We're not going to just simply go with every pattern of the world,
every new thing that comes down the track,
every new thing that is basically comes out of a fashion industry
that is wanting to sell things to you
and does so by appealing to your fleshly senses.
And when I see when I see Mennonites
picking up aspects of that,
that troubles me
because they're not asking themselves,
where does this come from?
And what is the message?
It's sending clothes send a message.
Doesn't matter how you dress, it sends a message.
You have to decide what is the message you want to send.
Welcome
to this episode of Anabaptist Perspectives.
We are here to discuss being plain with Edsel Burdge.
Welcome, Edsel.
Can you introduce yourself to our audience?
My name is at Edsel Burdge Junior and I live in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.
I am, married with six children, and I have seven grandchildren.
I'm a member of Shippensburg Christian Fellowship, which is a conservative,
unaffiliated, conservative Mennonite congregation.
and I did not grow up in a Mennonite home.
I started attending Mennonite Church when I was 15
and was baptized when I was 17.
And then, I went to Eastern
Mennonite College and graduated with a bachelor's degree in history.
Then I got a master's degree in history from Villanova University,
and I taught school for a number of years.
I worked on a number of research and writing projects.
And, starting in 2012, I started working as a research
associate at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies
at Elizabethtown College, which is where I am currently.
And one of my major tasks is, compiling,
statistical data on various plain groups, particularly the Amish.
When people ask me what I do, I jokingly tell them that I, count Amish.
And, so it is a joke. It is true.
That is what I one of the things I do, in 2004,
my, my book coauthored with Samuel Horst,
building on the Gospel Foundation, the Mennonites of Franklin County,
Pennsylvania, and Washington County, Maryland, 1730 to 1970,
came out as part of the studies on Anabaptism and Mennonite history series
and,
and, 2004, the third volume of Documents of Brotherly Love,
Dutch Mennonite Aid to Swiss Anabaptist,
came out and I was one of the coeditors of that,
final volume and that that document series.
Fabulous.
Thank you for the introduction.
We are here to talk about being plain.
Some communities of Christians call themselves plain people.
Many in our audience see themselves as plain.
But we have a diverse audience.
So many listening probably do not regard themselves as plain,
and may not be familiar with the way that we will be
using the term in this episode.
So let's begin by situating and contextualizing the term
and acknowledging its various definitions.
Unadorned may be the most straightforward and basic definition.
So those who are interested in 17th century Puritan literature
may think of plain style as
being clear, brief, sincere,
distinctive dress
code or symbolic religious apparel may also come to many people's minds
as characteristic of plainness.
So let's begin with the historic development
of how these various definitions interrelated over the years.
Okay.
Well, you know, Mennonites and Amish in the, let's say, here in North America,
an 18th, 19th century, their primary,
language was German, not English.
And the term, plain is kind of an English word.
I thought I would try to find out what they use instead
when they're talking German, and I haven't been able to figure that out yet.
I probably have to have a good a long conversation with my friend Amos Hoover,
who's really a specialist on that kind of, those kind of linguistic questions.
But the term plain, I think actually we can,
you talked about Puritan plain style that had to do more with a, a
type of preaching, not the elaborate,
kind of high church Anglican preaching
and so on, but more of a straightforward,
systematic, kind of presentation.
But as far as I can see, the, the term plain in the sense
that we talk about it as kind of lifestyle issues,
that that term was originally used by the Society of Friends, by the Quakers.
And I, I just want to read to you, a section
from the 1804, Discipline of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
The, the section on plainness.
And this is a very Quakery
language, but I think actually kind of gets to the, to the, gist of what
what the kind of things we're talking about
when we use the word plain says plainness, advise
that all friends, both old and young, keep out of the world's corrupt language,
manners, vain and needless things and fashions
in apparel, buildings and furniture of houses,
some of which are immodest, indecent, and unbecoming,
and that they avoid immoderation and the use of lawful things, which,
through, though innocent in themselves, may thereby become hurtful.
