April 3, 2025 • 47 mins
Edsel Burdge walks us through plainness, starting with the Quakers, addressing concerns of plainness at various points of conservative Mennonite history, and makes a case for why considerations of plainness should matter to Christians today. Burdge thinks of plainness as an approach to life that identifies a person with God’s people while resisting pressures of wealth, consumerism, and sensuality.
Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College:
Ready to Harvest’s Video about Mennonites:
“Overview of the Plain People” by Ernest Eby:
“An Introduction to Old Order: and Conservative Mennonite Groups” by Stephen Scott:
Shippensburg Christian Fellowship History Series:
“Building on the Gospel Foundation” by Edsel Burdge and Samuel Horst:
Link to the First Episode with Edsel:
This is the 261st episode of Anabaptist Perspectives, a podcast, blog, and YouTube channel that examines various aspects of conservative Anabaptist life and thought.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
We're not going to just simply gowith every pattern of the world,
every new thing that comes down the track,
every new thing that is basically comesout of a fashion industry
that is wanting to sell things to you
and does soby appealing to your fleshly senses.
And when I see when I see Mennonites
(00:22):
picking up aspects of that,
that troubles me
because they're not asking themselves,
where does this come from?
And what is the message?
It's sending clothes send a message.
It's sending clothes send a message.
Doesn't matter how you dress,it sends a message.
You have to decidewhat is the message you want to send.
(00:49):
Welcome
to thisepisode of Anabaptist Perspectives.
We are here to discuss being plainwith Edsel Burdge.
Welcome, Edsel.
Can you introduce yourselfto our audience?
My name is at Edsel Burdge Juniorand I live in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.
I am, married with six children,and I have seven grandchildren.
(01:13):
I'm a member of Shippensburg ChristianFellowship, which is a conservative,
unaffiliated,conservative Mennonite congregation.
and I did not grow up in a Mennonite home.
I started attending Mennonite Churchwhen I was 15
and was baptized when I was 17.
And then, I went to Eastern
(01:33):
Mennonite College and graduatedwith a bachelor's degree in history.
Then I got a master's degree in historyfrom Villanova University,
and I taught school for a number of years.
I worked on a number of researchand writing projects.
And, starting in 2012,I started working as a research
associate at the Young Centerfor Anabaptist and Pietist Studies
(01:54):
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 Ione of the things I do, in 2004,
(02:17):
my, my bookcoauthored 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 studieson Anabaptism and Mennonite history series
and,
and, 2004, the thirdvolume of Documents of Brotherly Love,
(02:42):
Dutch Mennonite Aid to Swiss Anabaptist,
came outand I was one of the coeditors of that,
final volumeand that that document series.
Fabulous.
Thank you for the introduction.
We are here to talk about being plain.
Some communities of Christianscall themselves plain people.
(03:06):
Many in our audiencesee themselves as plain.
But we have a diverse audience.
So many listening probably do notregard themselves as plain,
and may not be familiarwith the way that we will be
using the term in this episode.
So let's beginby situating and contextualizing the term
(03:26):
and acknowledging its various definitions.
Unadorned may be the most straightforwardand basic definition.
So those who are interestedin 17th century Puritan literature
may think of plain style as
being clear, brief, sincere,
distinctive dress
(03:47):
code or symbolic religious apparelmay also come to many people's minds
as characteristic of plainness.
So let's beginwith the historic development
of how these various definitionsinterrelated over the years.
Okay.
Well, you know, Mennonites and Amishin the, let's say, here in North America,
(04:12):
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 outwhat they use instead
when they're talking German, and Ihaven't been able to figure that out yet.
I probably have to have a good a longconversation with my friend Amos Hoover,
(04:33):
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 Puritanplain style that had to do more with a, a
type of preaching, not the elaborate,
kind of high church Anglican preaching
(04:55):
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 itas kind of lifestyle issues,
that that term was originally usedby the Society of Friends, by the Quakers.
(05:15):
And I, I just want to read to you,a section
from the 1804, Discipline of PhiladelphiaYearly Meeting.
The, the section on plainness.
And this is a very Quakery
language, but I think actually kind ofgets to the, to the, gist of what
what the kind of thingswe're talking about
(05:37):
when we use the wordplain says plainness, advise
that all friends, both old and young,keep out of the world's corrupt language,
manners, vain and needlessthings and fashions
in apparel, buildingsand furniture of houses,
some of which are immodest,indecent, and unbecoming,
(05:59):
and that they avoid immoderationand 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 mindthan for real usefulness,
and let tradesmen and others, membersof our religious society be admonished,
(06:23):
that they be not a accessoryto 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, righteouslyand godly in the present world,
that we may adorn the gospel of our LordJesus Christ and all things.
(06:45):
So may we feel his blessingand being instrumental in his hand
for the good of others.
Now, I thinkthat's a pretty good definition of plain
all right, even if it's not coming froma, 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
(07:09):
I think that as the,
as Mennonites moved into
using English moreeven as they became bilingual,
that, the this this Quaker term
plain and everything it meant
because in, in the 18th and
and 19thcentury, Quakers were also a plain people.
(07:31):
There was a recognition of that.
I mean, they had a distinctive garb.
They had sort of a similar attitude towardpossessions 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, inhow they looked and so on.
And it
(07:52):
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 churchesin Franconia and Lancaster conference
and both conferencesopened up their churches
(08:13):
for him and appointed meetings for him.
And they said that they wouldprobably 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 thingthat, that made, made
(08:35):
that made him acceptableto these, these folks here.
So I think that the term plain as it's
used, perhaps originated with friends.
And as Amish Mennonite peoplebegan to use English
more often,they kind of took that term over.
In fact,
I had a conversation with an Old OrderMennonite friend of mine about this.
(08:56):
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, plainand 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
(09:18):
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 ofhow various ordinances are to be performed
(09:40):
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.
(10:01):
And so even in the 1840s,you know, I think
even before that,there's pretty strong evidence
that there wasa distinctive style of dress,
that was consideredto be plain. All right.
And again,as you mentioned, it really does mean
unamended, unadorned,stripped of unnecessary things.
(10:23):
Okay.
one of the things that's very interesting,my, my friend,
my late friendSteve Scott, came across a reference
in the Pennsylvania Gazette,an 18th century, newspaper,
and there was an advertisementfor a runaway indentured servant.
