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A man who lives in remote Kentucky among strict Amish and Mennonites has revealed what their isolated communities are really like - from living without electricity, internet, and cellphones to driving around in horse and buggies. For his whole life, Steven Haste has resided in a community in Casey County, Kentucky, that is made up prominently of Amish and Mennonite people - two religious groups who believe in living a traditionalist lifestyle. And while he doesn't consider himself Amish or Mennonite and doesn't follow their firm rules, he recently opened up about why he prefers to spend his time with...

So, I'm flying out of San Diego at 6:00 am this morning. I got to the airport much earlier. There's an Anabaptist couple. Man and woman, early-mid 20s. He's wearing traditional garb. Abe Lincoln beard. Flat-brimmed straw hat. She's wearing a long dress with a white hair covering. I assumed they were Amish. Except.... Both were wearing tennis shoes. And I couldn't help to notice that she was wearing a very colorful set of yoga pants under her dress. Also, she was listening to an iPhone. She had earplugs in her ear. I wish I had talked to them. I...

The Mennonite Church USA has voted to retire denomination-wide Membership Guidelines that prohibited pastors from performing same-sex weddings but will allow local church bodies to maintain the ban. The Membership Guidelines had prohibited pastors from performing same-sex weddings, defined marriage as being between one man and one woman, and labeled “homosexual, extramarital and premarital sexual activity” as sinful acts. At a special session of the Mennonite Church USA’s Delegate Assembly, held May 27-30 in Kansas City, Missouri, the official Membership Guidelines were retired by a vote of 404 in favor, 84 against, and three abstentions. Delegates at the special session...

The governing body of the largest Mennonite denomination in the United States passed a resolution on Sunday (May 29) confessing to “committing violence against LGBTQ people” and committing to LGBTQ inclusion. In a separate vote, Mennonite Church USA also repealed instructions to pastors not to officiate at marriages between people of the same sex. The denomination’s official confession, which views marriage as between a man and a woman, remains unchanged. Nearly 83% of the delegates meeting at a special assembly in Kansas City, Missouri, voted in favor of repealing the guidelines barring marriage for same-sex couples, while the resolution for...

Clotheslines with billowing linens and long dresses are a common sight on the off-grid farms of Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, home to the nation’s largest Amish settlement. For many tourists they’re as iconic a part of Amish Country’s bucolic scenery as the rural lanes and wooden bridges. But for two days in late April, a clothesline with a different purpose was strung in a small indoor exhibit here. Hanging from it were 13 outfits representing the trauma of sexual assault suffered by members of the Amish, Mennonite and similar groups, a reminder that the modest attire they require, particularly of women...

A self-proclaimed Christian missionary from Virginia has admitted to having sex with at least 21 boys, ages 5 to 17, while on missionary trips to Haiti.James Daniel Arbaugh, 40, of Stuarts Draft, Va., pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of illicit sexual conduct with a boy under the age of 18. According to court documents, Arbaugh admitted to befriending, grooming, and engaging in sexual conduct with minors while in Haiti on trips between 2008 and 2017.Arbaugh traveled throughout Haiti evangelizing and showing Christian-themed movies, according to a statement from United States Attorney Rick A. Mountcastle.Arbaugh will be sentenced on June...

“I feel like I’m having to choose between you and God.” That’s what Greta Lindecrantz, a 67-year-old Mennonite, told an Arapahoe County, Colo., district judge on Wednesday after she ordered her to testify for the prosecution in a death-penalty case — or remain in jail for contempt of court. Lindecrantz had been behind bars since Monday. As she spoke, wearing a jail jumpsuit and shackles on her arms, supportive Mennonites sang hymns outside the courtroom, according to the Daily Journal. “This is now me telling you directly … and I’m ordering you to answer the questions,”

LANCASTER, Pennsylvania, January 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The largest conference of Mennonite congregations in the U.S. has officially split from the Mennonite community Monday over concerns that the wider church is beginning to affirm LGBT lifestyles. The Lancaster Mennonite Conference (LMC) had voted to leave the Mennonite Church USA (MC USA) in 2015, and the decision became effective January 1, 2018. The LMC, comprised of 179 congregations in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, left over the definition of marriage and the sinfulness of homosexuality, according to a report from Religion News Service. A pastor for one of the LMC congregations...

On Sunday (Feb. 2), a regional body of Mountain States Mennonites licensed the first lesbian in a committed same-sex relationship, the first step toward ordination. Theda Good’s licensure was celebrated by some Mennonite Church USA clergy and greeted with dismay by others.