Also, such kinds of stuffs, colors, and dress, as are calculated
more to please a vain and wanton mind than for real usefulness,
and let tradesmen and others, members of our religious society be admonished,
that they be not a accessory to those evils.
For we ought to take up our daily cross,
minding the grace of God, which brings salvation,
and teach us to deny all ungodliness, worldly lusts,
and to live soberly, righteously and godly in the present world,
that we may adorn the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and all things.
So may we feel his blessing and being instrumental in his hand
for the good of others.
Now, I think that's a pretty good definition of plain
all right, even if it's not coming from a, a Mennonite or Amish source.
It's coming from an Anabaptist source.
And I think that once, I, I,
I think I, this would need further documentation, but
I think that as the,
as Mennonites moved into
using English more even as they became bilingual,
that, the this this Quaker term
plain and everything it meant
because in, in the 18th and
and 19th century, Quakers were also a plain people.
There was a recognition of that.
I mean, they had a distinctive garb.
They had sort of a similar attitude toward possessions and so on that Mennonites
and Amish and German Baptist people had, even some of their garb was very similar,
not exactly alike, but very similar, in how they looked and so on.
And it
was interesting.
In the 1880s, there was an orthodox Quaker,
minister from Philadelphia, the name of Joseph Elkinton who,
spent about a year at various points, not the whole year, but various points
visiting the, church, Mennonite churches in Franconia and Lancaster conference
and both conferences opened up their churches
for him and appointed meetings for him.
And they said that they would probably not have done this for anybody
other than a Quaker.
And of course, this was a plain dressing,
plain and a plain dressing,
Quaker minister.
And that was part of that thing that, that made, made
that made him acceptable to these, these folks here.
So I think that the term plain as it's
used, perhaps originated with friends.
And as Amish Mennonite people began to use English
more often, they kind of took that term over.
In fact,
I had a conversation with an Old Order Mennonite friend of mine about this.
And you know what?
What terms do you use?
He said, we use plain even in Dutch, we use plain.
We talk about, so they've they've borrowed this, this,
this term plain, this English term, plain and in Dutch and Pennsylvania Dutch.
They, they use it.
And I wonder now, what did they do, what did they use before they, had that
in some of the older literature,
particularly I'm thinking of,
and the 1840s, I think it is there is, there is a,
there's a manuscript, that records
a, essentially what it's an Ordnung,
set of standards, description
of of how various ordinances are to be performed
and so on that Lancaster conference, agreed to and there it talks
about pride
when it comes to dress.
It talks about no pride, no arrogance.
Actually term is no arrogance in dress and
and so and not dressing like the world.
Okay.
And so even in the 1840s, you know, I think
even before that, there's pretty strong evidence
that there was a distinctive style of dress,
that was considered to be plain. All right.
And again, as you mentioned, it really does mean
unamended, unadorned, stripped of unnecessary things.
Okay.
one of the things that's very interesting, my, my friend,
my late friend Steve Scott, came across a reference
in the Pennsylvania Gazette, an 18th century, newspaper,
and there was an advertisement for a runaway indentured servant.
And it says that he was dressed in a Mennonite coat
in a Mennonite coat.
So even in the 18th century, there was something about the coats
that Mennonites wore that was distinctive from the coats that everybody else wore.
Or why would you say he was dressed in a Mennonite coat?
All right.
So, so dress has always been one of the aspects of plainness.
Now, as friends, as, the thing of that, the, disciplined Friends discipline
says it's not just not, it's just not, it's not just, coats are clothes.
It's also your houses.
Okay?
It's also whatever else you might own, that they're not it
not be that it basically be functional and unadorned.
All right. And show moderation.
Even the right use, even the use of right of innocent things.
Okay, so I think that's what we mean about plainness.
Okay.
It's stripped of It's, it's,
ornamentation and the basic rationale
is to avoid pride
and exalting oneself and how one looks, what one’s possessions are.
It really does kind of have to do with the things we see.