And it says that he was dressedin a Mennonite coat
(10:45):
in a Mennonite coat.
So even in the 18th century,there was something about the coats
that Mennonites wore that was distinctivefrom the coats that everybody else wore.
Or why would you sayhe was dressed in a Mennonite coat?
All right.
So, so dress has always beenone of the aspects of plainness.
Now, as friends, as, the thing of that,the, disciplined Friends discipline
(11:09):
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 itbasically be functional and unadorned.
All right. And show moderation.
(11:29):
Even the right use,even the use of right of innocent things.
Okay, so I think that'swhat 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.
(11:52):
It really doeskind 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 overviewof the plain landscape today?
(12:13):
And how do various groups
or communities definitions of plainnesssupport 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 thethe variety of,
quote unquote, plain Mennonites, which going from old order to,
(12:39):
I don't I'mnot sure how far to go down with that one.
I would say that there are,
there are on kind of the more progressiveand of conservative Mennonites.
There are groups that I would describeas being conservative,
but not necessarily plain, plain.
I think for a group to be plain,there still does kind of
(13:00):
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 definedfor the women than it is for the men.
and there's variation there.
If you look, for example, at the StaufferMennonite Church or the Pike
(13:23):
Mennonite there,their garb is very reminiscent.
And this probably changed very littlefrom what Mennonite garb
was in the 1840s when they split offof the Lancaster Conference.
Okay.
So if you go to Lancaster Countyand you encounter some, some, Stauffer
(13:43):
Mennonites,you are probably seen a pattern
that was prettypretty much intact in the 1840s.
Okay.
Now, there may have been some change,okay.
But groups like thattend to very conservative.
Groups like thattend to be very resistant to change.
And so and and there's also as you comparetheir dress to
(14:05):
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 historyor the spectrum of plain Mennonites.
It really does
(14:25):
reflect, first of all, their background,
sometimes their regional background.
And what was the practicein that particular region?
It reflects when in the 20th century,as the larger
Mennonite Church and ConservativeMennonite Conference is assimilated,
(14:46):
when persons who formed new groupscame out.
Okay, the the later that they came out,probably the less plain
they are going to bebecause they've been impacted
by the assimilationthat happened prior to that.
Okay.
And so, one of the thingsI think that explains, it's
not the only thing, but one of the thingsthat explained that explains the ...
(15:08):
of various plain groups has to do
with when they formedand what were the things that they were,
were the issues for them leaving one groupand forming a new group?
Okay. And typically speaking,
the more,
more recent that has happened,because they participated
(15:31):
in some assimilation,the less plain they are.
You may have alreadypartially 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,
(15:55):
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 fundamentalistor evangelical conservatives.
(16:16):
And these were a spectrum.
And one of them,not the only but one of the criteria
that he used in defining these variousand these these are types, okay.
These are types.
They're okay.They're not formal groups. Okay.
These are types in which formal groupsfit in to one of the types.
But one of the criteria,
or one of the markers that he usedis is how in the sense plane
(16:40):
they were, how, how conservativethey were in their dress.
Okay.
So, depending which group you're part of,
then the the discussionwill be at a different place.
All right.
You know, I, I know of onevery conservative, ultra conservative
(17:00):
group in my area and which the discussionis about wearing a plain black hat.
That is not a discussionthat 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 practicethat you don't really see,
(17:22):
in some other groupsas being, being an emphasis.
So I would say that many discussions boil
down to the particularsof plain dress, and
how much and
questions about, you know, can a practicebe altered?
Can it be abandoned.
(17:43):
And so on.
And the other thing that I would say isthat, you know, most conservative
Mennonites have a pattern of plain dressthat is pretty much,
20th century pattern, thoughit is reminiscent of an earlier pattern.
It's it's derived from an earlier pattern.
And so there has even among the mostconservative of the car driving groups,
(18:08):
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 somethingthat is very much reminiscent
of pre-Civil War, how pre-CivilWar Mennonites as a whole, particularly in
in eastern Pennsylvania and,and in Pennsylvania and so on, dressed.
(18:31):
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 madefrom what you were saying.
Is that still
(18:52):
significant priority in the conversations
surrounding plainness in plain Mennonite
churches?
Maybe.
Maybe,depends on what the conversation is.
I do sometimes think.
(19:12):
And conversations I've heard andeven conversations I participated in that.
The conversation, gets taken upor revolves around
particular applications of plainness,and so on, and not really
kind of the big issue,I mean, are sort of the overarching,
(19:32):
overarching,principle of what plainness is about.
for example,you know, there are groups that,
congregationsI'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 housesand so on,
(19:52):
you see something therethat in my mind is not plain.
Okay. It's not plain.
And, you know, that earlier Quaker
way of thinking about thingsand I think also in earlier, Mennonite
and Amish way of thinking about isthat plainness is more than dress.
Plainness impactsevery aspect of your life.
(20:13):
Okay. So your house is your dress and yourhouses, it should be kind of the same.
All right.
Your possessions should reflect that.
Okay.
And so we are really talking hereabout 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
(20:36):
that plain the discussion aroundplainness has only to do with dress.
And I think that's an importantdiscussion, don't get me wrong there.
But I think also that wewe have particularly among
some conservative Mennonite groups,we really have lost the
the idea that plainnessis supposed to impact everything.
It's supposed to impact the car
(20:57):
that we drive, supposed to impactthe 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
(21:18):
an earlier understanding would havean earlier understanding addressed that.
And there are still some groupsthat do address that.
Okay. They do address that.
They tend to be, on the more conservativeend of things.
Okay.
One of the things that we experiencein the 21st century
(21:38):
that has changed
as compared to earlier centuries,
when some of these
early conversations about plainnessin the Quaker Mennonite world started
is that we have mass productionof clothing
in a way that wasn't entirely congruentwith how it previously was.
(22:00):
So can custom handmade
clothing, which is oftena significant part of the way
conservative Mennonitesdefine plainness today.
Can that plausibly be regarded
as plain?
You mean people making their own clothes?
(22:21):
Yes. Okay.
Yeah, I think so.
So. Well, let me let me, just go backand 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 isthat they serve a very didactic purpose.
