Years ago when teaching in the Frederick,Maryland community college in the evenings I had many of them as students and found them terrific people. They individually believe in pacifism but serve in the armed forces in medic and other non-arms firing roles. The young were quite regular in their participation in sports and other activities. They sensibly saw alcohol use as not different from illegal drug use. I was teaching sociology courses and they were very interested and attentive students. The older women wore, many of them, little hair caps and their clothing tended to be plain but not strikingly out of context of the clothes others wore. They were good farmers and mechanics and the other occupations of the area.
I haven’t had as close an association with very many of them since but there are a good many of them around Maryland. They have taken over a church in what used to be a very small town that was built by my grandfather as an Old School Baptist church years and years ago and keep it up well. I would be surprised if they were connected with the Orthodox but will defer to those who know more about them.
“I would be surprised if they were connected with the Orthodox but will defer to those who know more about them.”
See some of the other commentors on the history of this group. NO connection with any Orthodox Churches.
I don’t like pacifists in any form and flavor. They are free to practise their peculiar beliefs only because OTHER Americans were willing to die in their place.
As for considering alcohol use equivalent to drug abuse, that is pretty absurd. Moderate alcohol consumption is not deleterious, criminal, or un-American. Pacifism is.
Its a free country and they are of course free to believe whateveer they believe, but presenting themselves as part of the mainstream American religious current is, I think, stretching it.