Okay. It really does.
So that's very good historical context
today.
Many people regard themselves as plain.
So can you give an overview of the plain landscape today?
And how do various groups
or communities definitions of plainness support what they value?
Well, okay.
Well, you know, that is a spectrum.
And I would say that
my my sense is that when we look at the the variety of,
quote unquote, plain Mennonites, which going from old order to,
I don't I'm not sure how far to go down with that one.
I would say that there are,
there are on kind of the more progressive and of conservative Mennonites.
There are groups that I would describe as being conservative,
but not necessarily plain, plain.
I think for a group to be plain, there still does kind of
have to be a somewhat defined,
particularly in dress, a somewhat defined dress, though
admittedly that, for some of the groups, that is always much more,
noticeable and defined for the women than it is for the men.
and there's variation there.
If you look, for example, at the Stauffer Mennonite Church or the Pike
Mennonite there, their garb is very reminiscent.
And this probably changed very little from what Mennonite garb
was in the 1840s when they split off of the Lancaster Conference.
Okay.
So if you go to Lancaster County and you encounter some, some, Stauffer
Mennonites, you are probably seen a pattern
that was pretty pretty much intact in the 1840s.
Okay.
Now, there may have been some change, okay.
But groups like that tend to very conservative.
Groups like that tend to be very resistant to change.
And so and and there's also as you compare their dress to
older styles of dress, to, you know, costumes
and dresses that are, you know, maybe in museums or something like that.
You can see that.
Yeah. This is a pattern.
It's pretty pretty much, like it.
the history or the spectrum of plain Mennonites.
It really does
reflect, first of all, their background,
sometimes their regional background.
And what was the practice in that particular region?
It reflects when in the 20th century, as the larger
Mennonite Church and Conservative Mennonite Conference is assimilated,
when persons who formed new groups came out.
Okay, the the later that they came out, probably the less plain
they are going to be because they've been impacted
by the assimilation that happened prior to that.
Okay.
And so, one of the things I think that explains, it's
not the only thing, but one of the things that explained that explains the ...
of various plain groups has to do
with when they formed and what were the things that they were,
were the issues for them leaving one group and forming a new group?
Okay. And typically speaking,
the more,
more recent that has happened, because they participated
in some assimilation, the less plain they are.
You may have already partially answered this,
but how do current dress code discussions
relate to historic ideas of plainness?
Well, that depends on what the conversation is.
I would say that,
you know, my friend Steve Scott,
who I referred to earlier, divided Mennonite groups,
conservative Mennonite groups into, I think four categories.
You talked about ultra conservatives, talked about intermediate conservatives
who talked about moderate conservatives,
and then he talked about fundamentalist or evangelical conservatives.
And these were a spectrum.
And one of them, not the only but one of the criteria
that he used in defining these various and these these are types, okay.
These are types.
They're okay. They're not formal groups. Okay.
These are types in which formal groups fit in to one of the types.
But one of the criteria,
or one of the markers that he used is is how in the sense plane
they were, how, how conservative they were in their dress.
Okay.
So, depending which group you're part of,
then the the discussion will be at a different place.
All right.
You know, I, I know of one very conservative, ultra conservative
group in my area and which the discussion is about wearing a plain black hat.
That is not a discussion that most plain groups have anymore.
All right.
But that is a discussion there.
And, and it's and or an effort
to maintain that particular practice that you don't really see,
in some other groups as being, being an emphasis.
So I would say that many discussions boil
down to the particulars of plain dress, and
how much and
questions about, you know, can a practice be altered?
Can it be abandoned.
And so on.
And the other thing that I would say is that, you know, most conservative
Mennonites have a pattern of plain dress that is pretty much,
20th century pattern, though it is reminiscent of an earlier pattern.
It's it's derived from an earlier pattern.
And so there has even among the most conservative of the car driving groups,
there has been change that has happened, but it is reminiscent of earlier patterns.
