The Bondage of Christian Conservatism – Chapter 9

Chapter 9 of the book:

The Failure of the Great Amish and Conservative Mennonite Dress Experiment

Why Christian Conservatism Isn’t the Answer and What to Do

The bondage of Christian conservatism is real. Conservative churches have placed a significant amount of bondage on the people in their churches. Christ’s commands give freedom; church rules and regulations bring bondage. God tells us: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” (Galatians 5:1)

Jesus described the bondage of men that a church puts on its people as heavy burdens and grievous to be born. Jesus rebuked the scribes and Pharisees in His day for putting heavy burdens on their people. “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat… For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.” (Matthew 23:2-4) “Will not move them with one of their fingers” describes the heartlessness of the Pharisees in not seeing how great a burden they had placed on their people and not helping to ease the burdens that they had put there. This same mindset is particularly true of the burdens that Amish and Mennonite preachers have put on the women in their congregations. In contrast Jesus says “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:30)

Are you looking for something more than just the same old concepts, interpretations, explanations, and perspectives you have heard regurgitated over and over again? This website will give you some new insights and things to think about. You may not agree with everything you read, but Biblical Research Reports will stimulate your thinking. Our goal is to help you to formulate in your own mind what is Jesus’ truth as you look at the research we share on the various subjects facing the Church.

The conservative regulation dress of the Amish and Mennonite denominations is a prime example of bringing people into bondage. When a congregation’s leadership exalts themselves and assumes authority that God has not given to them, and make rules that God has not commanded, they bring people into bondage. Many people have suffered because of the bondage of conservatism that they have been brought under. They have suffered ridicule, strange looks from others, and a lack of freedom to choose what they will wear. They have suffered the fear of what others in the church will think of them. Many women have suffered in the cold from being required to wear open bottomed dresses with practically bare legs in freezing cold weather, while the men who have required them to dress that way, piously ignore what they have done to the women as they stand beside them in their warm, insulated long underwear and long pants. Every day Amish men button their shirts, but in some groups the women aren’t allowed to have any buttons on their dresses. They must pin them with straight pins. There is more than one thing that would quickly change if conservative men had to do what they require the women to do or to wear.

I believe too, from other research that I have done, that many have unknowingly suffered sickness, degenerative diseases and cancer from dressing head to toe in plastic polyester fabric. Because many of the clothes are handmade and take a significant amount of time to sew, polyester is often used because it is durable and lasts much longer than cotton or other natural fibers. Polyester clothing does not breathe as well and it builds up static electricity which can affect the electrical currents in the body and affect a person’s health.

God also warns us about the bondage of conservatism that we are not to be brought into bondage by man. “And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.” (Galatians 2:4-5)

In Christ, we have liberty as we keep His commands. Many of them leave a lot of flexibility and personal choice in how we carry them out. However, it seems that many church leaders feel the need to add commands of men or commands from the Old Testament (that Christians are no longer required to follow). Their concern is that some of Christ’s commands will not be kept without adding more specific rules. The opposite happens. When we keep the commands of a pastor, church, or denomination, or commands from the Old Testament Law, we are no longer following Christ alone. We have gone down a bunny trail and are following men, not Christ alone.

A picture of me (Myron Horst) with a wardrobe dysfunction – wearing shorts in the snow when it was 18 degrees outside. Most of us think it is ridiculous when a man wears shorts in the snow and it is very cold outside. But many Amish and conservative Mennonite men think it is normal for their women to go to church or shopping wearing only one legged shorts (dresses) when it is very cold outside with the wind blowing up under their dresses. The men don’t feel the cold that the women feel. The women don’t complain. They have been silenced by being taught that it would be displeasing to God if they wear pants. One of the things that God convicted me of was my hard-heartedness in requiring my wife and daughters to wear dresses in the cold while I dressed in long pants and long underwear. I had to repent, and I asked my wife and daughters to forgive me. There is more than one thing that would quickly change if conservative men had to do what they require the women to do or to wear.

God likens people to sheep. There are many similarities between people and sheep including having “the wool pulled over one’s eyes”. When we were shearing sheep one year, one of my sons had a sheep that he had just finishing shearing. She was relaxed from the shearing process, and he gently laid her head down on the shearing board and covered her face with wool. She lay there, almost perfectly still, with no one holding her. It is not natural for a sheep to lie still in that position with no one holding them. When the wool was removed from her eyes, she got up and looked around with a bewildered look on her face and walked out of the barn.