A family-run business filed papers with the Supreme Court today telling the high court that it must stop the “unjust” Obamcare mandate that requires companies to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs for their employees.This is the companion case to the legal challenge the Supreme Court accepted from Hobby Lobby.Alliance Defending Freedom and allied attorneys representing a Pennsylvania Mennonite family and its woodworking business filed their opening brief with the U.S. Supreme Court Friday in one of two major legal challenges to the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate that the high court agreed in November to hear.“Unjust laws are...

SUGARCREEK, Ohio—The corn stands 5 feet tall, the temperatures are in the 90s and Johnny Byler got hooked on his head while fishing with a friend, reported Mrs. Jerry Ray Byler in a recent front-page article of the Budget. Mrs. Byler is one of about 860 correspondents for the Budget, a 123-year-old weekly newspaper, which carries the news of Amish and Mennonite communities, from Diagonal, Iowa to the three Minnesota outposts of Bertha, Clarissa and Lenora. They write about who got married, who went to church, who received dentures—and how 11 chickens went missing when Toby Schrocks of Cisne, Ill.,...

Pastor Miller and his family January 25, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - "I have time for just a short note," wrote Mennonite pastor Kenneth Miller to his supporters as he awaited his inevitable arrest yesterday, "'...Whom having not seen ye love, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.' (1 Pet. 1:8-9)  He is risen. His Kingdom reigns forever. All is well." Hours later, Miller faced federal judge William Sessions III, and informed him that he would not testify before a...

Lisa Miller and daughter Isabellea August 15, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Kenneth L. Miller, a Mennonite pastor who helped a little girl and her mother to flee the United States to escape the girl’s court-imposed lesbian “mother,” has been convicted on the charge of “aiding and abetting a parental kidnapping.” A Vermont jury returned the verdict yesterday after only four hours of deliberation. He is free while awaiting sentencing, which could bring a punishment of up to three years in prison.  Miller’s attorney, Joshua M. Autry, says he is considering an appeal. Following the verdict, lesbian Janet Jenkins filed a civil...

A Lancaster County man and two of his sons died after apparently drowning in a manure pit Wednesday at a Maryland farm where they were working. The victims were identified as Glen W. Nolt, 48, and his sons, Kelvin R. Nolt, 18, and Cleason S. Nolt, 14, all of the 900 block of Goshen Mill Road in Peach Bottom. The three were reported missing Wednesday night at a large dairy farm in Kennedyville, Md., which is between Elkton and Chestertown, on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay. The Nolts came to the farm to work each day in the...

Matthew Zimmerman got a ticket in February 2010 for driving with steel cleats on his tractor. He drove over newly paved road. He was 13 years old at the time of the citation. His punishment was $500 or 30 days in jail. There was a possibility for both, plus pay for road damages. Matthew (pictured in Des Moines Register) is 15 now and has had the Iowa Supreme Court weigh in on his case.

This month's formal conversation between leaders of the Mennonite World Conference and the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists offered the opportunity for both groups to share their beliefs and dispel misunderstandings in a receptive forum, leaders of both groups said. "By sitting down and talking with those of other faiths, we gain a deeper understanding of who they are," said John Graz, Public Affairs and Religious Liberty director for the Adventist Church, whose department organized the June 28 to July 1 event at its world headquarters. In a joint statement, leaders from both faiths said each shares "a desire to...

A Canadian man who locked his 21-year-old son in a tiny wooden box for eight weeks has been forced to release him by police. Johan Knelsen was made to live in the homemade prison, no bigger than a portable toilet, in the basement of his home in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. His father, David Knelsen, told police that his son was mentally ill and needing punishing for stealing livestock Local media reported that the young man had also used a telephone. The family are Mennonites, a Christian denomination that follows a strict interpretation of the Bible and shuns the use of...

Fresh off their Supreme Court victory allowing them to picket funerals of military soldiers, members of the Westboro Baptist Church have announced plans to picket the funerals of seven Mennonite children killed Tuesday night when their Perry County farmhouse caught fire. The children, ages 7 months to 11 years, were killed when a fire started in the home while their mother was milking cows and their father was on his milk delivery route.Their three-year-old daughter managed to escape and alert the mother, but the fire had already overwhelmed the wooden structure, police said. The group from Topeka, Kan., said the...

(Sept. 30, 2010) — This fall, Missouri residents might vote out the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, replacing U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, a conservative Democrat who describes himself as “the soldiers’ Congressman” in campaign material, with a member of a church which until a few months ago was known as Harrisonville Mennonite Church. Mennonites have been pacifists for centuries and have generally opposed military service, though some have served in various non-combat positions within the military. However, Hartzler’s campaign spokesman emphasizes that she is not a pacifist and does not agree with some views historically held by Mennonites....

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Gay and lesbian Mennonites dressed in bright pink have gathered with others outside the church's biannual convention in Columbus to criticize its leaders for trying to push them out.