Like I said, if you look at the Stauffer Mennonites,
you're going to see something that is very much reminiscent
of pre-Civil War, how pre-Civil War Mennonites as a whole, particularly in
in eastern Pennsylvania and, and in Pennsylvania and so on, dressed.
So if historically,
the the definition of plain was.
Unadorned and practicality,
I think, use the word unadorned, not the word practicality.
That's I think, an inference made from what you were saying.
Is that still
significant priority in the conversations
surrounding plainness in plain Mennonite
churches?
Maybe.
Maybe, depends on what the conversation is.
I do sometimes think.
And conversations I've heard and even conversations I participated in that.
The conversation, gets taken up or revolves around
particular applications of plainness, and so on, and not really
kind of the big issue, I mean, are sort of the overarching,
overarching, principle of what plainness is about.
for example, you know, there are groups that,
congregations I've been in where, you know,
they're as far as they're dress, they seem to me to be okay.
You got that one nailed down pretty well.
But then when you go into their houses and so on,
you see something there that in my mind is not plain.
Okay. It's not plain.
And, you know, that earlier Quaker
way of thinking about things and I think also in earlier, Mennonite
and Amish way of thinking about is that plainness is more than dress.
Plainness impacts every aspect of your life.
Okay. So your house is your dress and your houses, it should be kind of the same.
All right.
Your possessions should reflect that.
Okay.
And so we are really talking here about appearances across the board.
What you have and, and what you, what you show.
All right.
and I would say that unfortunately, I think that in too many cases
that plain the discussion around plainness has only to do with dress.
And I think that's an important discussion, don't get me wrong there.
But I think also that we we have particularly among
some conservative Mennonite groups, we really have lost the
the idea that plainness is supposed to impact everything.
It's supposed to impact the car
that we drive, supposed to impact the kind of houses we build, what how we
how we decorate our houses, how we adorn our houses.
You know, it it seems to me that I,
I go, I've been into place or think, well, this is,
these people dress plain, but they don't live plain, Whereas I think
an earlier understanding would have an earlier understanding addressed that.
And there are still some groups that do address that.
Okay. They do address that.
They tend to be, on the more conservative end of things.
Okay.
One of the things that we experience in the 21st century
that has changed
as compared to earlier centuries,
when some of these
early conversations about plainness in the Quaker Mennonite world started
is that we have mass production of clothing
in a way that wasn't entirely congruent with how it previously was.
So can custom handmade
clothing, which is often a significant part of the way
conservative Mennonites define plainness today.
Can that plausibly be regarded
as plain?
You mean people making their own clothes?
Yes. Okay.
Yeah, I think so.
So. Well, let me let me, just go back and look at this.
All right.
There's this myth, okay?
There's this myth. People love myths.
You know?
They just love them.
And and the thing about Myths is that they serve a very didactic purpose.
Okay, but there's this myth
that plainness came into the Mennonite church in the 20th century
through Western revivalists like, like, John S Kaufman and A.D.
Wanger and ... from Virginia.
But those kinds of people that this is when we began to see people,
you know, going to more of a defined plain style
and so on, women putting coverings on and everything like this and so on.
That's, that's a myth,
because,
it wasn't something new, as my,
my friend James Lowry used to say,
do we think that the old orders were looking in through the windows
at the revival meetings and picking up the fact that they should dress plain?
Okay.
Oh, no, they weren't.
They weren't there at those revival meetings listening to John S Kaufman or.
Or Daniel Kaufman or whoever, advocating plain dress.
Okay.
There's something, intrinsic there, that isn't part of the tradition and so on.
Now, what you do have happening actually in the 19th century,
and it is a result of industrialization and an industrialization,
first of all, in this country hit the hit, the cloth making industry.
Okay.
And all of a sudden, cloth which was produced in a very laborious
process of hand looms, weaving pieces of cloth.
I mean, you just did not have a lot of clothes unless you are very wealthy.
Wealthy person.
Okay? You do not have a lot of clothes.