A Sheep with the Wool Pulled Over Its Eyes

The same is true of us as people. When we have “the wool pulled over our eyes” we willingly submit to the teachings and bondage that others place us under. Other people looking on wonder why such intelligent people would willingly believe that teaching or allow someone to put them under unnecessary bondage instead of rejecting the false teaching or the bondage. The people with the wool over their eyes have been rendered helpless and need to have someone help them by removing the wool from their eyes and showing them God’s truth. God says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Hosea 4:6) People need our help for deliverance from the bondage that religious leaders have placed them under.  

Another passage about bondage is Galatians 4:9-11: “But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.”

People feel a certain amount of security in the bondage of conservatism. The Children of Israel wanted to return to their bondage in Egypt because of the food that they had there. They did not know that the food that God had to give them in Canaan was far superior to the food in Egypt and would not give them the diseases of Egypt that they were afraid of. It is important that we do not go into bondage or allow a church to put us in bondage to manmade rules because it feels secure and seems safe. We will lose much if we do.

A number of years ago, God warned me in a dream to leave the Mennonite church. He told me that if we stayed, the cost to our family would be greater than what we were willing to pay. At the time that we left, I only saw a small part of that cost. The security of staying seemed safer to the human mind than leaving. Since then, I have seen a much greater cost if we had stayed, and am so glad we left.

Galatians 6:12-13 addresses the bondage of pleasing men. “As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.”

God tells us that “Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart” (I Samuel 16:7). The fear of man and what others will think causes many pastors to put “conservative” requirements on their people. They do not want to suffer rejection from other conservative Mennonites who will shun them and refuse to associate with them if their people are perceived to be too worldly in their appearance. This is a problem that God addresses in the verses above. Some Jewish Christians were concerned about outward appearances because they did not want to be persecuted by other Jews. In the same way, many conservative Mennonite and Amish pastors glory in how their people look – that they are conforming to the expectations of others who are also conservative.

The Bondage and Failures of Conservatism and their Conservative Modesty Doctrine.

The modesty doctrine, of conservatism in general, and also of the Great Amish and Conservative Mennonite Dress Experiment has been an awful failure in protecting girls from sexual abuse.

“Modesty” is not a concrete, clearly defined concept, but is open to a wide range of opinions about what is modest and what is not. Total nudity in public is a God-given shame that a person, Christian or non-Christian, usually tries to avoid. One of the places God tells us about the shame of nudity is in Revelation 3:18: “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.” But beyond nudity, a person’s conscience of how much of the body must be covered in order to be modest tends to defined by those who one is influenced by. There is a very wide range of opinions among professing Christians about what is modest and appropriate and what is not.

Jesus has not defined what is modest or what is immodest. Conservative churches have attempted to regulate modesty, feeling that the Bible alone is inadequate on the subject and that husbands and fathers cannot be trusted to regulate it in their own home. Modesty is a concept that is drilled into conservative women. They are made to feel guilty and responsible if a man were to look at them in any way sexually. Jesus on the other hand, puts the responsibility on a man for his lust.

An Amish woman, wearing her required “modest” dress, on a scooter in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Many conservative women have been required to wear dresses, based upon the church’s interpretation of one command that was handpicked out of the Old Covenant Law (even though we as Christians are no longer under the Old Covenant Law). “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.” (Deuteronomy 22:5)

Conservative church leaders use this Old Testament command as the basis for their own commands that define the distinction between men and woman’s clothing. They state that men’s clothing is pants and women’s clothing is dresses even though there is a distinction between many women’s pants and men’s pants. Mennonite men would not be caught wearing a woman’s style of jeans or pants because it is readily recognized as woman’s pants. In spite of that, the conservative church leaders still state that women may not wear pants and must wear dresses.

The issue is not really about wearing men’s clothing because many conservative churches will allow the girls and women to wear sweat shirts, t-shirts, sneakers, coats, jackets, and the like, that are the same or not much different from what men and boys wear. They don’t have a problem with those things being “men’s clothing”. Their main focus in addressing “men’s clothing” is on women wearing pants. However, the real issue is not really about whether pants are a women’s style of clothing in today’s culture, but it is about holding on to tradition and the way society used to dress and not changing. Holding on to the past is part of the bondage of conservatism.