(22:43):
Okay, but there's this myth
that plainness came intothe Mennonite church in the 20th century
through Western revivalistslike, like, John S Kaufman and A.D.
Wanger and ... from Virginia.
But those kinds of people that this iswhen we began to see people,
you know,going to more of a defined plain style
(23:05):
and so on, women putting coverings onand 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 orderswere looking in through the windows
(23:26):
at the revival meetings and picking upthe fact that they should dress plain?
Okay.
Oh, no, they weren't.
They weren't there at those revivalmeetings listening to John S Kaufman or.
Or Daniel Kaufman or whoever,advocating plain dress.
Okay.
There's something, intrinsic there, thatisn't part of the tradition and so on.
(23:47):
Now, what you do have happeningactually in the 19th century,
and it is a result of industrializationand an industrialization,
first of all, in this countryhit the hit, the cloth making industry.
Okay.
And all of a sudden, clothwhich was produced in a very laborious
process of handlooms, weaving pieces of cloth.
(24:07):
I mean, you just did not have a lotof 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 clothcloth becomes much more readily available.
(24:31):
The other nice thing is, is thatthey can actually do some things with it.
They can print it,
they can put nice little flowers on itand 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.
(24:52):
Now there was always fashion.
Okay.
But fashion was almost always the purviewof 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 sewedwith a needle and thread.
(25:12):
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 thirdof the first, third of the 19th century,
(25:36):
that clothing becomesmuch more readily available and that
plain people
have to deal with this issue of clothing.
Okay, of clothing.
Now, most clothing still inthe 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.
(25:59):
But that's that's sort of the exception.
Again, that's for something for thefor the people who are really well-to-do.
And it's at this particular pointthat you begin to see,
I think, begin to see kind of a shiftin Mennonite communities,
particularly as clothingas, as clothing becomes
more clothingbecomes much more easily accessible.
(26:19):
And you have a particularlyamong Mennonites
not so much among the Amish,but among Mennonites.
You have this this distinction between
people
who, youngpeople who are not part of the church
and how they dressand how their parents dress.
And then you also have,I think, a development simply,
(26:40):
and particularly some quarters,particularly in the western states,
somewhat in Virginia, even, interestinglyenough, some in Franconia area,
a lesser degree in Lancaster,
very lesser degree in my areain Washington, Franklin counties.
And so you begin to have people who are
(27:00):
their dress is not traditionally plain
or it may have altercations to itThere’s this very interesting story.
In 1890s.
Katie.
Katie Martin,who later on, married J.D.
Bronk the songwriter and hymnalogistand so on.
She tells the story about when she was,
(27:22):
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 womento have these
kind of mutton chops, sort of shouldersand so on, their dresses and so on,
and she tells the story that the, thethey said to her, I think one of the
(27:45):
the bishop or deacon just kind of pinchedthe thing and said, we'd like to see
a little less of these.
And, and so, now, so when
so you it's interestingwhen you look at pictures of plain
dress people in the 19th century,early 20th century,
how much current fashions
(28:07):
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, inthe 1920s is when you see
cape dressesthat look like they're flapper
(28:28):
dresses, they have this long waistthat 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 havethey have a Cape Cape on.
But it's really,you know, trying to imitate
a then fashion and style and societyin general,
particularly as communication becomesmore advanced, as styles change and so on.
(28:53):
You know, they, they have impactsand so on.
And I thinkactually that is what is happening
with some of these revivalist who are
they are convinced that it's necessaryfor us to be a plain people
and that what's happeningin, in their advocating this
and then in some cases, peoplepicking up on it
(29:15):
is that it's, it'sbringing back into into prominence
and it's just simply an earlier practicethat was this is just the way it was.
Okay.
But changes had happened and now there'san 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 someare not in the long run, very successful.
(29:38):
At Anabaptist perspectives, our ambition
or our vision is to encourageallegiance 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
(30:01):
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 prideand pride is not a good thing.
Okay.
Now, pride can also be somethingthat, you know,
(30:21):
it can be manifestin different kinds of ways.
But one of the things that's interestingabout 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 Anabaptistand find some other term.
That's why when people ask me what I am,I tell them I'm a Mennonite right?
(30:42):
I prefer thatthan 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 reformedand they talk a Calvinist, they talk about
(31:05):
pride, they're talking about an innercondition condition primarily
if if you think about it in a pietistickind of way, it's an inner condition.
Now, I don't think anybody would denythat's an inner condition.
Okay.
But the to me, the genius
of of quote unquote.
I’m gonna use the term Anabaptist okay.
(31:27):
The genius of Anabaptism is thatit does not
separate the inward dispositionfrom the outward life.
And so if you see pridebeing expressed in a person's
the way they live, the way they dress,what their houses are like,
then one can, I think, prettywell assume that they are proud
(31:47):
there's something inside of them is proud.
Now one can be proud and hide things
to you knowone can be proud about being plain,
some of which is curious, isn't it?
But but one of the things I would noticeand I got this idea
actually, from Aaron Slabaugh,he talks about the fact that
(32:11):
when it came to humility
that Mennonites and Amish objectified it.
Okay.
They made it an objective reality, notjust simply a disposition of the heart.
Okay?
And it's a objective realitythat expresses itself in various ways.
Okay.
And so I think that
(32:33):
that that still has a that'sstill a valid way of looking at things.
Okay.
Pride is the original sin.
Okay.
It's as as John M Brennaman talks about itis it his tract
pride and humility.
I think the spiritual roots
(32:54):
of not patterned ourselves after world
as, as, Paul said, you know, be, be
ye not conformed to the world, but be yetransformed by the renewing of your mind.
Okay? The patterns of the world, okay?
Are in opposition to godliness.
And they express themselves
(33:15):
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 thatperhaps today we have lost somewhat
is that particularly when it comes to,I think about how some of our
(33:37):
how houses are builtand how they're decorated and so on.
It is the idea that we are actually
not identifyingwith the elite in the world.
We are not patterned ourselvesafter the elite, but we are.
We are finding a common, ordinary, simplethough I hate.
I hesitate to use the word simplebecause some people run with that
(34:00):
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 apologistfor plainness.
Most Christiansare not practitioners of plainness.
(34:22):
So I'm curious how you would make the casefor plainness to believers
who aren't presently plain.
No, that's a good question.