Styles for
ordinary people did not change that way, even in general society.
Okay, so, but with the Industrial Revolution
and all of a sudden all this
machine woven cloth cloth becomes much more readily available.
The other nice thing is, is that they can actually do some things with it.
They can print it,
they can put nice little flowers on it and everything like that.
And, and so this becomes much more
available cloth becomes much more cheaper.
And you will see a corresponding, how shall we say, increase,
fashion. Okay.
Now there was always fashion.
Okay.
But fashion was almost always the purview of the wealthy, of people
who had lots of money and could afford,
you know, lots of clothes, all right.
Because the clothes had to.
The cloth had to be hand woven.
It had to be cut out by hand.
It had to be sewed with a needle and thread.
But in the 19th century, we have all sudden this new technology
in which cloth is woven on machines, and we have sewing machines.
And so it becomes much more easy.
And we begin to have mass produced, ready made clothing.
All right.
And so it's at this particular point, I think probably in the,
let's say the toward the end of the third of the first, third of the 19th century,
that clothing becomes much more readily available and that
plain people
have to deal with this issue of clothing.
Okay, of clothing.
Now, most clothing still in the 19th century is produced at home.
Okay.
Most of it is, unless you're really well to do.
And you go to a tailor
and you have a tailor or dressmaker, make your clothing, make your clothing.
But that's that's sort of the exception.
Again, that's for something for the for the people who are really well-to-do.
And it's at this particular point that you begin to see,
I think, begin to see kind of a shift in Mennonite communities,
particularly as clothing as, as clothing becomes
more clothing becomes much more easily accessible.
And you have a particularly among Mennonites
not so much among the Amish, but among Mennonites.
You have this this distinction between
people
who, young people who are not part of the church
and how they dress and how their parents dress.
And then you also have, I think, a development simply,
and particularly some quarters, particularly in the western states,
somewhat in Virginia, even, interestingly enough, some in Franconia area,
a lesser degree in Lancaster,
very lesser degree in my area in Washington, Franklin counties.
And so you begin to have people who are
their dress is not traditionally plain
or it may have altercations to it There’s this very interesting story.
In 1890s.
Katie.
Katie Martin, who later on, married J.D.
Bronk the songwriter and hymnalogist and so on.
She tells the story about when she was,
when, Bishop Michael Hurst and, who's the deacon?
I forget who the deacon was.
Came and visited her.
Prior to her baptism.
The style in the 1890s was for women to have these
kind of mutton chops, sort of shoulders and so on, their dresses and so on,
and she tells the story that the, the they said to her, I think one of the
the bishop or deacon just kind of pinched the thing and said, we'd like to see
a little less of these.
And, and so, now, so when
so you it's interesting when you look at pictures of plain
dress people in the 19th century, early 20th century,
how much current fashions
influence plain dress?
All right.
And you see that today.
All right. You see that today?
I mean, they might have a cape, but you might also see these mutton chops.
Shoulders. Okay.
What's really curious, in the 1920s is when you see
cape dresses that look like they're flapper
dresses, they have this long waist that go down to about the hips and so on.
You may see pictures of them. It's really odd.
It's really very hot.
But they're technically they have they have a Cape Cape on.
But it's really, you know, trying to imitate
a then fashion and style and society in general,
particularly as communication becomes more advanced, as styles change and so on.
You know, they, they have impacts and so on.
And I think actually that is what is happening
with some of these revivalist who are
they are convinced that it's necessary for us to be a plain people
and that what's happening in, in their advocating this
and then in some cases, people picking up on it
is that it's, it's bringing back into into prominence
and it's just simply an earlier practice that was this is just the way it was.
Okay.
But changes had happened and now there's an attempt to reverse some of the changes.
Most of those were not, in the long run, successful.
Okay.
I mean that
some of them were but not some are not in the long run, very successful.
At Anabaptist perspectives, our ambition
or our vision is to encourage allegiance to Jesus Kingdom.
How does
being plain support such allegiance?
