I grew up Mennonite and left when I was 16. I’m now 23 and I’ve just started to see it as a cult. I’ve been straight-up told that I will never be happy outside the church, basically my life is just guaranteed to suck. My family has very little to do with me. I can agree with pretty much every check you put on that list, your analysis is accurate.
Am also 23 and born into a mennonite family. I never was fully indoctrinated as I moved to a different country at a young age, but I rejected the religion completely at 14.
Kitty Kat I still struggle with the repercussions of being raised that way and leaving, but I’ve moved to Seattle and am slowly starting to adapt to life in the real world. Glad to hear you were able to escape.
@@Jer_Schmidt it probably has only a tiny bit to do with the cult, but I was raised by a mother who emotionally abused me for her own benefit, and she was raised by a misogynistic batshit crazy woman who sent me a TH-cam link to a 2 hour "movie" about what will happen to those left behind after the rapture. I cut contact with my mother 18 months ago and it was honestly the hardest and best decision of my life
I can relate.... I grew up Mennonite too and I’m only just now learning to be a functional human and I’m just now learning how much damage was done to me by what I now recognize to be brainwashing and thought control.
You have to admit there's at least one good thing about the Amish: compared to JWs and Mormons and ISKCONs, they're extremely unlikely to troll your comment section.
@@squidguy7907 I think they mean it like they don't have access to the internet and those other cults' members always comment under those types of videos to bash the atheists or try to convert them.
I was raised as a Mennonite, so thanks for talking about it. It was very surreal to hear you talk about all these topics as third-hand as it's my heritage, and still seems strange that there are other ways humans could live or be raised. Wow, I guess that feeling I'm having reenforces your conclusion that these are cults. Huh. You touched on a lot of things, but two major omissions that might have been helpful to flesh out context... First, the anabaptist split was almost entirely over infant baptism. The Catholic church baptized babies and that was simply not cool with anabaptist church fathers. This was a big enough deal to cause the entire rift. Second, separation from the world -- technology in particular -- wasn't mentioned and is one of the more common things that people DO know about these groups. The interesting thing is that each village seemed to come up with their ideas about what level of technology is successful... I always joked that it was x hundred years behind. The progressive ones can use 100 year old tech (like cars), where others require technology to be at least 500 years old before it could be used. I never found good justification for the arbitrary dividing lines chosen. Anyhow, GREAT JOB giving an overview. I too saw SO MANY Mennonites when I visited the Ken Ham Creation Museum, but for me it was "coming home".
i would like to do a part 2 on this. i could have talked about them for a lot longer than i did. ill address those points when the time comes. thanks for watching it. i know what you mean when you say it seems strange that there are other ways humans could have been raised. 100%
As always Telltale, yet another great video. I always knew there was something strange about the Amish... There is one question I've been wanting to ask for a while: would either you or Paulogia consider Lutheranism a cult or not?
In Minnesota and North Dakota we have Menonites who pay someone to act as a driver. They dress according to their code. They tend not to speak to outsiders, unless it's necessary. I flirted with a few Mennonite guys...or tried to.
I grew up Mennonite and I’m transgender... it really fucked me up and I’m only just now dealing with the trauma from it and it’s really crazy how much it affected me even in like the smallest aspects Of my life like I’m learning a lot about myself and I want to thank you for your videos honestly you’ve saved my life and I appreciate you more than I can express in words!
Funny enough, where I come from, the Mennonite culture is much more modernized than what was shown here (no dress restrictions, no shunning, much less thought control, etc.). It took me traveling to the east coast to see traditional Mennonites, which is what was described. I only recently found out that my region was in the minority of this sect. I feel the need to point out that I am not a Mennonite; I just come from a Mennonite family.
Where I’m at it’s similar. The modern mennos are chill af. Like that girl in the video described my area to a t. They like their food and their panicky blitz card game 😂. Like this Mennonite religion he’s talking about is the type of stuff we have in our Mennonite heritage museum. That’s the history of it, but it’s not or present. The museum has a church in it, and most of us were darn shocked to learn they used to separate the sexes. There’s very few in my area who still subscribe to that, hardly a cult, just some remaining extremists.
I used to date a Mennonite. We met at the Fire Academy and hit it off immediately. All we wanted to do is be left alone when we were together, but her sister was always around and followed us everywhere. I never said anything, but I knew she was spying on us. I told my girlfriend’s parents when we started dating that I respected her and her family’s wishes and I had no intention of doing her wrong. This went on for 3 years and, even though their family actually liked me quite a bit, we were still spied on. We ended up breaking up because I joined the Navy and she didn’t want to leave her family. Last time she contacted me Facebook she told me she got married and wanted to be friends.
James Rutley I haven’t been able to find her on any social media lately and I don’t have her phone number so I haven’t spoken to her at all in the past few years.
The Amish is not a “lifestyle”. It isn’t a new fad that you can jump on. It’s a religious cult that comes with an extremely restrictive lifestyle with no benefits. Some modern people think that the Amish lifestyle is appealing because of the whole “back to nature” and “living off the land” appeal. Not only are those things bogus, but the Amish don’t live off the land or close to nature. The Amish are just as dependent on modern technology as anyone else. Using pins instead of buttons in your clothing isn’t exactly back to nature and propane and natural gas delivered to your home via truck is pretty far from being self-sufficient. Yes, many Amish grow some of their own food, but they also buy a lot of it. They buy summer homes, sell their “quaint” goods to non-Amish people then then use the money to buy things. They are a part of the modern economy. What’s more, Amish do not permit outsiders to join. It generally takes 3+ generations before someone is accepted (i.e. if you joined the Amish, your grandchildren might be accepted). The romanticization of an extremist religious cult like the Amish is sickening. They don’t live a simpler, back to nature life, they live a restrictive life in a misogynistic cult that is having several issues because of inbreeding and has a suicide rate of double the national average.
Yeah, they get romanticized as being idyllic and quaint, due to their lack of modern technology and their pacifism when it comes to military service. Except their culture is very backwards at this point, a lot of it is they are still living in an 1800's pre-industrial mindset where their beliefs really weren't that out of place and weren't considered too extreme, except they stayed there while the rest of society moved forward 130 years. This ends up causing a lot of nonsensical traditions that they will admit don't make sense, but they follow them anyways. Back in the day, belts, buttons, cars, electricity, etc were all seen as luxury and prideful items so they shunned them. But now they are practically essential to modern life, so they begrudgingly incorporate them in odd ways. They can have people drive them around, they can use equipment with small motors or generators and cellphones, but can't have their houses wired. Or other times have a community phone, but no one personally owns it so it is okay.
John Smith Amish can be a bit diverse too. I don't think it takes three generations to be accepted by them. Not that I never want to join one. You also forgot to mention puppy mills, harsh treatment of animals, and some drug dealing that goes on. I get sick of reading on the internet when people say I want to join the Amish. My response is always go ahead. People do romanticize the 'simple life'. From what I see they do work really hard. People that want to join them could never do it. Nor would they really want to once they got there.
If someone wants to get close to nature and distance themselves from big cities and whatever, it is much better to do that without any religious indoctrination
Also, any religious sect in which more than half of members have 5+ kids is definitely a cult. No way around it. More than 95% of people who have so many kids are either fundamentalists or too dumb to use contraception properly.
ITS ME! Or what I was. Grew up mennonite (but the kind you can't tell from most people) And went to a mennonite school. So this is all in my experience, for the non old order mennonites a lot of this doesnt quite apply. Mennonites have gone through a lot of secondary splits, like I believe there are two conferences of non old order mennonites in the US, which split due to some specific beliefs.The mennonites around me dont shun, and no dresscode is enforced at all. What I can tell you from my time at school is that they do teach young earth creationism as an equal to evolution in scientific merit, harry potter was banned in libraries (though mennonites vary on this point by family), they are VERY anti-abortion and mostly homophobic, non-violence was probably the most emphasized part of or faith (we had school projects where we had to solve hypothetical world problems without war), baptism was a commitment to god and later you would go through another show of faith to become a member of a church. While there is control in mennonite communities, a lot of it is... more informal? There are certain last names that hold sway in the community. Those that have been mennonite for generations. And there is also... this sort of idealized mennonite image, at least in children. Tempered, unassuming, patient, unquestioning etc. If you dont fit that it is a bit harder to really feel like you belong. I could tell stories about the politics of elders and congregations, of people judging parents for the actions of children, being yelled at during sunday school for questioning the story of Jonah, going to anti abortion protests to feel like I fit in. But these are all moments and my experience was a spectrum. Sorry for the ramble. I can explain more if anyone is curious. But thought I might share my two cents. Great video. P.S. this is PA mennonites.
Hey you're cute. If you're interested in dating me, hit me up please. I don't have any viruses. I got myself checked out and I don't have herpes or aids. Ttyl
From what I gather, it was such a popular book, that at the time there was so little understanding about hell that the church shrugged and said 'eh why not?'. Like since it's not really explained or described in great detail, the church didn't mind letting people believe in what Dante said. And it was written in the vernacular, not Latin, so more uneducated people (ie, most people) could have understood that than the Bible itself.
Rachael Lefler yep, another thing that helped with the "publicity" is the fact that Virgilio was in there, which was already quite well known at the time. And Dante himself was pretty famous because of his political beliefs since Florence was at the time divided between two different groups, and he eventually got exiled from the city
D'aaaaw such a shame. Just search them on youtube. They make videos about mythology, summarizing them in a highly entertaining manner. I suggest watching their series about The divine comedy. Or about the Illiad.
Also I saw a documentary about Amish health care. They are very reluctant to take their kids to the drs. Sadly there’s a rise in maple syrup disease ( no joke it’s awful, think it affects kidneys) the documentary said it was due to inbreeding, as it’s a small community
It's not just that it's a small community. Some groups of Amish are absolutely obsessed with blood lines. They will knowingly engage inbreeding (marrying first cousins) in order to maintain "purity".
Dan Morgan oh that old chestnut, well it didn’t do the romans or the Egyptians much good did it?! Surely it should be illegal. I mean look at warren Jeff’s and the FLDS and the Kingston clan. How are they not prosecuted? Have you seen the baby graveyard the FLDS have, it’s shocking? Also some who have escaped, have said the wives and kids are kept in dreadful conditions, and the more sick babies they have the more social money they get. If the authorities are so scared of going head to head with these cults maybe, they should start with looking into fraudulent activities
Dan Morgan for the record though I do somewhat admire the Amish. I watched the film Amish Grace. There in that horrendous situation they showed true forgiveness and love. Cannot take that away from them, inbred or not imho
I don't know that the Romans ever engaged in first cousin marriage but that would not have been the source of their problems anyway; their problems stemming from diminishing returns on increasing scale of empire, sorrows of empire such as America is starting to experience. For the Egyptians the Pharaohs married siblings which produced health problems for the pharaohic family but I think the problems of Egypt were more geopolitical , namely conquest by the Persians, the Greeks, and finally absorption by Rome when Cleo died.
It strikes me that the FLDS is almost a mirror of the ancient Israelites with their patriarchs. The adolescent males being sent away as a threat to the dominant male, just as happens in a lion pride chasing away young males. The stories of Essu and Ismail come to mind. The ancient Israelites wandering, being persecuted while being delusional (God's chosen people paranoia), moving on sounds just like the FLDS. They would make an excellent "13th tribe". In his attempt to find a Jewish tribe in the new world Joseph Smith may have inadvertently created something resembling it.
My Grandfather who grew up in the culture and then left as an adult and just became a typical baptist left school at the age of 8 and used the skills he developed in his youth as a Mennonite to become a professional carpenter.
Both my parents grew up Conservative Mennonite. My dad never finished high school and neither of them ever went to college. There was no push for higher education with me. I went to a shitty private Christian high school that was evangelical, because my parents had left the Mennonite church by then. No surprise I never went to college until last year, when I was 46. Better late than never I guess.
