Weavertown Amish Mennonite Church - Distinctives

Distinctives

Weavertown church members still dress somewhat plainly and distinctively. Women wear the prayer covering, married men grow beards, and members do not make use of broadcast television or radio in their homes or cars. Acceptance of electricity, telephone, central heating, field tractors, and automobiles, however, marks them as quite distinct from the Old Order Amish. In matters of belief, however, other than the difference about the practice of Streng Meidung or shunning, they are quite alike. Amish churches are generally not evangelistic, nor do they generally embrace doctrines like the assurance of salvation, and on these points they are also different from the Weavertown congregation.

Church services at Weavertown Amish Mennonite Church had been conducted exclusively in High German and Pennsylvania Dutch until 1966; since then services have been conducted in English. Congregational singing has always been unaccompanied by musical instruments. Youth generally attend high school and occasionally college. Youth from the Weavertown church have served terms of voluntary service in Germany, South America, Central America, northern Canada, and various areas of the United States, and generally tour for a week each summer as a choral group.