If so, what way of being plain?
Well, you know, going back to the, to the thing
from the Society of Friends discipline, it talks about,
the fact that, you know,
there's something when it comes to pride.
Okay.
These are all manifestations of pride and pride is not a good thing.
Okay.
Now, pride can also be something that, you know,
it can be manifest in different kinds of ways.
But one of the things that's interesting about an Anabaptist perspective,
I hesitate to use the term Anabaptist, but sometimes you're stuck with it.
You guys ought to get another name. Yes.
I don't, I know, I wish we all would just jetison
the term Anabaptist and find some other term.
That's why when people ask me what I am, I tell them I'm a Mennonite right?
I prefer that than saying I'm an Anabaptist.
But anyhow, that's just a beef of mine.
But, among Mennonites and Amish.
Okay.
Pride I think if you talk about like
if you talk about pride, in a by,
if somebody is reformed and they talk a Calvinist, they talk about
pride, they're talking about an inner condition condition primarily
if if you think about it in a pietistic kind of way, it's an inner condition.
Now, I don't think anybody would deny that's an inner condition.
Okay.
But the to me, the genius
of of quote unquote.
I’m gonna use the term Anabaptist okay.
The genius of Anabaptism is that it does not
separate the inward disposition from the outward life.
And so if you see pride being expressed in a person's
the way they live, the way they dress, what their houses are like,
then one can, I think, pretty well assume that they are proud
there's something inside of them is proud.
Now one can be proud and hide things
to you know one can be proud about being plain,
some of which is curious, isn't it?
But but one of the things I would notice and I got this idea
actually, from Aaron Slabaugh, he talks about the fact that
when it came to humility
that Mennonites and Amish objectified it.
Okay.
They made it an objective reality, not just simply a disposition of the heart.
Okay?
And it's a objective reality that expresses itself in various ways.
Okay.
And so I think that
that that still has a that's still a valid way of looking at things.
Okay.
Pride is the original sin.
Okay.
It's as as John M Brennaman talks about it is it his tract
pride and humility.
I think the spiritual roots
of not patterned ourselves after world
as, as, Paul said, you know, be, be
ye not conformed to the world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Okay? The patterns of the world, okay?
Are in opposition to godliness.
And they express themselves
not only in inward dispositions, but in objective ways.
And I think plainness is an effort
to deal with that reality.
And the other thing that I think also that perhaps today we have lost somewhat
is that particularly when it comes to, I think about how some of our
how houses are built and how they're decorated and so on.
It is the idea that we are actually
not identifying with the elite in the world.
We are not patterned ourselves after the elite, but we are.
We are finding a common, ordinary, simple though I hate.
I hesitate to use the word simple because some people run with that
way of life.
Okay, in a sense.
In a sense, it's almost.
impoverishing ourselves.
Okay.
Forgive me if I misunderstand you,
but you seem to be an apologist for plainness.
Most Christians are not practitioners of plainness.
So I'm curious how you would make the case for plainness to believers
who aren't presently plain.
No, that's a good question.
Yeah.
I guess I could say I'm an apologist for me for plainness.
Well,
you know, the I guess the question
that I would, would address is,
you know, when you look at,
when let's just simply take dress for example, okay.
When, when I see some and this is kind of indirect,
what you're dealing with when I see some young Mennonite guys
where, cut their hair, where they had these really,
I think what they call tight and high haircuts,
you know, it's really, really, it's really shaved kind of on the side.
And it's this top stuff here. So.
But where did that come from?
Where where did that come from?
Well, it comes from the world.
It comes from it comes from the fashion industry.
So it does.
And it's a look and it it conveys a message.
All right.
It really makes an appeal to, to
our it's a visual appeal to us.
Okay.
It calls attention to to somebody’s looks.
Now that changes.
And that's the thing about fashions it changes okay.
And what's really in now or what's really, attractive and and appealing
to the senses now may change, but there's often some similarities to it.
Okay.