During the brief time I spent in Ohio (a few months) I worked as a painter alongside several Mennonites working on the same job site as me and even met a few Amish (apparenty, Ohio has many more Amish and Mennonites than Pennsylvania) - they were all craftsman (extremely good ones, in fact) and worked in construction, and were generally pretty aloof from everyone they didn't have to work directly with. They were driven in and out by someone who picked them up and dropped them off, and all had simple clamshell mobile phones, which really surprised me. I should note though that the phones were a work necessity - that's why they had them. After work was done, I imagined they either didn't use them or left them somewhere else. Mennonites make LOT of concessions for the sake of their jobs that Amish are much less likely to do. Being a linguist and a general language enthusiast, I was especially fascinated with the fact they all spoke German to each other. Now, I'm comfortable enough in German to be able to have conversations that dont get too technical or anything like that. And while I was able to talk to them, I noticed they had an easier time understanding me than I them - that is, unless they switched to Hochdeutsch when speaking to me, then I could undserstand them fine. But they noted it felt rather weird speaking in their liturgical language conversationally - kind of similar to if we went around addressing each other using Shakespearian English. That's what it was like for them, they said. They were clearly more comfortable speaking in dialectal German, but it turns out the reason for that was because they all could read and recite in Standard High German via their bibles, which are always in Hochdeutsch. But they only ever did that when singing hymns or reciting passages in church, never just to casually talk to each other. But the variety they SPEAK to each other derives from West Central German and has digerged even from that dialect quite a lot over the centuries. There are a lot of English phrases and the whole dialect sounds very much like German but with a lot of odd grammar forms (some very conservative, others very innovative), and spoken in what the same sort of accent that permeates Midwest English speakers. However, when they speak English they do so with a distinctly German sounding accent. Lol it was very peculiar to me. So they German they spk sounded rather English-y, and the English they spoke sounded rather German-y. Odd, huh? Although they were aloof, if approached for a conversation they'd happyily carry one on with ya, although the only thing I ever had to talk about with them was their language. Even so, though, the ones I got to know were friendly and approachable and after a while would even come to me to talk sometimes. I liked them and one in particular I miss conversing with quite a bit :) Hope he's well.
Amish speak Pennsylvania German which is influenced by Rhineland German and Palatinate German. Pfälzisch. Mennonites speak a variety of Plattdeutsch related to the eastern dialects around Pomerania and Mecklenburg. I think they call it something like Plautdietsch though I could be off on that. Platt is on a dialectic continuum that eventually leads to Dutch and Freesian which makes it closer to English than high German is. This is extraordinary because a lot of low German dialects have or are currently dying off. Mennonite is still going strong.
Great video, Telltale, and kudos to Paulogia for escaping! I had to testify against an amish group for animal abuse. They had puppy mills, horrible ones. And the horses weren't well taken care of, either. This was a small community in WA, I believe they went back to PA after that. Hitchins told a joke, "why'd the Amish girl get excommunicated? Two Mennonite!" Sorry, had to. Love and Peace
I live in Pennsylvania and the puppy mills are heart breaking. There are laws but... They see all animals as living objects not sentient beings. They do the absolute least to house and feed the animals.
So glad someone is addressing this, aren’t the river brethren similar too? If they shun they are a cult. Deborah Frances white says the difference between a religion and a cult is, a religion let’s you leave with your dignity in tact. I think that’s a fair assessment
When i was very small, like 5 or 6, i remember going to an Amish community in tennessee. There was a bakery where this man with a really long beard talked about all of his homemade goods and had a conversation woth my mother about (something idk) We bought some and it was actually really good. He was really sweet and i saw tons of horseback riding, it was pretty cool and 8 year old me thought the lifestyle was very nice. Nowadays i still like the lifestyle but not their beliefs.
Both of my parents were raided Amish and I wanna say thank you for covering this. They did move to Christianity (which has it's own problems). Hearing stories of what they went through and how it was all sanctioned by the church I think you were a little easy on this religion.
Just thought I’d make a quick comment. I just recently started watching your videos because of a coworker being a JW. But this one hits closer to home with me. Both of my parents were raised Amish and left the church after they joined officially after their rum springa period or their time to be worldly. My Dads side of the family shunned us until about 10 years ago but my Mom’s side did not and we were allowed to attend family functions on her side. One other quick thing about Amish shunning. If you decide not to join the church after your Rum Springa phase you will not be shunned by the family or the community. Only if you’re baptized into the church will you then be shunned.
I have to say your work is consistently top notch and I look forward to every video. I hope you and godless engineer can come to Tampa sometime. I would love to see you guys speak.
It seems like Telltale is gaining a furry fanbase with all this anthro fanart. As long as they don't start roleplaying in the comments, I'm fine with it. * Scratches arm * * Blushes at Telltale * * Nuzzles into him * Please help me, I'm too far down the furry rabbithole :)
I’m at 13:23, and several times I have heard you say that Amish live communally. That is not correct. The Hutterites, another Anabaptist group which so far I have not heard you mention, live communally. They are mainly based up in Canada,but also live in several states that border Canada such as Montana, North Dakota, etc.
I think quite a few people confuse Hutterites with Mennonites. There are quite a few Hutterite communities in Canada. The Mennonites in BC (Canada) = and there are many! - are for the most part just like other "modern" Christian churches. No dress code or foot washing, or separating the women and men in church or any of that, just the usual Christian doctrinal beliefs. But they are anti-war (helped US draft dodgers in the Vietnam era) and very active with charity work. (I work for a Mennonite nonprofit and I'm not required to be a Mennonite. They have a lot of really good programs for the homeless, domestic abuse victims, etc.)
They make damn good pretzels and summer bologna though! Anyway Ive worked in Lancaster a lot and even here in Baltimore they are driven in vans every thursday friday and saturday to the markets around here. And, what a lot of people don't know is that in Southern Maryland they grow all of the tobacco and auction the bundles at the Phillip Moris auction house in LaPlata. They are basically the only ones that grow it because it is VERY labor intensive and there arent any machines that can do the work. They are worth LOTS of money even though they use none of it for modernization, it's all for land and building homes for the next generation.
My attitude is - correct pronunciation of a foreign name is a privilege, not a right. Of course Xini in Chinese or Shidonī in Japanese sounds different to Sydney in English and Australia is Àodàlìyǎ in Chinese or Ōsutoraria in Japanese but who cares. Asians have the most problems with Ls and Rs and that is that.
Münster isn't only a Name for actually a bunch of (german) towns but also an expression of a certain kind of churches. It dirives from The latin word for monastary and I guess that may be true for the irish province, too. Because there is no letter ü or ue, telltale pronounced it as good as he could. I don't even no how to explain how we pronounce ü/ue something between an e and an u sound? For anyone interested in how to pronounce german Umlauts, here is a bit silly but educational video from "Don't trust the rabbit" th-cam.com/video/hEpsLVKo5vg/w-d-xo.html
Being raised around both, I already knew the answer going into the video. It's so blatantly obvious if you know anything about the Amish and Mennonite communities and how they function. The funny thing with Mennonites is that they're allowed to drive cars, but only blue or black cars? That might not be the same for all churches, but my mom's friend is Mennonite and that's what he was told. As for the Divine Comedy, it's funny that Hell is supposedly made of fire when the deeper down you go (in the Divine Comedy), the colder it is.
Hi Telltale. I'm an ex Mormon who lives in a Mennonite community and as far as dietary restrictions go the old school Mennonites aren't supposed to drink alcohol and I've heard of people being kicked out of the church for being caught with a beer in their hand. Lot's of Hudderites around here too. I'm moving back to civilization shortly but it's been interesting comparing cultiness.
If you don’t wanna read the divine comedy, there’s a film on TH-cam called l’inferno, it’s a silent film from the 1910’s and is a really good depiction of the book. I’ve seen it like 3 times and it still fascinates me 😌😌
I used to live around Mennonites in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho. At the time, they comprised about half of the population there. They were very nice. Lots of baked goods. The women wore their hair in buns and long dresses, while the men wore baggy pants and had beards. They couldn't watch teevee or listen to the radio, but they made a beeline every morning for the newspaper. If you drove past their church on a sunny summer Sunday, you could hear the fire-and-brimstone preaching. They had a difficult time keeping members, and if they reached marriage age, they had to find someone local or be shipped off to another group in Kansas.
Wow didn't know those bits. I still see Mennonites fairly regularly here Coeur D'Alene but I see alot more of the born again Christians around here. There's a bunch of different Churches of them around the city and they are very Cult like. A bunch of the clients I work with go to one of their churches. I've had to sit through a few of their sermons very creepy. I'd rather go to a more traditional Lutheran church if I was inclined to go church (I'm not Christian any longer but was raised Lutheran).
I have a lot of mennonites that come up from Mexico in my town. They speak low German, and can be real pains in the ass because they drive their cars illegally (Mexican plates for over a year, illegal mods, stuff like that) and pretend they can’t speak English when they get pulled over. They get really mad if one of them speaks low German back to them. From what I’ve seen of them, the old order women wear bonnets or veils and have long hair underneath (I went to school with one named Eva, she was old order), wear flower print dresses in different colours (mainly purple, blue, and pink), and they wear black overcoats. The men all wear plaid button up shirts with jeans and a belt, and their names are mostly Abe, John, and Jacob. I also went to high school with a bunch of new order mennonites. I came over to one of their houses for a New Years party on New Year’s Day. Her parents weren’t home, but when they stopped home quick to get something, we hid the alcohol in the bathtub. They were really normal, the only way you could really tell that they were Mennonite was a lot of the kids had the same 5 last names: Wall, friesen, Klassen, Krahn, and Wiebe. Like they’d dye their hair, get piercings, wear normal clothing, swear. I think the girls had long hair from personal preference, but I know a few that got tattoos. The new order mennonites, at least where I live, are really chill people, fun to laugh with and be around. They make Mennonite jokes about themselves. They were way nicer to me than the normal kids at my other school.
A little off topic but The Divine Comedy is literally just self insert fanfiction where Dante hands out with his best friend Virgil to go visit his dead girlfriend. It’s really trippy.
We have an old school Mennonite community just outside of my small city. I used to work as an Optometric Assistant and they'd come to our office as patients. I'm guessing they chose us because the doctor who owned the practice was a Brethren elder and all of us were fundamentalist Christians. The men all had bowl cuts, wore exactly the same eyeglass frames and wore heavy black suits with broad brimmed hats all year round. The women wore long sleeved, ankle length dresses and old fashioned bonnets. I felt so sorry for them when they sweltered in the humid summer heat. This community did not use electricity, but drove horse and buggies along the highway, although they were fine with getting a ride from a neighbour to get to town. The children rarely finished high school, with the boys expected to work on the farm from a very young age, and the girls were taught how to cook, clean, do laundry and help raise the younger children. They married young, and had very large families which made it more difficult to feed and clothe themselves. The Mennonites bartered with their neighbours, and they had no qualms about taking an unfair advantage if they sensed the neighbour felt sorry for them. They are definitely a cult.
It's kind of like generating a 1000 hertz sine wave using math.h instead of a lookup table just because you were told it was desirable (to the enemy combatants) to want to not know any better.
I really appreciate you making a video about this. I was brought up in the Mennonite church until I was about six years old and even though my family switched churches after that, my mother’s view certainly didn’t. It makes a lot of her statements and behaviors make more sense, as well as why there are so many baby/young pictures of my sisters and I in bonnets.
Hey, great video! My mother is Mennonite and I go with her to church often (I'm personally a Celtic reconstructionist, a form of Celtic pagan, though my mom doesn't know. It would be interesting to see your thoughts on the reconstructionist movement in a video) and I'm so happy to see someone shed light on their cult practices. It's hard to see my friends in the youth group at the church being indoctrinated like they are. Anyway, great video, I love your channel!
The local Mennonites protested a music festival we had in our rural town. They stood outside the park holding signs equating the drinking of beer with going to hell. Cringeworthiness being next to godliness when you're a cult member.
@R Per So you want to try and *trick* the boiler. If you had even one shortest perceivable moment of your life where you did not get your way then you are *already* in hell. Sentinent life is an evolutionary mis-step, free will is an illusion. We say we enjoy our lives, but being conceived an alive is the most undesirable thing imaginable--the lowest number that can be stored in the computer. People, even non-culted people, should not have children out of pure moral compassion.
That's interesting, as I've know Mennonites who had no problem with drinking, per se, and certainly not enough of a problem with it to protest others doing so. Even the Old Order Amish don't have as hard-and-fast a rule against alcohol consumption as most would expect; I think it is varies from ordnung to ordnung. I have seen, with my own eyes, Amish buying alcoholic beverages and Mennonites drinking beer. I guess you get a heck of a lot of variance with a non-centralized religion.