Yeah.
I guess I could say I'man apologist for me for plainness.
Well,
you know, the I guess the question
(34:43):
that I would, would address is,
you know, when you look at,
when let's just simply take dressfor example, okay.
When, when I see someand this is kind of indirect,
what you're dealing withwhen I see some young Mennonite guys
where, cut their hair,where they had these really,
(35:03):
I think what they call tightand 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 fromit comes from the fashion industry.
(35:26):
So it does.
And it's a look and itit 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 fashionsit changes okay.
And what's really in now or what's really,attractive and and appealing
(35:50):
to the senses now may change,but there's often some similarities to it.
Okay.
And so the question I often want to askpeople is
where is where did that come from?
And the people who invented itor came up with that particular way
of, let's say, cutting your hairor that particular way of dressing?
(36:13):
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 attentionto how to your body.
Okay.
But it was actually comes a desireto accentuate all that.
(36:35):
All right.
And that'swhat drives the whole fashion industry.
Okay.
So my so to me now
you know, as far as the particularsof how it works itself out,
okay, of how quote unquote plainnessworks itself out in a Mennonite
or Amish or German Baptist context.
(36:58):
You know, I think they work really well.
I have no quarrel with them. Okay.
They accomplished the thing that I thinkthey need to accomplish.
Okay.
But that does not say thatthose ways of doing it
are necessarily the only ways of doing it.
Therecould be, different ways of doing it
(37:21):
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 thisthat really works.
Well, I think works well.
(37:43):
And it also places me in continuitywith with the church
in the past, which I'm part of as wellas 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.
(38:03):
Yeah, happened to somebodyI know this plainly dressed woman
at an airport where some evangelicalcame 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.
(38:24):
But but the foundational thingis, you know, when we talk about,
you know, and one of the thingsI think we need to understand
is that the particular patternof plain dress that we have
has is not static, okay?
It's not static, but it is rooted in
(38:44):
what went before and in many cases,
the pattern that came up was a responseto 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 issuefor many people.
And this is interesting to me, particularly because it impacts men.
(39:08):
Men, there are
there are men in our plain churcheswho resist wearing a plain coat,
and yet they want their wivesto wear a cape, dress and dress plain.
There seems to be to mea fundamental inequity there.
Okay.
And they could come up with good, rationalreasons why they don't want to do this,
why they don't want to wear a plain coatokay. And say, well, it cost money.
Well, you know, I hear that.
(39:29):
And then I look at whattheir wardrobe is, right?
And I think, well,
I bet you spent more money onyour 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
(39:51):
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 andyou have this thing that comes down to V,
and there's these two littleor three buttons down at the bottom,
and you come in
and it's there that nobody would designa coat for any practical reason.
(40:12):
Why did they do that?
Well, in the 19th centuryand 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 upstill 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 itover the roll it.
(40:33):
Okay, well once they roll it,then it creates these lapels.
All right.
And then what you have to dowell you have to start wearing long ties.
Now there were bow ties before that.But bow ties were
actually, were neckerchiefsto close the collar of a shirt.
Here I'm getting into the particularsof of dress of rest. But
I thinkI mean, that's my personal opinion.
(40:56):
I think a plain coat makes the most senseof 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 thatfor fashion.
The only for for practicality.
They only decide it for fashion.
(41:16):
Okay,I've also kind of found it interesting
when I and I have known people like this
who resist the ideaof wearing a plain coat,
and they come up with all these rationaleswhy they shouldn't wear a plain coat.
It's not necessarily to wear a plain coat.
And if they leave a groupwhere that's what's expected,
and they go to another groupwhere it's not expecting, guess what?
They put on a lapel coat.
Now, I donot want to judge the motives of people.
(41:37):
But I began to wonder, was that reallywhat 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, contactwith plain people
(41:59):
or with Mennonites or brethrenor or or Amish or anything like that.
And there they may come up with a patternand maybe they'll wear lapel coat,
you know.
You know, I know, I know some groupsin which
they're really insistent that,
that their men wear
when they go to church, they wear a suitand a tie, a long black tie.
That's their pattern.
(42:19):
And that's in their minds.That's being nonconformist.
I think that'sa 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 gowith every pattern of the world,
that we're not going to just simply gowith every pattern of the world,
every new thing that comes down the track,
(42:40):
every new thing that is basically comesout of a fashion industry
that is wanting to sell things to you
and does soby appealing to your fleshly senses.
Okay.
And when I see when I see Mennonites
picking up aspects of that,
(43:02):
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 decidewhat is the message you want to send.
Before we end this episode,
(43:24):
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, intothe Mennonite church when I was 17 years old.
All right.
And I'm 64 years old,
approaching my 65th birthday herenext year.
(43:48):
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.
(44:10):
I've seen more erosion
of plainness than before.
Now for the conservative
Mennonite groups who came out of the
the groups that were assimilatedin the 1950s and 60s.
Okay, that generation who came outand I would even say for a while
after that have very good sense
(44:32):
of how things developedand how they looked at
what what were some of the markersthat some of the things that you
would be alert to itas the next generations come along?
They do not havethat 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.
(44:54):
And so us old fogies. Okay.
And I almost I think I'm like that.
Us old guys, we've heard thesethese arguments before
okay.
And we can say you can go that wayif 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.
(45:15):
And so, I think that
I think we, I think our churchesas far as maintaining nonconformity,
the practices of non-conformityare at a crisis.
And I believe that across the board,I talked to,
talked to an older Mennonitefriend of mine recently.
He said thatthey're one of the most recent conference,
(45:35):
the most recent conference meetingsthat they had.
The whole question of plainnessand nonconformity
was a big issue.
Now it's hitting them at variousdifferent places.
It is some other groups.
the creation and
maintenance of a plain culture
with, with markers that define that
(45:57):
do give some guidanceto how we should let live
it help usto avoid the wickedness of the world.
So that that would be.
And the other thingI would have to say is.
Somehow we're going to have to addressthe inequity
of what we insist upon for our women
(46:18):
when it comes to their dressand what we allow our men to do.
When when you walk down the streetwith your wife
or with your sisters?
With your mother.
Okay.
As a man,
is it as obvious to everybody looking on
(46:40):
that you are a Christian as it is
that they're your women are a Christian?