And so the question I often want to ask people is
where is where did that come from?
And the people who invented it or came up with that particular way
of, let's say, cutting your hair or that particular way of dressing?
Okay.
What was motivating that?
it was not a desire to serve God.
It was not a desire to be modest.
It was not a desire to not call attention to how to your body.
Okay.
But it was actually comes a desire to accentuate all that.
All right.
And that's what drives the whole fashion industry.
Okay.
So my so to me now
you know, as far as the particulars of how it works itself out,
okay, of how quote unquote plainness works itself out in a Mennonite
or Amish or German Baptist context.
You know, I think they work really well.
I have no quarrel with them. Okay.
They accomplished the thing that I think they need to accomplish.
Okay.
But that does not say that those ways of doing it
are necessarily the only ways of doing it.
There could be, different ways of doing it
that are equally as valid,
get the job done and so on.
My, my personal opinion is,
is that being a Mennonite, I don't need to reinvent the wheel.
There's a pattern, there's a style.
There's a way of doing this that really works.
Well, I think works well.
And it also places me in continuity with with the church
in the past, which I'm part of as well as hopefully the church of the future,
which I'm part of in the church of today, it identifies me as something
I it's really interesting story about, this, plainly dressed woman.
And it's a true story, because.
Yeah, happened to somebody I know this plainly dressed woman
at an airport where some evangelical came up to her and said,
you don't need to
dress that way to be a Christian.
And she said, well, how did you know I was a Christian?
It was because of her dress.
Okay.
It was because of her dress.
But but the foundational thing is, you know, when we talk about,
you know, and one of the things I think we need to understand
is that the particular pattern of plain dress that we have
has is not static, okay?
It's not static, but it is rooted in
what went before and in many cases,
the pattern that came up was a response to what was happening
in the larger society and saying, no, we don't want to do that.
Let's take, for example, the plain coat.
Okay.
Now, I think this is an issue for many people.
And this is interesting to me, particularly because it impacts men.
Men, there are
there are men in our plain churches who resist wearing a plain coat,
and yet they want their wives to wear a cape, dress and dress plain.
There seems to be to me a fundamental inequity there.
Okay.
And they could come up with good, rational reasons why they don't want to do this,
why they don't want to wear a plain coat okay. And say, well, it cost money.
Well, you know, I hear that.
And then I look at what their wardrobe is, right?
And I think, well,
I bet you spent more money on your wardrobe than I ever spent on a coat.
All right.
But but the other thing is, when you think about a plain coat.
All right.
What is it?
Well, it buttons up to your throat.
Okay.
Now, if anybody was designing a coat
for practical reasons, what would they do?
They would design a coat.
That buttoned up to your throat.
They would not design a coat, which
you turn the collar over and you have this thing that comes down to V,
and there's these two little or three buttons down at the bottom,
and you come in
and it's there that nobody would design a coat for any practical reason.
Why did they do that?
Well, in the 19th century and the first half of the 19th century,
as fashions, began to develop.
All right, we have the collar,
the standing collar, and it gets higher and higher.
It goes higher and higher up still reaches up to the ears.
What can hardly go any farther than that.
And so what did they do?
Well, the next style is to turn it over the roll it.
Okay, well once they roll it, then it creates these lapels.
All right.
And then what you have to do well you have to start wearing long ties.
Now there were bow ties before that. But bow ties were
actually, were neckerchiefs to close the collar of a shirt.
Here I'm getting into the particulars of of dress of rest. But
I think I mean, that's my personal opinion.
I think a plain coat makes the most sense of any coat I've ever seen,
because it buttons up to the throat.
The only reason to wear a lapel coat.
The only rationale for that is fashion.
It's not. It's not a sensible coat.
Nobody would design a coat like that for fashion.
The only for for practicality.
They only decide it for fashion.
Okay, I've also kind of found it interesting
when I and I have known people like this
who resist the idea of wearing a plain coat,
and they come up with all these rationales why they shouldn't wear a plain coat.