I live in Münster. One of the symbols of the city are three cages on the dome, which where used to display the corpses of the leaders of the Münster rebellion. Never thought I would hear about them in one of your videos :D
I had to read inferno for my Language Arts class. It was surprisingly interesting to compare Inferno to the modern version of hell that many Christians believe in.
The Amish and Mennonites are both Anabaptist sects that formed as part of the Protestant Reformation, but separate from it. Most notably, they went further from the Catholic teachings and were often as at odds with the Protestant rulers as they were with the Catholics. The Amish split off from the other Anabaptists and formed their own sect much later. They are closely related, with some more “liberal” Amish groups being less conservative than the most conservative Mennonite groups. Most of the Anabaptist groups formed in the Germanic countries of the Continent in the 16th century. The Quakers share very little with the Amish and Mennonites. They formed in England in the 18th century and were known as the Society of Friends. The thing they probably share the most with the Anabaptists is the policy of non-resistance (similar to pacifism) where you do not take part in any violence, even to defend yourself. While Amish and Mennonites share a cultural and religious ancestor and are fairly similar (Amish who leave the church usually become Mennonites), Quakers have no such familiarity other than being a Christian faction that split off from the established religion of their nation.
To understand recursion, first you must understand recursion. I don't defend my life anymore than I would defend having a painful disease or maintaining that my whole house remain on fire or be in financial poverty for eternity. "How much would you pay for something you don't want". The key here is to defend QUALITY of life. The justice system may put me in a padded cell for tens of thousands of years, and I might not manage to kill my oppressors (any presence of government is oppression), but you may have a strange painful scar on your body that makes you fall asleep one minute later than you should at night and you shall remember what a jerk you were for not letting me have my way.
I was really surprised to stumble upon a huge Mennonite community in Belize. I was told that they left the US because they didn't want to pay taxes. I heard the locals didn't like them because they don't want to pay in Belize either. They came to town in horse and buggies, but as we went up the river, I saw that they had mechanized farm operations. Was really interesting.
it's so funny to see a video about something that seems so normal to me. I grew up in an area with a lot of mennonite and amish people and it just seems like something so normalized. they're usually very nice people, typically shy and don't socialize so much but they seem good natured. They speak to themselves in PA "Dutch" a lot (It's actually German) and often have farms and grocery stores. My dad calls them "Yonies" but I think that's derogatory.
Dante's inferno is so fun you guys! Everybody should check it out. The synopsis itself is fascinating. For the ones of you that could be interested I'll suggest some specific parts: canto V (Lust, basically an italian version of Romeo and Juliet) canto XXVI (what happened to Ulysses after he returned to Itaca, basically pursue of knowledge) and the best of all canto XXXIII (traitors, here you'll find the ugly punishment and death of a traitor, forced to starve to death with his 4 children). Do not bother reading Purgatory and Paradise, suuuper boring. Make you wish you'll end up in limbo (canto IV).
I’m Mennonite. You did a better job than most with understanding/presenting a lot of what we are, so kudos for that! It’s amazing how much people misunderstand us. It’s important to note however that a lot of what makes mennonites what we are is purely cultural. There are sometimes people that are within the culture that don’t believe. In some ways we sometimes act like a country. (There are loads of mennos that don’t share the German/Russian culture, though)
Your swords are one with mine. I have to take Risperdal and Celexa to stay civilized and sleep 12 hours every knight. It's like I'm working a 28 hour a week part time job in bed. I refer to taking the pills as "Putting a quarter in the meter".
To be fair, Dante's Divine Comedy is some of the most popular self-insert fanfiction ever written. Also, not entirely sure how true this is so take with an amused grain of salt. But I heard somewhere else that footwashing has been used historically as a slang for oral sex. So there's that fun trivia for you.
I'd pull the bastard with my vehicle. Screw horses, they're dumb, they stink and they shit everywhere! cars don't shit and won't freak out when a fly farts.
The TH-cam Phantom Official “He drives her buggy.” Buggy has a dual meaning. The word describes both a conveyance and a slang term for driving someone crazy. It’s basically a “Dad joke” or a “groaner”.
I live in wester Pennsylvania and am active in a local LGBT community. About a year ago my home town had an ordinance proposed to add transgender people to existing anti hate bill banning discrimination in housing and a number of other areas. A local old order Mennonite pastor spoke at City Hall in opposition to the bill. Another pastor from a reformed Mennonite Church spoke in support of the bill. I attended the reformed Mennonite Church out of curiosity. They have other transgender members a female pastor no dress code and they practice same sex marriage. From what I understand the Mennonite Church here in Western Pennsylvania has split up on the issue of same sex marriage. The majority of the conference sided on allowing same sex marriage. A group that did not want to allow same sex marriage and the inclusion of transgender members left and started a new denomination and other members went to the old order Church. I was schocked with how liberal the Church was. I was also schocked that the Church is allowing same sex marriage and people against it where the ones to leave. I am a flaming queer liberal and I feelt more welcome than in the United Methodist Church I normally attended. It may be something more specific to my area but it seems that some Mennonites are reforming and become less cult like and more inclusive.
1:22 you did your best, trying to pronounce it right. The sound Ü doesn't exist in English. The 2 points mean that an E is added to the vowel, although in the case of the U it's slightly more similar to an added I. You'd have to hear it to understand it
One thing, the amish in my area ride their carriages to the Wendy's i work at and buy some food there and also the walmart across the street. We give them the leftover buckets from the pickles that would have otherwise been thrown out too. We also have a huge mennonite community, they own most the town i live in and have their own school i believe, because they use their children to run their stores from a really absurdly young age, like terrifyingly young. I swear this one boy working at the gas station couldn't be more than 10. It's sad.
My mom was not Amish or Mennonite, but when one of us did something she did not approve of, she would give us the silent treatment which was a form of shunning. It would sometimes go on for days, weeks or even months depending on the infraction. Tensions would finally come to a boil resulting in a sit down to work things out & relations would often get back to normal. This was not a very healthy approach to dealing with conflict & led to many psychological scares for all us children. Church leaders who advocate for & practice shunning should be held accountable by their congregations & quite possibly seek legal recourse as this is clearly a form of psychological abuse. I never sought legal avenues with my mother, simply because we all knew this was just part of her way of coping, but for an organized community to practice this on it's members borders on inhumane. Thank you for sharing this information as it will likely help alert people to activities in these communities they should be aware of & quite possibly have family members experiencing as we speak & prompt them to get help. Keep up the great work...:)
We also grew up playing Dutch blitz, but that’s because my Quaker grandparents believed playing cards were of the devil- and not even because of gambling. They literally believed they had hidden occult symbols on them. They also refused to say the names of the months or days, because that would be invoking pagan deities. Instead, it was “First Day” or “First Month.”
As someone who grew up in a very modern Mennonite church it’s very strange to hear all these crazy traditions and rules that were never really enforced at my church
@@OwenMorganTelltale Yes! And while we're at it, have the FBI look into the "religion" for people who are stuck there against their own will, which I know happens a lot in Scientology
Hey Telltale, wonderful video, but you forgot to mention the Hutterites! They're another Anabaptist denomination from Germany and today they're mostly found in Montana or South Dakota, which has over 50 Hutterite colonies! I live in northern colorado and i saw a mennonite family doing some grocery shopping at king sooper's and since they were picking things out in the freezer department, they must have electricity at their house. an 8-10 year old was pushing the cart and he was wearing a maga hat. i don't understand how they think that trump best represents their views or values. strange world we live in.
I actually have a Mennonite background on my fathers side and I never really knew what they believed or anything until now so thank you for making this!
Seeing young girls in hijabs always breaks my heart because I understand what indoctrination is, my family is baptist and their church is well, sexist, no other way of putting it.
Zachary Alexander the girls who wear hijab must have parents who do not follow the religion strictly cause hijab is only uppose to be worn after the girls go through puberty, most people should really read the quran it is actually quite interesting
@@danielfredrickson8916 Kinda but not really, most Muslims would shun their children if they refused to wear a Hijab. Progressive Muslims don't wear them. So they choose to wear them, but only because it's easier than having everyone hate you. So it doesn't really count as a choice. Depends on where they're from ofc, some countries are more conservative than others and before the Arab spring most women didn't wear them.
I’m so glad I wasn’t raised Islamic or born in an Islamic country, if you live in Islamic country you have no choice to wear it or else you can be raped and no one will do anything about it
I like how you give positive and negative information on how these religions work. You seem to be advocating for ones right to get all the information before making a decision, whether or not you actually agree with it; not many people are okay with others contradicting what they think is right, but you word it on a way that makes it seem more factual rather than pushy or hateful. You are able to say your opinion while also encouraging others to formulate and keep their own and that's a very respectable quality to have!
Anabaptist basically means they practice adult baptism. There are three Anabaptist sects: Amish, Mennonite and Hutterite. Hutterites are similar to very conservative Mennonites. They live in colonies, are educated on their colony, eat in community (not as a family for example) and go to church every day. there are three Hutterite sects: Schmeidleut, Dariusleut and Lahrerleut (sorry if I misspelled those). Hutterites live mostly in Canada/USA prairie provinces/states as their primary business in Canada is farming and ranching, but in the old world 200+ years ago, they were craftsmen. Hutterites are lovely people if you don't mind that women aren't allowed to vote, drive or leave the colony except to move to their husband's colony when they marry. They are technically allowed to graduate (boys or girls) but are pressured to leave school at 15, which means if they decide to be a run-away they join the "real world" without a high school education (or any identification often), which makes it very hard for them. Hutterites often get forgotten because they like it that way and are pretty discrete about their contact with the outside "English" world and although I love so much about their culture, they are definitely a cult (if you can define a cult as one that doesn't invite outsiders to join, because I understand that is pretty darn rare).
Hi there. Spent some time as a Mennonite. It's really a spectrum and not as black and white and flat grey as you make it out to be. I happened to be a member of a very liberal Mennonite church (yes they exist). A lot of the hallmarks of a cult that you laid out didn't exist there. There were a ton of ex-amish in the church that wanted as far away from their upbringing as possible but still wanted the comfortable, familiar staples of religious community. Some examples in my experience that differed from your research: No segregation of genders Foot washing was done by the pastor and he washed everyone's feet. Man and woman. This only happened once in the 2 years I was there. Communion wasn't unlike other sects of antibaptists. It was weekly. Shunning wasn't a thing. Remember, a lot of the church was ex-Amish. They had their own shunning going on. Why bring that into something new? The blanket statement about home-grown or preserved food was way off base. That's the Amish and not most Mennonites with the strict frugality. The church wasn't Big Brother. If you had some tough stuff going on in life, nobody was going to pry it out of you. It was your business. Giving money to the church is common with most religious institutions. How does that factor into how this is a cult? See Earnest Angley for some truely screwed-up methods of extracting money from people. Compared to my experience, I give this review 4/10. Hope this was constructive.
I’m Mennonite too and so many of them have techie jobs at my church. My church belongs to MCUSA and our conference and my church is accepting of LGBT people.
This is all fine and good. I know some liberal Mennonites exist. But what I grew up with, and what my parents grew up with, was absolutely the cult that this video describes. In fact, much worse.
I'd recommend listening to The Plain People's Podcast for first-hand experiences in the anabaptist circles. First thing I found that went into the intricacies of the culture.
I’m currently a Mennonite, and I will say I am questioning whether if I want to still be a Mennonite or convert to Catholicism. I will say my church doesn’t want to call themselves Mennonite because they don’t want to scare people off people and bring more people to church. I honestly don’t like how they do that and there’s just many things I’m starting to dislike and this video definitely opened my eyes. Thank you
"Museum" comes from a Latin phrase for "Seat of the Muses", referring to the Greek mythological figures representing the inspiration for science and art. The term "museum" is perfectly appropriate for a building dedicated to a bunch of made-up stuff, and I wouldn't bother giving the Creation Museum the power of trying to argue it's not a "real museum" - the Creation Museum sounds like at least as much imagination and creativity went into producing its contents as any art museum. 11:50 - The measure of "dietary restrictions", I'd suggest, would be a matter of intent: general control over the group (such as choosing their menus for them and removing all choice in what to eat), or a matter of nutritional deprivation as part of a brainwashing program (which is what a lot of fasting and weird minimalist starvation diets comes into play - I'd include certain vegetarian and vegan diets there as well). Just a matter of home-grown food in and of itself should barely register, if at all, unless there's something more to it. (Even so, I agree that the modern Anabaptist sects ping enough of the other markers to register as cultish in nature.)