I think thatI 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
(47:05):
is that eventuallythe women's dress will change.
Also.
I believethat we will end the episode here.
Thank you for listening to this
episode of Anabaptist Perspectives.
This is the second episodethat we have recorded with Edsel Burdge.
His previous episode,which was about theological concerns
(47:28):
of Swiss Mennonites in Americafrom 1730 to 1930,
and every other episode and essaythat we have published
can be foundat anabaptistperspectives.org.
We're not going to just simply gowith every pattern of the world,
every new thing that comes down the track,
every new thing that is basically comesout of a fashion industry
that is wanting to sell things to you
and does soby appealing to your fleshly senses.
And when I see when I see Mennonites
(00:22):
picking up aspects of that,
that troubles me
because they're not asking themselves,
where does this come from?
And what is the message?
It's sending clothes send a message.
It's sending clothes send a message.
Doesn't matter how you dress,it sends a message.
You have to decidewhat is the message you want to send.
(00:49):
Welcome
to thisepisode of Anabaptist Perspectives.
We are here to discuss being plainwith Edsel Burdge.
Welcome, Edsel.
Can you introduce yourselfto our audience?
My name is at Edsel Burdge Juniorand I live in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.
I am, married with six children,and I have seven grandchildren.
(01:13):
I'm a member of Shippensburg ChristianFellowship, which is a conservative,
unaffiliated,conservative Mennonite congregation.
and I did not grow up in a Mennonite home.
I started attending Mennonite Churchwhen I was 15
and was baptized when I was 17.
And then, I went to Eastern
(01:33):
Mennonite College and graduatedwith a bachelor's degree in history.
Then I got a master's degree in historyfrom Villanova University,
and I taught school for a number of years.
I worked on a number of researchand writing projects.
And, starting in 2012,I started working as a research
associate at the Young Centerfor Anabaptist and Pietist Studies
(01:54):
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 Ione of the things I do, in 2004,
(02:17):
my, my bookcoauthored 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 studieson Anabaptism and Mennonite history series
and,
and, 2004, the thirdvolume of Documents of Brotherly Love,
(02:42):
Dutch Mennonite Aid to Swiss Anabaptist,
came outand I was one of the coeditors of that,
final volumeand that that document series.
Fabulous.
Thank you for the introduction.
We are here to talk about being plain.
Some communities of Christianscall themselves plain people.
(03:06):
Many in our audiencesee themselves as plain.
But we have a diverse audience.
So many listening probably do notregard themselves as plain,
and may not be familiarwith the way that we will be
using the term in this episode.
So let's beginby situating and contextualizing the term
(03:26):
and acknowledging its various definitions.
Unadorned may be the most straightforwardand basic definition.
So those who are interestedin 17th century Puritan literature
may think of plain style as
being clear, brief, sincere,
distinctive dress
(03:47):
code or symbolic religious apparelmay also come to many people's minds
as characteristic of plainness.
So let's beginwith the historic development
of how these various definitionsinterrelated over the years.
Okay.
Well, you know, Mennonites and Amishin the, let's say, here in North America,
(04:12):
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 outwhat they use instead
when they're talking German, and Ihaven't been able to figure that out yet.
I probably have to have a good a longconversation with my friend Amos Hoover,
(04:33):
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 Puritanplain style that had to do more with a, a
type of preaching, not the elaborate,
kind of high church Anglican preaching
(04:55):
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 itas kind of lifestyle issues,
that that term was originally usedby the Society of Friends, by the Quakers.
(05:15):
And I, I just want to read to you,a section
from the 1804, Discipline of PhiladelphiaYearly Meeting.
The, the section on plainness.
And this is a very Quakery
language, but I think actually kind ofgets to the, to the, gist of what
what the kind of thingswe're talking about
(05:37):
when we use the wordplain says plainness, advise
that all friends, both old and young,keep out of the world's corrupt language,
manners, vain and needlessthings and fashions
in apparel, buildingsand furniture of houses,
some of which are immodest,indecent, and unbecoming,
(05:59):
and that they avoid immoderationand 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 mindthan for real usefulness,
and let tradesmen and others, membersof our religious society be admonished,
(06:23):
that they be not a accessoryto 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, righteouslyand godly in the present world,
that we may adorn the gospel of our LordJesus Christ and all things.
(06:45):
So may we feel his blessingand being instrumental in his hand
for the good of others.
Now, I thinkthat's a pretty good definition of plain
all right, even if it's not coming froma, 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
(07:09):
I think that as the,
as Mennonites moved into
using English moreeven as they became bilingual,
that, the this this Quaker term
plain and everything it meant
because in, in the 18th and
and 19thcentury, Quakers were also a plain people.
(07:31):
There was a recognition of that.
I mean, they had a distinctive garb.
They had sort of a similar attitude towardpossessions 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, inhow they looked and so on.
And it
(07:52):
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 churchesin Franconia and Lancaster conference
and both conferencesopened up their churches
(08:13):
for him and appointed meetings for him.
And they said that they wouldprobably 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 thingthat, that made, made
(08:35):
that made him acceptableto these, these folks here.
So I think that the term plain as it's
used, perhaps originated with friends.
And as Amish Mennonite peoplebegan to use English
more often,they kind of took that term over.
In fact,
I had a conversation with an Old OrderMennonite friend of mine about this.
(08:56):
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, plainand 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
(09:18):
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 ofhow various ordinances are to be performed
(09:40):
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.
(10:01):
And so even in the 1840s,you know, I think
even before that,there's pretty strong evidence
that there wasa distinctive style of dress,
that was consideredto be plain. All right.
And again,as you mentioned, it really does mean
unamended, unadorned,stripped of unnecessary things.
(10:23):
Okay.
one of the things that's very interesting,my, my friend,
my late friendSteve Scott, came across a reference
in the Pennsylvania Gazette,an 18th century, newspaper,
and there was an advertisementfor a runaway indentured servant.
And it says that he was dressedin a Mennonite coat
(10:45):
in a Mennonite coat.
So even in the 18th century,there was something about the coats
that Mennonites wore that was distinctivefrom the coats that everybody else wore.
Or why would you sayhe was dressed in a Mennonite coat?
All right.
So, so dress has always beenone of the aspects of plainness.