It's not necessarily to wear a plain coat.
And if they leave a group where that's what's expected,
and they go to another group where it's not expecting, guess what?
They put on a lapel coat.
Now, I do not want to judge the motives of people.
But I began to wonder, was that really what your argument was about,
or did you just simply want to blend in
with the pattern of the world?
so now not having said that,
having said that, there may be indeed people who, you know,
they have no contact, contact with plain people
or with Mennonites or brethren or or or Amish or anything like that.
And there they may come up with a pattern and maybe they'll wear lapel coat,
you know.
You know, I know, I know some groups in which
they're really insistent that,
that their men wear
when they go to church, they wear a suit and a tie, a long black tie.
That's their pattern.
And that's in their minds. That's being nonconformist.
I think that's a little silly way of being nonconformed.
I mean, it does’nt make sense to me.
And so but I can at least respect the idea
that, that they have an understanding
that we're not going to just simply go with every pattern of the world,
every new thing that comes down the track,
every new thing that is basically comes out of a fashion industry
that is wanting to sell things to you
and does so by appealing to your fleshly senses.
Okay.
And when I see when I see Mennonites
picking up aspects of that,
that troubles me
because they're not asking themselves,
where does this come from?
And what is the message?
It's sending clothes send a message.
Doesn't matter how you dress, it sends a message.
You have to decide what is the message you want to send.
Before we end this episode,
is there more that you would like to add?
Well, I guess I would have to say.
I mean, I was baptized into the Mennonite.
I was baptized,
I guess I'll have to say, into the Mennonite church when I was 17 years old.
All right.
And I'm 64 years old,
approaching my 65th birthday here next year.
And I would say in the last 20 years.
I have seen across the
the spectrum, across the spectrum.
I have seen
more erosion
among our conservative groups,
groups that define themselves as plain.
I've seen more erosion
of plainness than before.
Now for the conservative
Mennonite groups who came out of the
the groups that were assimilated in the 1950s and 60s.
Okay, that generation who came out and I would even say for a while
after that have very good sense
of how things developed and how they looked at
what what were some of the markers that some of the things that you
would be alert to it as the next generations come along?
They do not have that experiential understanding.
Okay.
And so they when they hear some things, okay.
When they hear something, well, that sounds reasonable.
Yeah. We do we have to do it this way.
And so us old fogies. Okay.
And I almost I think I'm like that.
Us old guys, we've heard these these arguments before
okay.
And we can say you can go that way if you want to.
But you look at this, these are the arguments
that people are using back then.
And look where it led them to.
Okay.
And so, I think that
I think we, I think our churches as far as maintaining nonconformity,
the practices of non-conformity are at a crisis.
And I believe that across the board, I talked to,
talked to an older Mennonite friend of mine recently.
He said that they're one of the most recent conference,
the most recent conference meetings that they had.
The whole question of plainness and nonconformity
was a big issue.
Now it's hitting them at various different places.
It is some other groups.
the creation and
maintenance of a plain culture
with, with markers that define that
do give some guidance to how we should let live
it help us to avoid the wickedness of the world.
So that that would be.
And the other thing I would have to say is.
Somehow we're going to have to address the inequity
of what we insist upon for our women
when it comes to their dress and what we allow our men to do.
When when you walk down the street with your wife
or with your sisters?
With your mother.
Okay.
As a man,
is it as obvious to everybody looking on
that you are a Christian as it is
that they're your women are a Christian?
I think that I think we have made our women
bear the burden of plainness
when it comes to dress.
And I think that is
that is not going to work in the long run, because what will happen
is that eventually the women's dress will change.
Also.
I believe that we will end the episode here.
Thank you for listening to this
episode of Anabaptist Perspectives.
This is the second episode that we have recorded with Edsel Burdge.
His previous episode, which was about theological concerns
of Swiss Mennonites in America from 1730 to 1930,
and every other episode and essay that we have published
can be found at anabaptistperspectives.org.