I feel like Rumspringa should ring a bell on the BITE Model. Kids are allowed to experience "normal" life (so they can choose whether or not to be Amish), but only under a controlled circumstance where they are guaranteed to fail. They are just thrown into the modern world with no preparation.
My father’s side of my bloodline came over from Switzerland in 1776 and stayed Mennonite since before the arrival to the states. My mom married into it, but rebelled right away. I never was raised in it, but in German mysticism instead. She came to the states in 1958. I was born in 67 and my father left when I was 5. I feel lucky to not be raised in the group.
I went to a Mennonite school, a specific german split up from them, they had seven churches in my town and each church had a neighborhood that consisted almost entirely of Mennonites. There would be building-weekends, first the church was build then the houses the kids could move into when they married then schools for their children almost all ppl where related, almost no new ppl came into it, it grew with the kids, alot of my friends had around 12 siblings, alot of them married relatives. You were pressured to give money into the funds for building, no one said you had to live in these neighborhoods and assigned houses but a possibility of leaving wasn't thinkable, alot of oppression wasn't formally written down but came with extreme forms of child indoctrination alot of my friends were beaten regularly were not allowed to use computers, just for schoolwork, we were in the menonnite school, busses would get us there, after that we were in church group activities or at home caring for younger siblings, so everyone was in a bubble you don't need written rules about forced housing and restrictions when it is just taught and expected from children their whole life. I don't know whether this applies to other Mennonites too, i would be interested in hearing other experiences
I'm an ex-Mennonite. Amish and most Mennonites don't live on communes. That's Hutterites. Amish and Mennonites tend to live near each other, but it's rare that they would share property in common (which is what happens in a commune). I can only imagine modern hippie liberal Mennonites doing that, and only on a small scale (like living in a co-op house or a three-family commune). And in terms of "reporting feeling and thoughts to an authority" from the BITE model, I'd come to the opposite conclusion that you came to. I'd say Mennonites are discouraged from sharing feelings and thoughts with an authority because we're supposed to repress all of them :) On the other hand, if you *do* something that's against the rules/considered a sin, depending on the community you are supposed to confess that publicly at a church service and ask for the congregation's forgiveness. That's only for adults, not kids (because kids aren't baptized and therefore not members of the church), and in the more modern Mennonite communities it is not something that happens. TL;DR I think Amish and Mennonite communities can be pretty unhealthy, but I don't think they meet as many criteria of the BITE model as you do.
I went to school where a lot of my classmates were Mennonite. They were pretty normal and very progressive, i think maybe a few of their grandparents wore like more traditional attire. I couldn't even tell they were Mennonite until they told me so.
I work at a local farmers market and there is an Amish family that works in the booth next to the one I work in, the boys of the family that I have grown up with really enjoy the times I brought my speaker and played music or set up TH-cam videos on my phone, one of them completely left the community when they turned 18, the other decided to stay in the community because he enjoys the farming lifestyle nice folks
I love your content, you are more knowledgeable about Christianity than most Christians I know. Myself included. Thank you for making me smarter and helping me to understand more about my faith and it's many variations.
Both sets of my grandparents are mennonite (they went to a church were there was either mennonite or composed of a large number of mennonites), my parents have always called themselves mennonites as if it was a cultural thing but that they consider themselves christians (they went to a few churches, non of them exclusively mennonite). What mennonites were wasn't talked about growing up, there was brief mention of my grandparents families moving to Prussia from Germany before moving to Canada before and after WW2. Growing up we didn't follow any of the mennonite practices or even talk about them, but hearing you talk about them I can clearly see how it affected my family in a second hand sort of way. From my grandparents stories they probably grew up in a compound or a very close mennonite community. There was no dress code, my family always seemed out of touch with the rest of society and technologically behind, sure we had cars, tvs and other normal common things, but my parents remember it being a big deal when my grandparents finally got a tv when they were growing up (my parents are in their early 60's). My dad told me a story of how he had to hide in his room to listen to rock on the radio for entertainment. My parents only had one computer when I was young and it was only to be used for their work/my school work, though I did play solitaire and minesweeper and some other default windows games on it. We only got an N64 around the year 2000 shortly before the gamecube was released (we never got another game system). I wasn't allowed to play Golden Eye or watch lord of the rings because they were too violent until I was around 16. I remember my mother calling Harry Potter was blasphemy and black magic and I wasn't allowed to see it until after the 2nd one was released on DVD. Overall my parents did change and got better and became more in-touch with society and technology as I grew up but they started very far behind and only made real progress when I was in highschool and beyond. I'm just glad I was able to fully escape the craziness when I got my first laptop and started University in 2010.
I don't know if I'm too late for this video if you see comments this late. But there were some pretty big misconceptions in your video. I'm currently a member of a Mennonite church I would love to chat to clear some things up. To be clear though most of what you said is spot on for amish and old order/conservative mennonite
The Amish and Mennonites where I grew up (southern York County, Penna.) had individual farms and did not live in communes. Sunday services for Amish take place in individual homes on a rotating basis, and it's common for horse and buggies to be on the road in that area, and of course they cooperate in building activities like barn-raising.
This was fascinating. I grew up in an Anabaptist sect known to outsiders as "the No-Name Church", and to members as "the Truth" or "the Friends" (depending on the context). My sister and I both left when I was 16, because my mother kicked us out of the house for "disobedience". We've both been irreligious since, but my sister has been struggling with loneliness and depression during the pandemic, and has been considering attending the local Mennonite church. She says it feels familiar without being as controlling as the group we grew up in. Meanwhile, my mother is trying to draw her back into the No-Name Church. I'm going to encourage her to ask some direct questions if she does attend their services.
I saw your vid on 12-steps and very much agree with your comments. I was involved in Americans United for the Separation of Church and State back in the 90s and court-ordered AA meetings for people with alcohol-related offenses was a topic I got particularly interested in, since it is not hard to make the connection that a member of the judiciary in a secular democracy is effectively ordering a person into a religious program. I read several books on the program and even attended meetings and talked to members. This categorization of cults is really interesting because if you go through the four quadrants, the one where AA (or any of the dozens of other flavors of the 12-step model is presented as) has the least cult-like aspects in the 'behavior' category. It is clearly over the threshold in information, thought and emotional control yet it only ticks a few of the boxes in behavior control. That is particularly interesting because control of addictive behavior is specifically the reason most people are in 12-step programs. I find it kind of like the fact that your identity as a "sinner" is, rather than something that salvation creeds are trying to eliminate, is actually one of the key factors in their foothold of keeping you in their belief system for life. What good would Catholicism be if we diodn't have original sin? In all but open declaration, 12-steps is a religion. In fact, the man most associated with its establishment (Buchman) was a renegade (later de-frocked) Lutheran minister attempting to start his own religion, which got co-opted by Bill Wilson and company.. Unless religion vanishes from humanity, a hope but not something I really believe will happen, within 200-years, or less, I see 12-steps (it will probably be rebranded) as being a mainstream religious sect right along with all the others. And why not? It has as much of a foundation, scripture, and creed as any other and the cult aspects are impossible to deny.. If addicts could actually stop being addicts, that would not further the cause. You have to practice step 12 and spread the word to others who are suffering and I have met many long-term 12-steppers who openly say that they would love to find a way to bring the program to everybody alive, weather or not they ever had a problem with addictive or compulsive behavior. Al-Anon = let's get the whole family into the program weather or not they really have suffered from the family member's addiction. Keep coming back!
Reading from.the original text, they replaced 2 words with "Hell". Sheol which is the Hebrew word for "Grave" or "Crypt". Then Gahenna, which was an ancient Philistine city that was near Jerusalem, that after the destruction of the city, was used as a trash pit, that would burn waste, including human waste. In the bible where Jesus talked about the final judgment, he referenced that all of the separated souls, upon Judgment would be judged and those slated to be separated would be sent to a place like Gahenna, where the soul would be destroyed to oblivion. This was paraphrased to, "Eternal damnation". Well, if your soul is destroyed, then you are eternally damned. The idea of burning forever in a pit, is conjecture.
![เปิด อาณาจักร หมื่นล้าน "สาระตั้ม" l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3XE0nPF4YkQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I grew up Mennonite and left when I was 16. I’m now 23 and I’ve just started to see it as a cult. I’ve been straight-up told that I will never be happy outside the church, basically my life is just guaranteed to suck. My family has very little to do with me. I can agree with pretty much every check you put on that list, your analysis is accurate.
Am also 23 and born into a mennonite family. I never was fully indoctrinated as I moved to a different country at a young age, but I rejected the religion completely at 14.
Kitty Kat
I still struggle with the repercussions of being raised that way and leaving, but I’ve moved to Seattle and am slowly starting to adapt to life in the real world. Glad to hear you were able to escape.
@@Jer_Schmidt it probably has only a tiny bit to do with the cult, but I was raised by a mother who emotionally abused me for her own benefit, and she was raised by a misogynistic batshit crazy woman who sent me a TH-cam link to a 2 hour "movie" about what will happen to those left behind after the rapture.
I cut contact with my mother 18 months ago and it was honestly the hardest and best decision of my life
I can relate.... I grew up Mennonite too and I’m only just now learning to be a functional human and I’m just now learning how much damage was done to me by what I now recognize to be brainwashing and thought control.
My family is related to the groups that became amish and mennonite. Maybe we are related lol 😆
I'm very curious about the way they speak
You have to admit there's at least one good thing about the Amish: compared to JWs and Mormons and ISKCONs, they're extremely unlikely to troll your comment section.
John Smith what is an ISKON?
Thought this was going somewhere else. Made me laugh, thanks
@@dogman9223 hare Krishna
Troll? In what way
@@squidguy7907 I think they mean it like they don't have access to the internet and those other cults' members always comment under those types of videos to bash the atheists or try to convert them.
Wait... is that me in the first fan art?
Professor Stick at least they didn’t draw your fursona
No it's just a stick figure who can call bullshit.
why not 'stick' around and find out. (ducks and runs out of the room)
I mean, your ARE the OG straw man, eigh?
All hail lord stick
I was raised as a Mennonite, so thanks for talking about it. It was very surreal to hear you talk about all these topics as third-hand as it's my heritage, and still seems strange that there are other ways humans could live or be raised. Wow, I guess that feeling I'm having reenforces your conclusion that these are cults. Huh.
You touched on a lot of things, but two major omissions that might have been helpful to flesh out context...
First, the anabaptist split was almost entirely over infant baptism. The Catholic church baptized babies and that was simply not cool with anabaptist church fathers. This was a big enough deal to cause the entire rift.
Second, separation from the world -- technology in particular -- wasn't mentioned and is one of the more common things that people DO know about these groups. The interesting thing is that each village seemed to come up with their ideas about what level of technology is successful... I always joked that it was x hundred years behind. The progressive ones can use 100 year old tech (like cars), where others require technology to be at least 500 years old before it could be used. I never found good justification for the arbitrary dividing lines chosen.
Anyhow, GREAT JOB giving an overview. I too saw SO MANY Mennonites when I visited the Ken Ham Creation Museum, but for me it was "coming home".
i would like to do a part 2 on this. i could have talked about them for a lot longer than i did. ill address those points when the time comes. thanks for watching it. i know what you mean when you say it seems strange that there are other ways humans could have been raised. 100%
As always Telltale, yet another great video. I always knew there was something strange about the Amish...
There is one question I've been wanting to ask for a while: would either you or Paulogia consider Lutheranism a cult or not?
Fascinating. So, are all Amish menonite?
In Minnesota and North Dakota we have Menonites who pay someone to act as a driver. They dress according to their code. They tend not to speak to outsiders, unless it's necessary. I flirted with a few Mennonite guys...or tried to.
My High School was Anabaptist and my hometown was primary old order Mennonite until the 1960's.
Got a Scientology ad in front of your video lol.