Now, as friends, as, the thing of that,the, disciplined Friends discipline
(11:09):
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 itbasically be functional and unadorned.
All right. And show moderation.
(11:29):
Even the right use,even the use of right of innocent things.
Okay, so I think that'swhat 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.
(11:52):
It really doeskind 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 overviewof the plain landscape today?
(12:13):
And how do various groups
or communities definitions of plainnesssupport 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 thethe variety of,
quote unquote, plain Mennonites, which going from old order to,
(12:39):
I don't I'mnot sure how far to go down with that one.
I would say that there are,
there are on kind of the more progressiveand of conservative Mennonites.
There are groups that I would describeas being conservative,
but not necessarily plain, plain.
I think for a group to be plain,there still does kind of
(13:00):
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 definedfor the women than it is for the men.
and there's variation there.
If you look, for example, at the StaufferMennonite Church or the Pike
(13:23):
Mennonite there,their garb is very reminiscent.
And this probably changed very littlefrom what Mennonite garb
was in the 1840s when they split offof the Lancaster Conference.
Okay.
So if you go to Lancaster Countyand you encounter some, some, Stauffer
(13:43):
Mennonites,you are probably seen a pattern
that was prettypretty much intact in the 1840s.
Okay.
Now, there may have been some change,okay.
But groups like thattend to very conservative.
Groups like thattend to be very resistant to change.
And so and and there's also as you comparetheir dress to
(14:05):
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 historyor the spectrum of plain Mennonites.
It really does
(14:25):
reflect, first of all, their background,
sometimes their regional background.
And what was the practicein that particular region?
It reflects when in the 20th century,as the larger
Mennonite Church and ConservativeMennonite Conference is assimilated,
(14:46):
when persons who formed new groupscame out.
Okay, the the later that they came out,probably the less plain
they are going to bebecause they've been impacted
by the assimilationthat happened prior to that.
Okay.
And so, one of the thingsI think that explains, it's
not the only thing, but one of the thingsthat explained that explains the ...
(15:08):
of various plain groups has to do
with when they formedand what were the things that they were,
were the issues for them leaving one groupand forming a new group?
Okay. And typically speaking,
the more,
more recent that has happened,because they participated
(15:31):
in some assimilation,the less plain they are.
You may have alreadypartially 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,
(15:55):
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 fundamentalistor evangelical conservatives.
(16:16):
And these were a spectrum.
And one of them,not the only but one of the criteria
that he used in defining these variousand these these are types, okay.
These are types.
They're okay.They're not formal groups. Okay.
These are types in which formal groupsfit in to one of the types.
But one of the criteria,
or one of the markers that he usedis is how in the sense plane
(16:40):
they were, how, how conservativethey were in their dress.
Okay.
So, depending which group you're part of,
then the the discussionwill be at a different place.
All right.
You know, I, I know of onevery conservative, ultra conservative
(17:00):
group in my area and which the discussionis about wearing a plain black hat.
That is not a discussionthat 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 practicethat you don't really see,
(17:22):
in some other groupsas being, being an emphasis.
So I would say that many discussions boil
down to the particularsof plain dress, and
how much and
questions about, you know, can a practicebe altered?
Can it be abandoned.
(17:43):
And so on.
And the other thing that I would say isthat, you know, most conservative
Mennonites have a pattern of plain dressthat is pretty much,
20th century pattern, thoughit is reminiscent of an earlier pattern.
It's it's derived from an earlier pattern.
And so there has even among the mostconservative of the car driving groups,
(18:08):
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 somethingthat is very much reminiscent
of pre-Civil War, how pre-CivilWar Mennonites as a whole, particularly in
in eastern Pennsylvania and,and in Pennsylvania and so on, dressed.
(18:31):
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 madefrom what you were saying.
Is that still
(18:52):
significant priority in the conversations
surrounding plainness in plain Mennonite
churches?
Maybe.
Maybe,depends on what the conversation is.
I do sometimes think.
(19:12):
And conversations I've heard andeven conversations I participated in that.
The conversation, gets taken upor revolves around
particular applications of plainness,and so on, and not really
kind of the big issue,I mean, are sort of the overarching,
(19:32):
overarching,principle of what plainness is about.
for example,you know, there are groups that,
congregationsI'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 housesand so on,
(19:52):
you see something therethat in my mind is not plain.
Okay. It's not plain.
And, you know, that earlier Quaker
way of thinking about thingsand I think also in earlier, Mennonite
and Amish way of thinking about isthat plainness is more than dress.
Plainness impactsevery aspect of your life.
(20:13):
Okay. So your house is your dress and yourhouses, it should be kind of the same.
All right.
Your possessions should reflect that.
Okay.
And so we are really talking hereabout 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
(20:36):
that plain the discussion aroundplainness has only to do with dress.
And I think that's an importantdiscussion, don't get me wrong there.
But I think also that wewe have particularly among
some conservative Mennonite groups,we really have lost the
the idea that plainnessis supposed to impact everything.
It's supposed to impact the car
(20:57):
that we drive, supposed to impactthe 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
(21:18):
an earlier understanding would havean earlier understanding addressed that.
And there are still some groupsthat do address that.
Okay. They do address that.
They tend to be, on the more conservativeend of things.
Okay.
One of the things that we experiencein the 21st century
(21:38):
that has changed
as compared to earlier centuries,
when some of these
early conversations about plainnessin the Quaker Mennonite world started
is that we have mass productionof clothing
in a way that wasn't entirely congruentwith how it previously was.
(22:00):
So can custom handmade
clothing, which is oftena significant part of the way
conservative Mennonitesdefine plainness today.
Can that plausibly be regarded
as plain?
You mean people making their own clothes?
(22:21):
Yes. Okay.
Yeah, I think so.
So. Well, let me let me, just go backand 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 isthat they serve a very didactic purpose.
(22:43):
Okay, but there's this myth
that plainness came intothe Mennonite church in the 20th century
through Western revivalistslike, like, John S Kaufman and A.D.
Wanger and ... from Virginia.
But those kinds of people that this iswhen we began to see people,
you know,going to more of a defined plain style
(23:05):
and so on, women putting coverings onand 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 orderswere looking in through the windows
(23:26):
at the revival meetings and picking upthe fact that they should dress plain?
Okay.
Oh, no, they weren't.
