Plain people are Christian groups characterized by separation from the world and simple living, including plain dress. These include Amish; Old Order, Conservative, Conservative Mennonites, and Old Colony Mennonites; Old German Baptist Brethren; the Hutterites; and Old Order River Brethren; and at one time Quakers, the Brethren in Christ (BIC), and Shakers, Dunkards. A small number of Quakers still practice plain dress. Plain Catholics, in communion with and faithful to the Roman Catholic Church, also live plain lives, including plain dress.
Customs of plain people include:
- Plain clothes, usually in solid, normally dark colors.
- Plain church buildings, or no church buildings whatsoever.
- A utilitarian view of technology, similar to the precautionary principle of technology in that unknowns should be avoided, but the emphasis was on the results in the eyes of God. If they were unsure of how God would look upon a technology, the leaders of the church would determine whether it was to be avoided or not. The degree to which this principle was supported varied among the congregations, but in general, the Amish people believed that the Mennonites had not done enough to separate themselves from the rest of the world.
Read more about Plain People: Origins, Religious Practices, Trends, Health
Famous quotes containing the words plain and/or people:
“Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains; and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminatingly murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)