Those cunts are allowed to advertise? talk about an r/antiMLM moment!
*oh no*
I love any video that trolls any religion.
@Roy Miller yes. The difference is, I am not using a fake 'religion' as a cover for fraud and embezzlement.
They have ads?
I grew up Mennonite and I’m transgender... it really fucked me up and I’m only just now dealing with the trauma from it and it’s really crazy how much it affected me even in like the smallest aspects Of my life like I’m learning a lot about myself and I want to thank you for your videos honestly you’ve saved my life and I appreciate you more than I can express in words!
Demons have access to mess with anyone. Your mennonite community is not exempt from.demons hence your confusion of your gender. I feel sorry for you.
Funny enough, where I come from, the Mennonite culture is much more modernized than what was shown here (no dress restrictions, no shunning, much less thought control, etc.). It took me traveling to the east coast to see traditional Mennonites, which is what was described. I only recently found out that my region was in the minority of this sect.
I feel the need to point out that I am not a Mennonite; I just come from a Mennonite family.
Where I’m at it’s similar. The modern mennos are chill af. Like that girl in the video described my area to a t. They like their food and their panicky blitz card game 😂. Like this Mennonite religion he’s talking about is the type of stuff we have in our Mennonite heritage museum. That’s the history of it, but it’s not or present. The museum has a church in it, and most of us were darn shocked to learn they used to separate the sexes. There’s very few in my area who still subscribe to that, hardly a cult, just some remaining extremists.
I used to date a Mennonite. We met at the Fire Academy and hit it off immediately. All we wanted to do is be left alone when we were together, but her sister was always around and followed us everywhere. I never said anything, but I knew she was spying on us. I told my girlfriend’s parents when we started dating that I respected her and her family’s wishes and I had no intention of doing her wrong. This went on for 3 years and, even though their family actually liked me quite a bit, we were still spied on. We ended up breaking up because I joined the Navy and she didn’t want to leave her family. Last time she contacted me Facebook she told me she got married and wanted to be friends.
DocSteve wow do you still love her
yeet skeet I moved on. After I graduated boot camp I did some reflecting and I realized how toxic that environment really was.
TheSteve Did take her up on her offer? Have you reconnected in any meaningful way or have you drifted apart completely?
James Rutley I haven’t been able to find her on any social media lately and I don’t have her phone number so I haven’t spoken to her at all in the past few years.
@@FFSteveEMT I see.
The Amish is not a “lifestyle”. It isn’t a new fad that you can jump on. It’s a religious cult that comes with an extremely restrictive lifestyle with no benefits.
Some modern people think that the Amish lifestyle is appealing because of the whole “back to nature” and “living off the land” appeal. Not only are those things bogus, but the Amish don’t live off the land or close to nature. The Amish are just as dependent on modern technology as anyone else. Using pins instead of buttons in your clothing isn’t exactly back to nature and propane and natural gas delivered to your home via truck is pretty far from being self-sufficient. Yes, many Amish grow some of their own food, but they also buy a lot of it. They buy summer homes, sell their “quaint” goods to non-Amish people then then use the money to buy things. They are a part of the modern economy.
What’s more, Amish do not permit outsiders to join. It generally takes 3+ generations before someone is accepted (i.e. if you joined the Amish, your grandchildren might be accepted).
The romanticization of an extremist religious cult like the Amish is sickening. They don’t live a simpler, back to nature life, they live a restrictive life in a misogynistic cult that is having several issues because of inbreeding and has a suicide rate of double the national average.
Yeah, they get romanticized as being idyllic and quaint, due to their lack of modern technology and their pacifism when it comes to military service. Except their culture is very backwards at this point, a lot of it is they are still living in an 1800's pre-industrial mindset where their beliefs really weren't that out of place and weren't considered too extreme, except they stayed there while the rest of society moved forward 130 years. This ends up causing a lot of nonsensical traditions that they will admit don't make sense, but they follow them anyways. Back in the day, belts, buttons, cars, electricity, etc were all seen as luxury and prideful items so they shunned them. But now they are practically essential to modern life, so they begrudgingly incorporate them in odd ways. They can have people drive them around, they can use equipment with small motors or generators and cellphones, but can't have their houses wired. Or other times have a community phone, but no one personally owns it so it is okay.
John Smith Amish can be a bit diverse too. I don't think it takes three generations to be accepted by them. Not that I never want to join one. You also forgot to mention puppy mills, harsh treatment of animals, and some drug dealing that goes on. I get sick of reading on the internet when people say I want to join the Amish. My response is always go ahead. People do romanticize the 'simple life'. From what I see they do work really hard. People that want to join them could never do it. Nor would they really want to once they got there.
If someone wants to get close to nature and distance themselves from big cities and whatever, it is much better to do that without any religious indoctrination
Also, any religious sect in which more than half of members have 5+ kids is definitely a cult. No way around it. More than 95% of people who have so many kids are either fundamentalists or too dumb to use contraception properly.
Kate S lol they sure do come to Philadelphia and sell their food it’s delicious too
AW MAN YOU SPOILED IT TELLTALE I WAS ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT
ITS ME! Or what I was. Grew up mennonite (but the kind you can't tell from most people) And went to a mennonite school. So this is all in my experience, for the non old order mennonites a lot of this doesnt quite apply. Mennonites have gone through a lot of secondary splits, like I believe there are two conferences of non old order mennonites in the US, which split due to some specific beliefs.The mennonites around me dont shun, and no dresscode is enforced at all. What I can tell you from my time at school is that they do teach young earth creationism as an equal to evolution in scientific merit, harry potter was banned in libraries (though mennonites vary on this point by family), they are VERY anti-abortion and mostly homophobic, non-violence was probably the most emphasized part of or faith (we had school projects where we had to solve hypothetical world problems without war), baptism was a commitment to god and later you would go through another show of faith to become a member of a church. While there is control in mennonite communities, a lot of it is... more informal?
There are certain last names that hold sway in the community. Those that have been mennonite for generations. And there is also... this sort of idealized mennonite image, at least in children. Tempered, unassuming, patient, unquestioning etc. If you dont fit that it is a bit harder to really feel like you belong.
I could tell stories about the politics of elders and congregations, of people judging parents for the actions of children, being yelled at during sunday school for questioning the story of Jonah, going to anti abortion protests to feel like I fit in.
But these are all moments and my experience was a spectrum.
Sorry for the ramble. I can explain more if anyone is curious. But thought I might share my two cents.
Great video.
P.S. this is PA mennonites.
We should be playing the Mennonite game and finding out how closely related we are.
Hollywood loved the Amish. Several films made. Most TV shows and an Amish episode.
Paulogia I am fourth cousins with the Rittenhouse people. Mostly on my mom's and grandmother's side so I have lost some of the last names.
Hey you're cute. If you're interested in dating me, hit me up please. I don't have any viruses. I got myself checked out and I don't have herpes or aids. Ttyl
@@Paulogia I'll play with you!
5:19 The Divine Commedy is basically a Bible fanfiction with an expansion on hell.
From what I gather, it was such a popular book, that at the time there was so little understanding about hell that the church shrugged and said 'eh why not?'. Like since it's not really explained or described in great detail, the church didn't mind letting people believe in what Dante said. And it was written in the vernacular, not Latin, so more uneducated people (ie, most people) could have understood that than the Bible itself.
Rachael Lefler yep, another thing that helped with the "publicity" is the fact that Virgilio was in there, which was already quite well known at the time. And Dante himself was pretty famous because of his political beliefs since Florence was at the time divided between two different groups, and he eventually got exiled from the city
Soooooo you watch Overly Sarcastic Productions as well?
If you're talking about me, it's the first time I've heard about them
D'aaaaw such a shame.
Just search them on youtube.
They make videos about mythology, summarizing them in a highly entertaining manner.
I suggest watching their series about The divine comedy.
Or about the Illiad.
Also I saw a documentary about Amish health care. They are very reluctant to take their kids to the drs. Sadly there’s a rise in maple syrup disease ( no joke it’s awful, think it affects kidneys) the documentary said it was due to inbreeding, as it’s a small community
It's not just that it's a small community. Some groups of Amish are absolutely obsessed with blood lines. They will knowingly engage inbreeding (marrying first cousins) in order to maintain "purity".
Dan Morgan oh that old chestnut, well it didn’t do the romans or the Egyptians much good did it?! Surely it should be illegal. I mean look at warren Jeff’s and the FLDS and the Kingston clan. How are they not prosecuted? Have you seen the baby graveyard the FLDS have, it’s shocking? Also some who have escaped, have said the wives and kids are kept in dreadful conditions, and the more sick babies they have the more social money they get. If the authorities are so scared of going head to head with these cults maybe, they should start with looking into fraudulent activities
Dan Morgan for the record though I do somewhat admire the Amish. I watched the film Amish Grace. There in that horrendous situation they showed true forgiveness and love. Cannot take that away from them, inbred or not imho
I don't know that the Romans ever engaged in first cousin marriage but that would not have been the source of their problems anyway; their problems stemming from diminishing returns on increasing scale of empire, sorrows of empire such as America is starting to experience. For the Egyptians the Pharaohs married siblings which produced health problems for the pharaohic family but I think the problems of Egypt were more geopolitical , namely conquest by the Persians, the Greeks, and finally absorption by Rome when Cleo died.
It strikes me that the FLDS is almost a mirror of the ancient Israelites with their patriarchs. The adolescent males being sent away as a threat to the dominant male, just as happens in a lion pride chasing away young males. The stories of Essu and Ismail come to mind. The ancient Israelites wandering, being persecuted while being delusional (God's chosen people paranoia), moving on sounds just like the FLDS. They would make an excellent "13th tribe". In his attempt to find a Jewish tribe in the new world Joseph Smith may have inadvertently created something resembling it.
One thing about the Mennonites I lived by - they didn't have to go to school past the 8th grade. That can't be a good thing.
HerkRants Amish do that too it’s weird
My Grandfather who grew up in the culture and then left as an adult and just became a typical baptist left school at the age of 8 and used the skills he developed in his youth as a Mennonite to become a professional carpenter.
Match Boxguy I hope she manages to leave the Amish! That sounds so tragic!
You NEED education.
Both my parents grew up Conservative Mennonite. My dad never finished high school and neither of them ever went to college. There was no push for higher education with me. I went to a shitty private Christian high school that was evangelical, because my parents had left the Mennonite church by then. No surprise I never went to college until last year, when I was 46. Better late than never I guess.
During the brief time I spent in Ohio (a few months) I worked as a painter alongside several Mennonites working on the same job site as me and even met a few Amish (apparenty, Ohio has many more Amish and Mennonites than Pennsylvania) - they were all craftsman (extremely good ones, in fact) and worked in construction, and were generally pretty aloof from everyone they didn't have to work directly with. They were driven in and out by someone who picked them up and dropped them off, and all had simple clamshell mobile phones, which really surprised me. I should note though that the phones were a work necessity - that's why they had them. After work was done, I imagined they either didn't use them or left them somewhere else. Mennonites make LOT of concessions for the sake of their jobs that Amish are much less likely to do.
Being a linguist and a general language enthusiast, I was especially fascinated with the fact they all spoke German to each other. Now, I'm comfortable enough in German to be able to have conversations that dont get too technical or anything like that. And while I was able to talk to them, I noticed they had an easier time understanding me than I them - that is, unless they switched to Hochdeutsch when speaking to me, then I could undserstand them fine. But they noted it felt rather weird speaking in their liturgical language conversationally - kind of similar to if we went around addressing each other using Shakespearian English. That's what it was like for them, they said. They were clearly more comfortable speaking in dialectal German, but it turns out the reason for that was because they all could read and recite in Standard High German via their bibles, which are always in Hochdeutsch. But they only ever did that when singing hymns or reciting passages in church, never just to casually talk to each other.
But the variety they SPEAK to each other derives from West Central German and has digerged even from that dialect quite a lot over the centuries. There are a lot of English phrases and the whole dialect sounds very much like German but with a lot of odd grammar forms (some very conservative, others very innovative), and spoken in what the same sort of accent that permeates Midwest English speakers. However, when they speak English they do so with a distinctly German sounding accent. Lol it was very peculiar to me. So they German they spk sounded rather English-y, and the English they spoke sounded rather German-y. Odd, huh?
