amish or German Baptist context, I think they work really well.

I have no quarrel with them. Okay? They accomplish the thing that I think they need to accomplish. Okay? But that does not say that those ways of doing it are necessarily the only ways of doing it.

There could be different ways of doing it that are equally as valid, get the job done, and so on.

My personal opinion is that being a Mennite, I don't need to reinvent the wheel.

There's a pattern. There's a style. There's a way of doing this that really works well, I think works well. And it also places me in continuity with the church in the past, which I'm part of, as well as hopefully the church of the future, which I'm part of, and the church of today.

It identifies me as something—this is a really interesting story about this plainly dressed woman. And it's a true story because it happened to somebody I know. This plainly dressed woman at an airport where some evangelical came up to her and said, "You don't need to dress that way to be a Christian."

And she said, "Well, how did you know I was a Christian?"

It was because of her dress. Okay? It was because of her dress.

But the foundational thing is when we talk about—and one of the things I think we need to understand is that the particular pattern of plain dress that we have is not static. Okay? It's not static, but it is rooted in what went before. And in many cases, the pattern that came up was a response to what was happening in the larger society and saying, "No, we don't want to do that." Let's take, for example, the plain coat. Okay? Now, I think this is an issue for many people. And this is interesting to me, particularly because it impacts men.

There are men in our plain churches who resist wearing a plain coat, and yet they want their wives to wear a cape dress and dress plain. There seems to be, to me, a fundamental inequity there. Okay? And they can come up with good rational reasons why they don't want to do this, why they don't want to wear a plain coat. Kids say, "Well, it costs money." Well, I hear that, and then I look at what their wardrobe is right, and I think, "Well, I bet you spent more money on your wardrobe than I ever spent on a coat." All right? But the other thing is, when you think about a plain coat, all right, what is it?

Well, it buttons up to your throat. Okay? Now, if anybody was designing a coat for practical reasons, what would they do? They would design a coat that buttons up to your throat. They would not design a coat which you turn the collar over, and you have this thing that comes down to the V, and there's these two little or three buttons down at the bottom that you come to, and it's there. Nobody would design a coat for any practical reason. Why did they do that? Well, in the 19th century, in the first half of the 19th century, as fashions began to develop, all right, we have the collar, the standing collar, and it gets higher and higher.

It grows higher and higher. It reaches up to the ears. Well, it can hardly go any farther than that. And so what did they do? Well, the next style is to turn it over, to roll it. Okay? Well, once they roll it, then it creates these lapels. All right? And then what you have to do? Well, you have to start wearing long ties. Now, there were bow ties before that, but bow ties were actually neckerchiefs to close the collar of a shirt. Here, I'm getting into the particulars of dress. But I think—I mean, this is my personal opinion—I think a plain coat makes the most sense of any coat I've ever seen because it buttons up to the throat.

The only reason to wear a lapel coat, the only rationale for that is fashion. It's not a sensible coat. Nobody would design a coat like that for practicality. They only design it for fashion. Okay? I've also kind of found it interesting when I—and I have known people like this who resist the idea of wearing a plain coat, and they can come up with all these rationales why they shouldn't wear a plain, why it's not necessary to wear a plain coat. And if they leave a group where that's what's expected, and they go to another group where it's not expected, and guess what? They put on a lapel coat.

Now, I do not want to judge the motives of people, but I began to wonder, was that really what your argument was about? Or did you just simply want to blend in with the pattern of the world? So now, having said that, having said that, there may be indeed people who they have no contact with plain people or with Mennites or Brethren or Amish or anything like that, and they may come up with a pattern, and maybe they'll wear a lapel coat.

I know of some groups in which they're really insistent that their men wear—when they go to church, they wear a suit and a tie, a long black tie. And that's their pattern. And in their minds, that's being non-conformed.

I think that's a little silly way of being non-conformed. I mean, it doesn't make sense to me and so on. But I can at least respect the idea that they have an understanding that we're not going to just simply go with every pattern of the world, every new thing that comes down the track, every new thing that basically comes out of a fashion industry that is wanting to sell things to you and does so by appealing to your fleshly senses.

Okay? And when I see Mennites picking up aspects of that, that troubles me because they're not asking themselves, "Where does this come from? And what is the message it's sending?" Clothes send a message. It doesn't matter how you dress. It sends a message.

You have to decide what is the message you want to send. Before we end this episode, is there more that you would like to add? Well, I guess I would have to say, I mean, I was baptized into the Mennite. I was baptized, I guess I'll have to say, into the Mennite Church when I was 17 years old. All right?

And now I'm 64 years old, approaching my 65th birthday here next year. And I would say in the last 20 years, I have seen across the spectrum, across the spectrum, I have seen more erosion among our conservative groups, groups that define themselves as plain. I've seen more erosion of plainness than before.

Now, first, the conservative Mennite groups who came out of the groups that were assimilating in the 1950s and '60s, okay, that generation who came out, and I would even say for a while after that, had a very good sense of how things developed and how they looked at what were some of the markers, some of the things that you would be alert to. As the next generations come along, they do not have that experiential understanding.

Okay? And so when they hear some things, okay, when they hear something, "Well, that sounds reasonable. Yeah. Do we have to do it this way?" And so us old fogies, okay, and I almost—I think I'm like that—us old guys, we've heard these arguments before. Okay? And we can say, "You can go that way if you want to.

But you look at this. These are the arguments that people were using back then, and look where it led them to." Okay? And so I think that I think our churches, as far as maintaining non-conformity, the practices of non-conformity, are at a crisis. And I believe that across the board. I talked to—I said I talked to an older Mennite friend of mine recently. He said at one of their most recent conference meetings that they had, the whole question of plainness and non-conformity was a big issue.

Now, it's hitting them at various different places than it is some other groups. The creation and maintenance of a plain culture with markers that define that do give some guidance to how we should live. It helps us to avoid the wickedness of the world.

So that would be—and the other thing I would have to say is somehow we're going to have to address the inequity of what we insist upon for our women when it comes to their dress and what we allow our men to do.

When you walk down the street with your wife or with your sisters, with your mother, okay, as a man, is it as obvious to everybody looking on that you are a Christian as it is that your women are a Christian?

I think we have made our women bear the burden of plainness when it comes to dress.

And I think that is not going to work in the long run because what will happen is that eventually the women's dress will change also.

I believe that we will end the episode here. Okay. Thank you for listening to this episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. This is the second episode that we have recorded with Edsel Berge. His previous episode, which was about theological concerns of Swiss Mennonites in America from 1730 to 1930, and every other episode and essay that we have published can be found at anabaptistperspectives.org.