They weren't there at those revivalmeetings listening to John S Kaufman or.
Or Daniel Kaufman or whoever,advocating plain dress.
Okay.
There's something, intrinsic there, thatisn't part of the tradition and so on.
(23:47):
Now, what you do have happeningactually in the 19th century,
and it is a result of industrializationand an industrialization,
first of all, in this countryhit the hit, the cloth making industry.
Okay.
And all of a sudden, clothwhich was produced in a very laborious
process of handlooms, weaving pieces of cloth.
(24:07):
I mean, you just did not have a lotof 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 clothcloth becomes much more readily available.
(24:31):
The other nice thing is, is thatthey can actually do some things with it.
They can print it,
they can put nice little flowers on itand 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.
(24:52):
Now there was always fashion.
Okay.
But fashion was almost always the purviewof 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 sewedwith a needle and thread.
(25:12):
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 thirdof the first, third of the 19th century,
(25:36):
that clothing becomesmuch more readily available and that
plain people
have to deal with this issue of clothing.
Okay, of clothing.
Now, most clothing still inthe 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.
(25:59):
But that's that's sort of the exception.
Again, that's for something for thefor the people who are really well-to-do.
And it's at this particular pointthat you begin to see,
I think, begin to see kind of a shiftin Mennonite communities,
particularly as clothingas, as clothing becomes
more clothingbecomes much more easily accessible.
(26:19):
And you have a particularlyamong Mennonites
not so much among the Amish,but among Mennonites.
You have this this distinction between
people
who, youngpeople who are not part of the church
and how they dressand how their parents dress.
And then you also have,I think, a development simply,
(26:40):
and particularly some quarters,particularly in the western states,
somewhat in Virginia, even, interestinglyenough, some in Franconia area,
a lesser degree in Lancaster,
very lesser degree in my areain Washington, Franklin counties.
And so you begin to have people who are
(27:00):
their dress is not traditionally plain
or it may have altercations to itThere’s this very interesting story.
In 1890s.
Katie.
Katie Martin,who later on, married J.D.
Bronk the songwriter and hymnalogistand so on.
She tells the story about when she was,
(27:22):
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 womento have these
kind of mutton chops, sort of shouldersand so on, their dresses and so on,
and she tells the story that the, thethey said to her, I think one of the
(27:45):
the bishop or deacon just kind of pinchedthe thing and said, we'd like to see
a little less of these.
And, and so, now, so when
so you it's interestingwhen you look at pictures of plain
dress people in the 19th century,early 20th century,
how much current fashions
(28:07):
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, inthe 1920s is when you see
cape dressesthat look like they're flapper
(28:28):
dresses, they have this long waistthat 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 havethey have a Cape Cape on.
But it's really,you know, trying to imitate
a then fashion and style and societyin general,
particularly as communication becomesmore advanced, as styles change and so on.
(28:53):
You know, they, they have impactsand so on.
And I thinkactually that is what is happening
with some of these revivalist who are
they are convinced that it's necessaryfor us to be a plain people
and that what's happeningin, in their advocating this
and then in some cases, peoplepicking up on it
(29:15):
is that it's, it'sbringing back into into prominence
and it's just simply an earlier practicethat was this is just the way it was.
Okay.
But changes had happened and now there'san 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 someare not in the long run, very successful.
(29:38):
At Anabaptist perspectives, our ambition
or our vision is to encourageallegiance 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
(30:01):
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 prideand pride is not a good thing.
Okay.
Now, pride can also be somethingthat, you know,
(30:21):
it can be manifestin different kinds of ways.
But one of the things that's interestingabout 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 Anabaptistand find some other term.
That's why when people ask me what I am,I tell them I'm a Mennonite right?
(30:42):
I prefer thatthan 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 reformedand they talk a Calvinist, they talk about
(31:05):
pride, they're talking about an innercondition condition primarily
if if you think about it in a pietistickind of way, it's an inner condition.
Now, I don't think anybody would denythat's an inner condition.
Okay.
But the to me, the genius
of of quote unquote.
I’m gonna use the term Anabaptist okay.
(31:27):
The genius of Anabaptism is thatit does not
separate the inward dispositionfrom the outward life.
And so if you see pridebeing expressed in a person's
the way they live, the way they dress,what their houses are like,
then one can, I think, prettywell assume that they are proud
(31:47):
there's something inside of them is proud.
Now one can be proud and hide things
to you knowone can be proud about being plain,
some of which is curious, isn't it?
But but one of the things I would noticeand I got this idea
actually, from Aaron Slabaugh,he talks about the fact that
(32:11):
when it came to humility
that Mennonites and Amish objectified it.
Okay.
They made it an objective reality, notjust simply a disposition of the heart.
Okay?
And it's a objective realitythat expresses itself in various ways.
Okay.
And so I think that
(32:33):
that that still has a that'sstill a valid way of looking at things.
Okay.
Pride is the original sin.
Okay.
It's as as John M Brennaman talks about itis it his tract
pride and humility.
I think the spiritual roots
(32:54):
of not patterned ourselves after world
as, as, Paul said, you know, be, be
ye not conformed to the world, but be yetransformed by the renewing of your mind.
Okay? The patterns of the world, okay?
Are in opposition to godliness.
And they express themselves
(33:15):
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 thatperhaps today we have lost somewhat
is that particularly when it comes to,I think about how some of our
(33:37):
how houses are builtand how they're decorated and so on.
It is the idea that we are actually
not identifyingwith the elite in the world.
We are not patterned ourselvesafter the elite, but we are.
We are finding a common, ordinary, simplethough I hate.
I hesitate to use the word simplebecause some people run with that
(34:00):
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 apologistfor plainness.
Most Christiansare not practitioners of plainness.
(34:22):
So I'm curious how you would make the casefor plainness to believers
who aren't presently plain.
No, that's a good question.
Yeah.
I guess I could say I'man apologist for me for plainness.
Well,
you know, the I guess the question
(34:43):
that I would, would address is,
you know, when you look at,
when let's just simply take dressfor example, okay.
When, when I see someand this is kind of indirect,
what you're dealing withwhen I see some young Mennonite guys
where, cut their hair,where they had these really,
(35:03):
I think what they call tightand 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 fromit comes from the fashion industry.
(35:26):
So it does.