Although they were aloof, if approached for a conversation they'd happyily carry one on with ya, although the only thing I ever had to talk about with them was their language. Even so, though, the ones I got to know were friendly and approachable and after a while would even come to me to talk sometimes. I liked them and one in particular I miss conversing with quite a bit :)
Hope he's well.
Amish speak Pennsylvania German which is influenced by Rhineland German and Palatinate German. Pfälzisch. Mennonites speak a variety of Plattdeutsch related to the eastern dialects around Pomerania and Mecklenburg. I think they call it something like Plautdietsch though I could be off on that. Platt is on a dialectic continuum that eventually leads to Dutch and Freesian which makes it closer to English than high German is. This is extraordinary because a lot of low German dialects have or are currently dying off. Mennonite is still going strong.
Great video, Telltale, and kudos to Paulogia for escaping! I had to testify against an amish group for animal abuse. They had puppy mills, horrible ones. And the horses weren't well taken care of, either. This was a small community in WA, I believe they went back to PA after that. Hitchins told a joke, "why'd the Amish girl get excommunicated? Two Mennonite!" Sorry, had to. Love and Peace
Yeah that's not at all uncommon with them sadly.
I had no idea. Wow.
I live in Pennsylvania and the puppy mills are heart breaking.
There are laws but...
They see all animals as living objects not sentient beings. They do the absolute least to house and feed the animals.
So glad someone is addressing this, aren’t the river brethren similar too? If they shun they are a cult. Deborah Frances white says the difference between a religion and a cult is, a religion let’s you leave with your dignity in tact. I think that’s a fair assessment
Cameron Reekie makes nommmimimmm
Shunning isn’t necessarily a cult thing
"it's just eternal separation from God. Sounds like Heaven to me." LOL. I also try to avoid spending time with murderous psychopaths!
But can they murder you in HELL?
When i was very small, like 5 or 6, i remember going to an Amish community in tennessee. There was a bakery where this man with a really long beard talked about all of his homemade goods and had a conversation woth my mother about (something idk) We bought some and it was actually really good. He was really sweet and i saw tons of horseback riding, it was pretty cool and 8 year old me thought the lifestyle was very nice. Nowadays i still like the lifestyle but not their beliefs.
Both of my parents were raided Amish and I wanna say thank you for covering this. They did move to Christianity (which has it's own problems). Hearing stories of what they went through and how it was all sanctioned by the church I think you were a little easy on this religion.
Just thought I’d make a quick comment. I just recently started watching your videos because of a coworker being a JW. But this one hits closer to home with me. Both of my parents were raised Amish and left the church after they joined officially after their rum springa period or their time to be worldly. My Dads side of the family shunned us until about 10 years ago but my Mom’s side did not and we were allowed to attend family functions on her side. One other quick thing about Amish shunning. If you decide not to join the church after your Rum Springa phase you will not be shunned by the family or the community. Only if you’re baptized into the church will you then be shunned.
Anthro community?
0w0 what's this?
STOP BEING EVERYWHERE DAMNIT
Dude that's cringy as come on.
ÓmÒ Justin don't do this
Justin Y. You're _here_ too? O MAI GAWW STHAP BEING EVERYWHERE
Justin Y. OWO
I have to say your work is consistently top notch and I look forward to every video. I hope you and godless engineer can come to Tampa sometime. I would love to see you guys speak.
It seems like Telltale is gaining a furry fanbase with all this anthro fanart. As long as they don't start roleplaying in the comments, I'm fine with it. * Scratches arm * * Blushes at Telltale * * Nuzzles into him *
Please help me, I'm too far down the furry rabbithole :)
I live for the cringe, comrade
This may be getting too intense cringe for me * backs away, holding Telltale in arms*
The 3D carrot *UWU*
OWO
*Murr* ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
What does Meta Knight have to do with religion?
*wheeze*
*wheeeze*
*wheeeeze*
*whez*
*Out of breath*
I’m at 13:23, and several times I have heard you say that Amish live communally. That is not correct. The Hutterites, another Anabaptist group which so far I have not heard you mention, live communally. They are mainly based up in Canada,but also live in several states that border Canada such as Montana, North Dakota, etc.
I think quite a few people confuse Hutterites with Mennonites. There are quite a few Hutterite communities in Canada. The Mennonites in BC (Canada) = and there are many! - are for the most part just like other "modern" Christian churches. No dress code or foot washing, or separating the women and men in church or any of that, just the usual Christian doctrinal beliefs. But they are anti-war (helped US draft dodgers in the Vietnam era) and very active with charity work. (I work for a Mennonite nonprofit and I'm not required to be a Mennonite. They have a lot of really good programs for the homeless, domestic abuse victims, etc.)
@@NataliePierson1 Hutterites are like Final Fantasy 10 Amish while the Amish are like Dungeons & Dragons.
They make damn good pretzels and summer bologna though! Anyway Ive worked in Lancaster a lot and even here in Baltimore they are driven in vans every thursday friday and saturday to the markets around here. And, what a lot of people don't know is that in Southern Maryland they grow all of the tobacco and auction the bundles at the Phillip Moris auction house in LaPlata. They are basically the only ones that grow it because it is VERY labor intensive and there arent any machines that can do the work. They are worth LOTS of money even though they use none of it for modernization, it's all for land and building homes for the next generation.
dude, you didn't even half butcher Münster. it sound still adorable with an american accent.
My attitude is - correct pronunciation of a foreign name is a privilege, not a right. Of course Xini in Chinese or Shidonī in Japanese sounds different to Sydney in English and Australia is Àodàlìyǎ in Chinese or Ōsutoraria in Japanese but who cares. Asians have the most problems with Ls and Rs and that is that.
Munster is the southern province of the Irish republic containing Cork Limerick Waterford Kerry Clare & Tipperary& apparently a town in Germany. Damn
Münster isn't only a Name for actually a bunch of (german) towns but also an expression of a certain kind of churches. It dirives from The latin word for monastary and I guess that may be true for the irish province, too. Because there is no letter ü or ue, telltale pronounced it as good as he could. I don't even no how to explain how we pronounce ü/ue something between an e and an u sound?
For anyone interested in how to pronounce german Umlauts, here is a bit silly but educational video from "Don't trust the rabbit" th-cam.com/video/hEpsLVKo5vg/w-d-xo.html
Christian Hohenstein ah, thanks for informing me, I never thought the word had so many meanings
@@christianhohenstein1422 For half of the video I was trying to come up with an idea how to explain "ü"
Being raised around both, I already knew the answer going into the video. It's so blatantly obvious if you know anything about the Amish and Mennonite communities and how they function.
The funny thing with Mennonites is that they're allowed to drive cars, but only blue or black cars? That might not be the same for all churches, but my mom's friend is Mennonite and that's what he was told.
As for the Divine Comedy, it's funny that Hell is supposedly made of fire when the deeper down you go (in the Divine Comedy), the colder it is.
My mom, my uncle and I have the same color Chevy Suburban. The mechanic has joked about us being in some sort of cult.
I must have Tibetan Monk in me for any nonzero Kelvin temperature is painfully hot for me.
Hi Telltale. I'm an ex Mormon who lives in a Mennonite community and as far as dietary restrictions go the old school Mennonites aren't supposed to drink alcohol and I've heard of people being kicked out of the church for being caught with a beer in their hand. Lot's of Hudderites around here too. I'm moving back to civilization shortly but it's been interesting comparing cultiness.
You are one of the few atheists that are respectful to those who have faith and I thank you
If you don’t wanna read the divine comedy, there’s a film on TH-cam called l’inferno, it’s a silent film from the 1910’s and is a really good depiction of the book. I’ve seen it like 3 times and it still fascinates me 😌😌
I used to live around Mennonites in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho. At the time, they comprised about half of the population there. They were very nice. Lots of baked goods. The women wore their hair in buns and long dresses, while the men wore baggy pants and had beards. They couldn't watch teevee or listen to the radio, but they made a beeline every morning for the newspaper. If you drove past their church on a sunny summer Sunday, you could hear the fire-and-brimstone preaching. They had a difficult time keeping members, and if they reached marriage age, they had to find someone local or be shipped off to another group in Kansas.
Wow didn't know those bits. I still see Mennonites fairly regularly here Coeur D'Alene but I see alot more of the born again Christians around here. There's a bunch of different Churches of them around the city and they are very Cult like. A bunch of the clients I work with go to one of their churches. I've had to sit through a few of their sermons very creepy. I'd rather go to a more traditional Lutheran church if I was inclined to go church (I'm not Christian any longer but was raised Lutheran).
Same here, they are very pleasant to our local community. Even support local businesses when they can and need to.
AC/DC- For those about to L.A.R.P., we salute you.
I have a lot of mennonites that come up from Mexico in my town. They speak low German, and can be real pains in the ass because they drive their cars illegally (Mexican plates for over a year, illegal mods, stuff like that) and pretend they can’t speak English when they get pulled over. They get really mad if one of them speaks low German back to them. From what I’ve seen of them, the old order women wear bonnets or veils and have long hair underneath (I went to school with one named Eva, she was old order), wear flower print dresses in different colours (mainly purple, blue, and pink), and they wear black overcoats. The men all wear plaid button up shirts with jeans and a belt, and their names are mostly Abe, John, and Jacob. I also went to high school with a bunch of new order mennonites. I came over to one of their houses for a New Years party on New Year’s Day. Her parents weren’t home, but when they stopped home quick to get something, we hid the alcohol in the bathtub. They were really normal, the only way you could really tell that they were Mennonite was a lot of the kids had the same 5 last names: Wall, friesen, Klassen, Krahn, and Wiebe. Like they’d dye their hair, get piercings, wear normal clothing, swear. I think the girls had long hair from personal preference, but I know a few that got tattoos. The new order mennonites, at least where I live, are really chill people, fun to laugh with and be around. They make Mennonite jokes about themselves. They were way nicer to me than the normal kids at my other school.
**spits out tea** THATS MY FAN ART IN THE VIDEO❤️👌❤️ aaaHHH tysm! It means so much XD
A little off topic but The Divine Comedy is literally just self insert fanfiction where Dante hands out with his best friend Virgil to go visit his dead girlfriend. It’s really trippy.
We have an old school Mennonite community just outside of my small city. I used to work as an Optometric Assistant and they'd come to our office as patients. I'm guessing they chose us because the doctor who owned the practice was a Brethren elder and all of us were fundamentalist Christians.
The men all had bowl cuts, wore exactly the same eyeglass frames and wore heavy black suits with broad brimmed hats all year round. The women wore long sleeved, ankle length dresses and old fashioned bonnets. I felt so sorry for them when they sweltered in the humid summer heat. This community did not use electricity, but drove horse and buggies along the highway, although they were fine with getting a ride from a neighbour to get to town. The children rarely finished high school, with the boys expected to work on the farm from a very young age, and the girls were taught how to cook, clean, do laundry and help raise the younger children. They married young, and had very large families which made it more difficult to feed and clothe themselves. The Mennonites bartered with their neighbours, and they had no qualms about taking an unfair advantage if they sensed the neighbour felt sorry for them. They are definitely a cult.
It's kind of like generating a 1000 hertz sine wave using math.h instead of a lookup table just because you were told it was desirable (to the enemy combatants) to want to not know any better.
I really appreciate you making a video about this. I was brought up in the Mennonite church until I was about six years old and even though my family switched churches after that, my mother’s view certainly didn’t. It makes a lot of her statements and behaviors make more sense, as well as why there are so many baby/young pictures of my sisters and I in bonnets.
There was a Mennonite community near where my mother grew up. They run a buffet style kitchen in town and I will admit- there food is really good.
Sydney Baxter are you talking about shady maple?
Hey, great video! My mother is Mennonite and I go with her to church often (I'm personally a Celtic reconstructionist, a form of Celtic pagan, though my mom doesn't know. It would be interesting to see your thoughts on the reconstructionist movement in a video) and I'm so happy to see someone shed light on their cult practices. It's hard to see my friends in the youth group at the church being indoctrinated like they are. Anyway, great video, I love your channel!
The local Mennonites protested a music festival we had in our rural town. They stood outside the park holding signs equating the drinking of beer with going to hell. Cringeworthiness being next to godliness when you're a cult member.
