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Do Amish and Mennonite girls get to pick their husbands?

 I grew up in a plain hybrid Amish/Mennonite community in Michigan that was part of a larger church in Pennsylvania called Charity Christian Fellowship. People did not date in these plain religious communities. Instead, they did something called courtship or courting.   My first personal interaction with this process was when my favorite big brother decided to marry when I was seven years old. The first thing he did was go to our Father and ask what he thought about the young lady from the church he’d been praying about getting to know better.  Our father gave his blessing and went to go visit the young lady’s father to inquire if he was open to marrying his daughter to my brother. Her father gave his blessing and said he’d ask her if she was open to entering a courtship with my brother with the goal of marriage within 6 months.  She said YES when her father asked and their courtship officially began.  My brother and now dear sister-in-law were made fo...
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Do Amish, Mennonite, and Plain Children know about law enforcement or 911?

Most children growing up in plain communities like the Amish, Mennonite, or plain communities have no access to the outside world. It is so isolated it is almost difficult to put into words. Yet also complex to answer. For example, if you perchance heard police sirens, it was attributed to a bad task force part of “Sodom and Gomorrah”. the place of the heathens and sinners worshiping the devil. I was told these people were evil and wanted to hurt our community. Consequently, there was no teaching about 911 or that you could call emergency services during childhood. This was something I only discovered was common practice after my friends started having children and interacted with families in mainstream society. 


From infanthood, every individual in this community is patterned through corporal punishment to obey the authority within the community without question. So you might ask what happens if someone says steals or rapes another? The answer is nothing. If a complainant happens to be raised about sexual assault or dishonesty the matter is brought up in a “Brethern’s Meeting” where only married men of the church meet to decide the laws they are going to enforce for the community. Women have absolutely no say in these circles and are forbidden from as much as speaking in a church service or meeting. A woman speaking up in a manner of authority or convection anywhere or in the church was thought of as an attack on the God-ordained order of life and families and the work of Satan. 

Most cases were viewed through the lenses of disproportional forgiveness. They would be reprimanded and ordered to refrain from speaking in church for a few weeks. Yet, beyond that, there were few punishments for cruelty or abuse, or wrongful behaviors. At the very worst, a family might be condemned to move to a different religious community that shared the same values, however, that was seldom heard of and rarely happened. It was a boys club allowed and enabled by the women within these communities. Although, one also must take into context the women often grew up abused and brainwashed and saw no other options. Yet this extension of generosities most also  take into account that the men too were patterned and trained to become totalitarian antisocial personalities that by birthright deserved complete obedience. It still breaks my heart. 


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