And it's a look and itit 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 fashionsit changes okay.
And what's really in now or what's really,attractive and and appealing
(35:50):
to the senses now may change,but there's often some similarities to it.
Okay.
And so the question I often want to askpeople is
where is where did that come from?
And the people who invented itor came up with that particular way
of, let's say, cutting your hairor that particular way of dressing?
(36:13):
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 attentionto how to your body.
Okay.
But it was actually comes a desireto accentuate all that.
(36:35):
All right.
And that'swhat drives the whole fashion industry.
Okay.
So my so to me now
you know, as far as the particularsof how it works itself out,
okay, of how quote unquote plainnessworks itself out in a Mennonite
or Amish or German Baptist context.
(36:58):
You know, I think they work really well.
I have no quarrel with them. Okay.
They accomplished the thing that I thinkthey need to accomplish.
Okay.
But that does not say thatthose ways of doing it
are necessarily the only ways of doing it.
Therecould be, different ways of doing it
(37:21):
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 thisthat really works.
Well, I think works well.
(37:43):
And it also places me in continuitywith with the church
in the past, which I'm part of as wellas 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.
(38:03):
Yeah, happened to somebodyI know this plainly dressed woman
at an airport where some evangelicalcame 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.
(38:24):
But but the foundational thingis, you know, when we talk about,
you know, and one of the thingsI think we need to understand
is that the particular patternof plain dress that we have
has is not static, okay?
It's not static, but it is rooted in
(38:44):
what went before and in many cases,
the pattern that came up was a responseto 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 issuefor many people.
And this is interesting to me, particularly because it impacts men.
(39:08):
Men, there are
there are men in our plain churcheswho resist wearing a plain coat,
and yet they want their wivesto wear a cape, dress and dress plain.
There seems to be to mea fundamental inequity there.
Okay.
And they could come up with good, rationalreasons why they don't want to do this,
why they don't want to wear a plain coatokay. And say, well, it cost money.
Well, you know, I hear that.
(39:29):
And then I look at whattheir wardrobe is, right?
And I think, well,
I bet you spent more money onyour 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
(39:51):
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 andyou have this thing that comes down to V,
and there's these two littleor three buttons down at the bottom,
and you come in
and it's there that nobody would designa coat for any practical reason.
(40:12):
Why did they do that?
Well, in the 19th centuryand 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 upstill 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 itover the roll it.
(40:33):
Okay, well once they roll it,then it creates these lapels.
All right.
And then what you have to dowell you have to start wearing long ties.
Now there were bow ties before that.But bow ties were
actually, were neckerchiefsto close the collar of a shirt.
Here I'm getting into the particularsof of dress of rest. But
I thinkI mean, that's my personal opinion.
(40:56):
I think a plain coat makes the most senseof 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 thatfor fashion.
The only for for practicality.
They only decide it for fashion.
(41:16):
Okay,I've also kind of found it interesting
when I and I have known people like this
who resist the ideaof wearing a plain coat,
and they come up with all these rationaleswhy they shouldn't wear a plain coat.
It's not necessarily to wear a plain coat.
And if they leave a groupwhere that's what's expected,
and they go to another groupwhere it's not expecting, guess what?
They put on a lapel coat.
Now, I donot want to judge the motives of people.
(41:37):
But I began to wonder, was that reallywhat 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, contactwith plain people
(41:59):
or with Mennonites or brethrenor or or Amish or anything like that.
And there they may come up with a patternand maybe they'll wear lapel coat,
you know.
You know, I know, I know some groupsin which
they're really insistent that,
that their men wear
when they go to church, they wear a suitand a tie, a long black tie.
That's their pattern.
(42:19):
And that's in their minds.That's being nonconformist.
I think that'sa 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 gowith every pattern of the world,
that we're not going to just simply gowith every pattern of the world,
every new thing that comes down the track,
(42:40):
every new thing that is basically comesout of a fashion industry
that is wanting to sell things to you
and does soby appealing to your fleshly senses.
Okay.
And when I see when I see Mennonites
picking up aspects of that,
(43:02):
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 decidewhat is the message you want to send.
Before we end this episode,
(43:24):
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, intothe Mennonite church when I was 17 years old.
All right.
And I'm 64 years old,
approaching my 65th birthday herenext year.
(43:48):
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.
(44:10):
I've seen more erosion
of plainness than before.
Now for the conservative
Mennonite groups who came out of the
the groups that were assimilatedin the 1950s and 60s.
Okay, that generation who came outand I would even say for a while
after that have very good sense
(44:32):
of how things developedand how they looked at
what what were some of the markersthat some of the things that you
would be alert to itas the next generations come along?
They do not havethat 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.
(44:54):
And so us old fogies. Okay.
And I almost I think I'm like that.
Us old guys, we've heard thesethese arguments before
okay.
And we can say you can go that wayif 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.
(45:15):
And so, I think that
I think we, I think our churchesas far as maintaining nonconformity,
the practices of non-conformityare at a crisis.
And I believe that across the board,I talked to,
talked to an older Mennonitefriend of mine recently.
He said thatthey're one of the most recent conference,
(45:35):
the most recent conference meetingsthat they had.
The whole question of plainnessand nonconformity
was a big issue.
Now it's hitting them at variousdifferent places.
It is some other groups.
the creation and
maintenance of a plain culture
with, with markers that define that
(45:57):
do give some guidanceto how we should let live
it help usto avoid the wickedness of the world.
So that that would be.
And the other thingI would have to say is.
Somehow we're going to have to addressthe inequity
of what we insist upon for our women
(46:18):
when it comes to their dressand what we allow our men to do.
When when you walk down the streetwith your wife
or with your sisters?
With your mother.
Okay.
As a man,
is it as obvious to everybody looking on
(46:40):
that you are a Christian as it is
that they're your women are a Christian?
I think thatI 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
(47:05):
is that eventuallythe women's dress will change.
Also.
I believethat we will end the episode here.
Thank you for listening to this
episode of Anabaptist Perspectives.
This is the second episodethat we have recorded with Edsel Burdge.
His previous episode,which was about theological concerns
(47:28):
of Swiss Mennonites in Americafrom 1730 to 1930,
and every other episode and essaythat we have published
can be foundat anabaptistperspectives.org.
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