@R Per So you want to try and *trick* the boiler. If you had even one shortest perceivable moment of your life where you did not get your way then you are *already* in hell. Sentinent life is an evolutionary mis-step, free will is an illusion. We say we enjoy our lives, but being conceived an alive is the most undesirable thing imaginable--the lowest number that can be stored in the computer. People, even non-culted people, should not have children out of pure moral compassion.
That's interesting, as I've know Mennonites who had no problem with drinking, per se, and certainly not enough of a problem with it to protest others doing so. Even the Old Order Amish don't have as hard-and-fast a rule against alcohol consumption as most would expect; I think it is varies from ordnung to ordnung. I have seen, with my own eyes, Amish buying alcoholic beverages and Mennonites drinking beer. I guess you get a heck of a lot of variance with a non-centralized religion.
Probably a different fundamentalist group, not Mennonites.
I live in Münster. One of the symbols of the city are three cages on the dome, which where used to display the corpses of the leaders of the Münster rebellion. Never thought I would hear about them in one of your videos :D
We've been spending most our lives living in a Amish paradise
I had to read inferno for my Language Arts class. It was surprisingly interesting to compare Inferno to the modern version of hell that many Christians believe in.
The Amish and Mennonites are both Anabaptist sects that formed as part of the Protestant Reformation, but separate from it. Most notably, they went further from the Catholic teachings and were often as at odds with the Protestant rulers as they were with the Catholics. The Amish split off from the other Anabaptists and formed their own sect much later. They are closely related, with some more “liberal” Amish groups being less conservative than the most conservative Mennonite groups. Most of the Anabaptist groups formed in the Germanic countries of the Continent in the 16th century.
The Quakers share very little with the Amish and Mennonites. They formed in England in the 18th century and were known as the Society of Friends. The thing they probably share the most with the Anabaptists is the policy of non-resistance (similar to pacifism) where you do not take part in any violence, even to defend yourself.
While Amish and Mennonites share a cultural and religious ancestor and are fairly similar (Amish who leave the church usually become Mennonites), Quakers have no such familiarity other than being a Christian faction that split off from the established religion of their nation.
You are totally correct
To understand recursion, first you must understand recursion. I don't defend my life anymore than I would defend having a painful disease or maintaining that my whole house remain on fire or be in financial poverty for eternity. "How much would you pay for something you don't want". The key here is to defend QUALITY of life. The justice system may put me in a padded cell for tens of thousands of years, and I might not manage to kill my oppressors (any presence of government is oppression), but you may have a strange painful scar on your body that makes you fall asleep one minute later than you should at night and you shall remember what a jerk you were for not letting me have my way.
I thought Quakers went to America in the mid 1600s??
I live in the heart of Amish country and they are commonly viewed here as harmless tourist attractions... It's horrifying.
I was really surprised to stumble upon a huge Mennonite community in Belize. I was told that they left the US because they didn't want to pay taxes. I heard the locals didn't like them because they don't want to pay in Belize either. They came to town in horse and buggies, but as we went up the river, I saw that they had mechanized farm operations. Was really interesting.
it's so funny to see a video about something that seems so normal to me. I grew up in an area with a lot of mennonite and amish people and it just seems like something so normalized. they're usually very nice people, typically shy and don't socialize so much but they seem good natured. They speak to themselves in PA "Dutch" a lot (It's actually German) and often have farms and grocery stores. My dad calls them "Yonies" but I think that's derogatory.
I always love gaining knowledge from your wonderful videos.
Always so interested in seeing your content. - Niko
Dante's inferno is so fun you guys! Everybody should check it out. The synopsis itself is fascinating. For the ones of you that could be interested I'll suggest some specific parts: canto V (Lust, basically an italian version of Romeo and Juliet) canto XXVI (what happened to Ulysses after he returned to Itaca, basically pursue of knowledge) and the best of all canto XXXIII (traitors, here you'll find the ugly punishment and death of a traitor, forced to starve to death with his 4 children).
Do not bother reading Purgatory and Paradise, suuuper boring. Make you wish you'll end up in limbo (canto IV).
I love the content you put out, Telltale. ☺
I’m Mennonite. You did a better job than most with understanding/presenting a lot of what we are, so kudos for that! It’s amazing how much people misunderstand us. It’s important to note however that a lot of what makes mennonites what we are is purely cultural. There are sometimes people that are within the culture that don’t believe. In some ways we sometimes act like a country. (There are loads of mennos that don’t share the German/Russian culture, though)
I just woke up from a 10 hour 'nap'. This is good content to wake up too. Keep making cool videos, like this one plz.
Your swords are one with mine. I have to take Risperdal and Celexa to stay civilized and sleep 12 hours every knight. It's like I'm working a 28 hour a week part time job in bed. I refer to taking the pills as "Putting a quarter in the meter".
To be fair, Dante's Divine Comedy is some of the most popular self-insert fanfiction ever written.
Also, not entirely sure how true this is so take with an amused grain of salt. But I heard somewhere else that footwashing has been used historically as a slang for oral sex. So there's that fun trivia for you.
My uncle married and Amish woman. He drives her buggy.
I'd pull the bastard with my vehicle. Screw horses, they're dumb, they stink and they shit everywhere! cars don't shit and won't freak out when a fly farts.
Argumented Reality The TH-cam phantom Official missed that humor by so much I felt the breeze in the future!
@@astralclub5964 What humor?
The TH-cam Phantom Official “He drives her buggy.” Buggy has a dual meaning. The word describes both a conveyance and a slang term for driving someone crazy. It’s basically a “Dad joke” or a “groaner”.
@@astralclub5964 Ah, I'd never heard that used as slang for driving someone crazy! I seem to learn new things every day.
I live in wester Pennsylvania and am active in a local LGBT community. About a year ago my home town had an ordinance proposed to add transgender people to existing anti hate bill banning discrimination in housing and a number of other areas. A local old order Mennonite pastor spoke at City Hall in opposition to the bill. Another pastor from a reformed Mennonite Church spoke in support of the bill. I attended the reformed Mennonite Church out of curiosity. They have other transgender members a female pastor no dress code and they practice same sex marriage. From what I understand the Mennonite Church here in Western Pennsylvania has split up on the issue of same sex marriage. The majority of the conference sided on allowing same sex marriage. A group that did not want to allow same sex marriage and the inclusion of transgender members left and started a new denomination and other members went to the old order Church. I was schocked with how liberal the Church was. I was also schocked that the Church is allowing same sex marriage and people against it where the ones to leave. I am a flaming queer liberal and I feelt more welcome than in the United Methodist Church I normally attended. It may be something more specific to my area but it seems that some Mennonites are reforming and become less cult like and more inclusive.
1:22 you did your best, trying to pronounce it right.
The sound Ü doesn't exist in English. The 2 points mean that an E is added to the vowel, although in the case of the U it's slightly more similar to an added I.
You'd have to hear it to understand it
A whole ride-hailing service was based on that sound.
One thing, the amish in my area ride their carriages to the Wendy's i work at and buy some food there and also the walmart across the street. We give them the leftover buckets from the pickles that would have otherwise been thrown out too.
We also have a huge mennonite community, they own most the town i live in and have their own school i believe, because they use their children to run their stores from a really absurdly young age, like terrifyingly young. I swear this one boy working at the gas station couldn't be more than 10. It's sad.
Her: "Foot washing, so if you have an aversion to feet, this might be a problem for you"
Everyone with a foot fetish: "Where do I sign up"
My mom was not Amish or Mennonite, but when one of us did something she did not approve of, she would give us the silent treatment which was a form of shunning. It would sometimes go on for days, weeks or even months depending on the infraction. Tensions would finally come to a boil resulting in a sit down to work things out & relations would often get back to normal. This was not a very healthy approach to dealing with conflict & led to many psychological scares for all us children. Church leaders who advocate for & practice shunning should be held accountable by their congregations & quite possibly seek legal recourse as this is clearly a form of psychological abuse. I never sought legal avenues with my mother, simply because we all knew this was just part of her way of coping, but for an organized community to practice this on it's members borders on inhumane. Thank you for sharing this information as it will likely help alert people to activities in these communities they should be aware of & quite possibly have family members experiencing as we speak & prompt them to get help. Keep up the great work...:)
So I found this channel called "The Key of David", and it looked like something you could talk about. Seems very cult-like to me.
This guy thinks everything that disagrees with his particular cultural belief system is a cult. It’s really annoying and silly.
We also grew up playing Dutch blitz, but that’s because my Quaker grandparents believed playing cards were of the devil- and not even because of gambling. They literally believed they had hidden occult symbols on them. They also refused to say the names of the months or days, because that would be invoking pagan deities. Instead, it was “First Day” or “First Month.”
My self-inflicted indoctrination has slewed over to the point whenever I hear someone exclaim "Oh my God!" I quickly reply "Which one?"
Great video!
Agreed! Also get an annotated edition of, Dantes Inferno. Lots of behind-the-scenes politics in the fiction.
As someone who grew up in a very modern Mennonite church it’s very strange to hear all these crazy traditions and rules that were never really enforced at my church
I agree we shouldn't ban religion, however that doesn't mean we shouldn't take away tax exempt status from certain churches/certain cults.
and fine them for every human rights violation until they're bankrupt or until they stop violating peoples rights. whichever comes first
@@OwenMorganTelltale Yes! And while we're at it, have the FBI look into the "religion" for people who are stuck there against their own will, which I know happens a lot in Scientology
Telltale What about restoration?
Hey Telltale, wonderful video, but you forgot to mention the Hutterites! They're another Anabaptist denomination from Germany and today they're mostly found in Montana or South Dakota, which has over 50 Hutterite colonies!
I live in northern colorado and i saw a mennonite family doing some grocery shopping at king sooper's and since they were picking things out in the freezer department, they must have electricity at their house. an 8-10 year old was pushing the cart and he was wearing a maga hat. i don't understand how they think that trump best represents their views or values. strange world we live in.
Do a video on the Baha’i Faith
Is it a cult, or is it just a Hindu-Abrahamic Fanfiction that got way too popular.
I actually have a Mennonite background on my fathers side and I never really knew what they believed or anything until now so thank you for making this!
Seeing young girls in hijabs always breaks my heart because I understand what indoctrination is, my family is baptist and their church is well, sexist, no other way of putting it.
Zachary Alexander the girls who wear hijab must have parents who do not follow the religion strictly cause hijab is only uppose to be worn after the girls go through puberty, most people should really read the quran it is actually quite interesting
If you're also talking about muslims then they choose to where hijabs.
@@danielfredrickson8916 Kinda but not really, most Muslims would shun their children if they refused to wear a Hijab. Progressive Muslims don't wear them. So they choose to wear them, but only because it's easier than having everyone hate you. So it doesn't really count as a choice. Depends on where they're from ofc, some countries are more conservative than others and before the Arab spring most women didn't wear them.
@@ub3rfr3nzy94 That's true and I can't argue with it.
I’m so glad I wasn’t raised Islamic or born in an Islamic country, if you live in Islamic country you have no choice to wear it or else you can be raped and no one will do anything about it
I like how you give positive and negative information on how these religions work. You seem to be advocating for ones right to get all the information before making a decision, whether or not you actually agree with it; not many people are okay with others contradicting what they think is right, but you word it on a way that makes it seem more factual rather than pushy or hateful. You are able to say your opinion while also encouraging others to formulate and keep their own and that's a very respectable quality to have!
I imagine that hell is like helheim in Norse mythology.
Here’s one for you, what goes clop clop bang clop clop bang? Answer, a Mennonite drive-by shooting.
Tf does mennonite sound like a pokemon?
It totally does
I feel like I learn something every time I watch your channel. Thanks for all the work you do!
Clicked so fast I almost cracked the screen
What's really impressive is you were using a mouse at the time.
Anabaptist basically means they practice adult baptism. There are three Anabaptist sects: Amish, Mennonite and Hutterite. Hutterites are similar to very conservative Mennonites. They live in colonies, are educated on their colony, eat in community (not as a family for example) and go to church every day. there are three Hutterite sects: Schmeidleut, Dariusleut and Lahrerleut (sorry if I misspelled those). Hutterites live mostly in Canada/USA prairie provinces/states as their primary business in Canada is farming and ranching, but in the old world 200+ years ago, they were craftsmen. Hutterites are lovely people if you don't mind that women aren't allowed to vote, drive or leave the colony except to move to their husband's colony when they marry. They are technically allowed to graduate (boys or girls) but are pressured to leave school at 15, which means if they decide to be a run-away they join the "real world" without a high school education (or any identification often), which makes it very hard for them.
Hutterites often get forgotten because they like it that way and are pretty discrete about their contact with the outside "English" world and although I love so much about their culture, they are definitely a cult (if you can define a cult as one that doesn't invite outsiders to join, because I understand that is pretty darn rare).
Blue moon of Kentucky keep on shinning.
Matthew Duggan Elvis?
I love Rock'n'Roll Bill Monroe
Matthew Duggan Cool. I heard an Elvis cover of it
Shine on the one whose gone and proved untrue
Yo at 5:59 I just imagined an endless room with tile floor and like those weird grids and grid lights above where you just wander forever.
Hi there. Spent some time as a Mennonite. It's really a spectrum and not as black and white and flat grey as you make it out to be. I happened to be a member of a very liberal Mennonite church (yes they exist). A lot of the hallmarks of a cult that you laid out didn't exist there. There were a ton of ex-amish in the church that wanted as far away from their upbringing as possible but still wanted the comfortable, familiar staples of religious community.
Some examples in my experience that differed from your research:
No segregation of genders
Foot washing was done by the pastor and he washed everyone's feet. Man and woman. This only happened once in the 2 years I was there.
Communion wasn't unlike other sects of antibaptists. It was weekly.
Shunning wasn't a thing. Remember, a lot of the church was ex-Amish. They had their own shunning going on. Why bring that into something new?
The blanket statement about home-grown or preserved food was way off base. That's the Amish and not most Mennonites with the strict frugality.
The church wasn't Big Brother. If you had some tough stuff going on in life, nobody was going to pry it out of you. It was your business.
Giving money to the church is common with most religious institutions. How does that factor into how this is a cult? See Earnest Angley for some truely screwed-up methods of extracting money from people.
Compared to my experience, I give this review 4/10. Hope this was constructive.
I’m Mennonite too and so many of them have techie jobs at my church. My church belongs to MCUSA and our conference and my church is accepting of LGBT people.
This is all fine and good. I know some liberal Mennonites exist. But what I grew up with, and what my parents grew up with, was absolutely the cult that this video describes. In fact, much worse.
I'd recommend listening to The Plain People's Podcast for first-hand experiences in the anabaptist circles. First thing I found that went into the intricacies of the culture.
"Destruction"? Neat, if I'm wrong about yahweh the exactly same thing will happen to me as if there were no yahweh at all.
I’m currently a Mennonite, and I will say I am questioning whether if I want to still be a Mennonite or convert to Catholicism. I will say my church doesn’t want to call themselves Mennonite because they don’t want to scare people off people and bring more people to church. I honestly don’t like how they do that and there’s just many things I’m starting to dislike and this video definitely opened my eyes. Thank you
All religions are cults or am I missing the point.
"Museum" comes from a Latin phrase for "Seat of the Muses", referring to the Greek mythological figures representing the inspiration for science and art. The term "museum" is perfectly appropriate for a building dedicated to a bunch of made-up stuff, and I wouldn't bother giving the Creation Museum the power of trying to argue it's not a "real museum" - the Creation Museum sounds like at least as much imagination and creativity went into producing its contents as any art museum.
11:50 - The measure of "dietary restrictions", I'd suggest, would be a matter of intent: general control over the group (such as choosing their menus for them and removing all choice in what to eat), or a matter of nutritional deprivation as part of a brainwashing program (which is what a lot of fasting and weird minimalist starvation diets comes into play - I'd include certain vegetarian and vegan diets there as well). Just a matter of home-grown food in and of itself should barely register, if at all, unless there's something more to it. (Even so, I agree that the modern Anabaptist sects ping enough of the other markers to register as cultish in nature.)
NOT FIRST! Hey. How's everyone?
pandaboye good, you
Good now that Telltale's video is out
I feel like Rumspringa should ring a bell on the BITE Model. Kids are allowed to experience "normal" life (so they can choose whether or not to be Amish), but only under a controlled circumstance where they are guaranteed to fail. They are just thrown into the modern world with no preparation.
My father’s side of my bloodline came over from Switzerland in 1776 and stayed Mennonite since before the arrival to the states.
My mom married into it, but rebelled right away. I never was raised in it, but in German mysticism instead. She came to the states in 1958. I was born in 67 and my father left when I was 5.
I feel lucky to not be raised in the group.
I went to a Mennonite school, a specific german split up from them, they had seven churches in my town and each church had a neighborhood that consisted almost entirely of Mennonites. There would be building-weekends, first the church was build then the houses the kids could move into when they married then schools for their children almost all ppl where related, almost no new ppl came into it, it grew with the kids, alot of my friends had around 12 siblings, alot of them married relatives. You were pressured to give money into the funds for building, no one said you had to live in these neighborhoods and assigned houses but a possibility of leaving wasn't thinkable, alot of oppression wasn't formally written down but came with extreme forms of child indoctrination alot of my friends were beaten regularly were not allowed to use computers, just for schoolwork, we were in the menonnite school, busses would get us there, after that we were in church group activities or at home caring for younger siblings, so everyone was in a bubble you don't need written rules about forced housing and restrictions when it is just taught and expected from children their whole life. I don't know whether this applies to other Mennonites too, i would be interested in hearing other experiences
I tried reading the inferno once, but quickly realized that it was written in Italian .
I'm an ex-Mennonite. Amish and most Mennonites don't live on communes. That's Hutterites. Amish and Mennonites tend to live near each other, but it's rare that they would share property in common (which is what happens in a commune). I can only imagine modern hippie liberal Mennonites doing that, and only on a small scale (like living in a co-op house or a three-family commune). And in terms of "reporting feeling and thoughts to an authority" from the BITE model, I'd come to the opposite conclusion that you came to. I'd say Mennonites are discouraged from sharing feelings and thoughts with an authority because we're supposed to repress all of them :) On the other hand, if you *do* something that's against the rules/considered a sin, depending on the community you are supposed to confess that publicly at a church service and ask for the congregation's forgiveness. That's only for adults, not kids (because kids aren't baptized and therefore not members of the church), and in the more modern Mennonite communities it is not something that happens.
TL;DR I think Amish and Mennonite communities can be pretty unhealthy, but I don't think they meet as many criteria of the BITE model as you do.
I went to school where a lot of my classmates were Mennonite. They were pretty normal and very progressive, i think maybe a few of their grandparents wore like more traditional attire. I couldn't even tell they were Mennonite until they told me so.
I work at a local farmers market and there is an Amish family that works in the booth next to the one I work in, the boys of the family that I have grown up with really enjoy the times I brought my speaker and played music or set up TH-cam videos on my phone, one of them completely left the community when they turned 18, the other decided to stay in the community because he enjoys the farming lifestyle nice folks
I've been over religion for a while now but I still find myself listening to things like this, just because it's interesting.
I love your content, you are more knowledgeable about Christianity than most Christians I know. Myself included. Thank you for making me smarter and helping me to understand more about my faith and it's many variations.
Both sets of my grandparents are mennonite (they went to a church were there was either mennonite or composed of a large number of mennonites), my parents have always called themselves mennonites as if it was a cultural thing but that they consider themselves christians (they went to a few churches, non of them exclusively mennonite). What mennonites were wasn't talked about growing up, there was brief mention of my grandparents families moving to Prussia from Germany before moving to Canada before and after WW2.
Growing up we didn't follow any of the mennonite practices or even talk about them, but hearing you talk about them I can clearly see how it affected my family in a second hand sort of way. From my grandparents stories they probably grew up in a compound or a very close mennonite community. There was no dress code, my family always seemed out of touch with the rest of society and technologically behind, sure we had cars, tvs and other normal common things, but my parents remember it being a big deal when my grandparents finally got a tv when they were growing up (my parents are in their early 60's). My dad told me a story of how he had to hide in his room to listen to rock on the radio for entertainment. My parents only had one computer when I was young and it was only to be used for their work/my school work, though I did play solitaire and minesweeper and some other default windows games on it. We only got an N64 around the year 2000 shortly before the gamecube was released (we never got another game system). I wasn't allowed to play Golden Eye or watch lord of the rings because they were too violent until I was around 16. I remember my mother calling Harry Potter was blasphemy and black magic and I wasn't allowed to see it until after the 2nd one was released on DVD.
Overall my parents did change and got better and became more in-touch with society and technology as I grew up but they started very far behind and only made real progress when I was in highschool and beyond. I'm just glad I was able to fully escape the craziness when I got my first laptop and started University in 2010.
I don't know if I'm too late for this video if you see comments this late. But there were some pretty big misconceptions in your video. I'm currently a member of a Mennonite church I would love to chat to clear some things up. To be clear though most of what you said is spot on for amish and old order/conservative mennonite
The Amish and Mennonites where I grew up (southern York County, Penna.) had individual farms and did not live in communes. Sunday services for Amish take place in individual homes on a rotating basis, and it's common for horse and buggies to be on the road in that area, and of course they cooperate in building activities like barn-raising.
This was fascinating. I grew up in an Anabaptist sect known to outsiders as "the No-Name Church", and to members as "the Truth" or "the Friends" (depending on the context). My sister and I both left when I was 16, because my mother kicked us out of the house for "disobedience". We've both been irreligious since, but my sister has been struggling with loneliness and depression during the pandemic, and has been considering attending the local Mennonite church. She says it feels familiar without being as controlling as the group we grew up in. Meanwhile, my mother is trying to draw her back into the No-Name Church. I'm going to encourage her to ask some direct questions if she does attend their services.
I saw your vid on 12-steps and very much agree with your comments. I was involved in Americans United for the Separation of Church and State back in the 90s and court-ordered AA meetings for people with alcohol-related offenses was a topic I got particularly interested in, since it is not hard to make the connection that a member of the judiciary in a secular democracy is effectively ordering a person into a religious program. I read several books on the program and even attended meetings and talked to members. This categorization of cults is really interesting because if you go through the four quadrants, the one where AA (or any of the dozens of other flavors of the 12-step model is presented as) has the least cult-like aspects in the 'behavior' category. It is clearly over the threshold in information, thought and emotional control yet it only ticks a few of the boxes in behavior control. That is particularly interesting because control of addictive behavior is specifically the reason most people are in 12-step programs. I find it kind of like the fact that your identity as a "sinner" is, rather than something that salvation creeds are trying to eliminate, is actually one of the key factors in their foothold of keeping you in their belief system for life. What good would Catholicism be if we diodn't have original sin? In all but open declaration, 12-steps is a religion. In fact, the man most associated with its establishment (Buchman) was a renegade (later de-frocked) Lutheran minister attempting to start his own religion, which got co-opted by Bill Wilson and company.. Unless religion vanishes from humanity, a hope but not something I really believe will happen, within 200-years, or less, I see 12-steps (it will probably be rebranded) as being a mainstream religious sect right along with all the others. And why not? It has as much of a foundation, scripture, and creed as any other and the cult aspects are impossible to deny.. If addicts could actually stop being addicts, that would not further the cause. You have to practice step 12 and spread the word to others who are suffering and I have met many long-term 12-steppers who openly say that they would love to find a way to bring the program to everybody alive, weather or not they ever had a problem with addictive or compulsive behavior. Al-Anon = let's get the whole family into the program weather or not they really have suffered from the family member's addiction. Keep coming back!
Okay children, Remember to Sin or else Jesus died for nothing!
Reading from.the original text, they replaced 2 words with "Hell".
Sheol which is the Hebrew word for "Grave" or "Crypt".
Then Gahenna, which was an ancient Philistine city that was near Jerusalem, that after the destruction of the city, was used as a trash pit, that would burn waste, including human waste. In the bible where Jesus talked about the final judgment, he referenced that all of the separated souls, upon Judgment would be judged and those slated to be separated would be sent to a place like Gahenna, where the soul would be destroyed to oblivion. This was paraphrased to, "Eternal damnation". Well, if your soul is destroyed, then you are eternally damned. The idea of burning forever in a pit, is conjecture.