The belief that only men may wear pants is not based on anything in the Bible. In Bible times, men did not wear pants, both men and women wore dresses, but we do not see any Amish or conservative Mennonite church leaders stating that men should follow the example of Jesus and wear dresses (robes) like He did. Instead, the practice of men wearing pants and women wearing dresses is based on what is now the old fashioned dress styles of the world in the 1800’s and early 1900’s.

Conservative church leaders put stricter controls on the women in how they dress than they do on the men. In most groups, the men do not dress as different from the rest of society as what the women are required to do. Many outside of conservative circles have commented about this injustice toward conservative Mennonite women. The women are required to look odd and old fashioned while the men are allowed to dress and have hair styles much like the rest of society.

One lady commenting on the internet shared this perspective: “I guess I’m going to be brave enough to ask about something that’s niggled at the back of my mind for a while. Is it totally my imagination, or does our tradition affect women more than men? For instance, the covered head for women is taught and practiced much more rigorously than the uncovered head for men. A family picture in which the men are wearing hats is ‘cute,’ but if the women had their heads uncovered, it would be scandalous! Also, the men can buy their clothes at Walmart or Goodwill (and I am glad they can–I wouldn’t wish it any different!) while we ladies have to sew our clothes by a prescribed pattern. Even the spiritual roles of men and women puzzle me a bit. I am NOT advocating that women should be the leaders in the church! But are they really only good for serving on the food committee and sewing comforters for the poor? Not that those things are bad, at all, but I do wonder if the spiritual gifts of women are neglected at times, and women are pushed into traditional roles that don’t fit them all that well.”

http://dwightgingrich.com/tradition-in-nt-1-bad-examples/#comments

In this conservative Mennonite family, the women are required by their church to dress odd and old fashioned in their “modest” cape dresses and white veil style head coverings while the dad, on the right, is dressed like the rest of society. That is not fair to the women and it is part of the bondage of conservatism. The women are the ones who are given the main responsibility to be distinctive from the world – the Mennonite doctrine of non-conformity to the world. The women bear the brunt of most of the dress requirements of the Great Dress Experiment and many of its failures.

As followers of Christ, Christians are now under the New Covenant – God’s commands in the New Testament. The only dress distinction that Christ requires between the sexes is in I Corinthians 11 where He instructs women to cover their head when they pray or prophesy (not all the time), and men to have an uncovered head when they pray or prophesy.

The Amish and Mennonites are not the only denominations that hand pick certain commands out of the Old Testament and certain commands out of the New Testament. What defines a church denomination is the unique set of commands from the Old Testament and New Testament and the set of commands and theologies of men that they have chosen to follow while ignoring the rest of the commands in the New Testament. Unfortunately, I know of no denomination that teaches all of God’s commands in the New Testament. To see a list of God’s commands in the New Testament see:

www.biblicalresearchreports.com/listofcommands.php

Are Dresses Really More Modest?

What is ironic about Amish and conservative Mennonite “modest” women’s dresses is that in addition to not preventing men from lusting after girls and women, the dresses with their open bottom hem are an open door that allows easy access for perverts and sexual molesters to quickly do their wicked deeds without fully undressing their victim. Is a dress safe? Is a cape dress really modest with its double layer at the top and an open door at the bottom? Can a dress really be labeled as modest for a young girl to wear? Little girls have great difficulty keeping their dresses down and end up showing their underwear at times. It is young girls and teens that are the ones most likely to be sexually abused.

A friend of ours, who did not grow up in a Mennonite home, told us that she was taught growing up that dresses were immodest. When I first heard it, I was surprised because it was the opposite of what I had been taught growing up. But she is right. In general, dresses are more “immodest” than pants. On the internet there are a number of testimonies of women who have been sexually abused who feel very uncomfortable wearing dresses.

A predictable response by conservatives when they discover that a part of one of their standards has failed is to make the standard more conservative or stricter and thus creating more bondage.  Over the years some conservative groups have been moving more and more conservative (”modest”) in their dress regulations to prevent their people from becoming ensnared by the immorality of the world. This is a mistake, because it does not address the real problem – that manmade modesty rules by a church are wrong in of themselves and Jesus said that they will not work.

The modest dresses of these young Amish girls with their high neck lines and low hem lines are not a protection from sexual predation. The reality is that the likelihood of them being sexually violated is the same or possibly greater than if they were wearing tank tops and short shorts which conservatives would say are very immodest.

To illustrate the subjective nature of the term modest and how conservatives tend to react, I will make a hypothetical set of extreme conservative dress regulations to address the sexual abuse problems that we have discovered in this book on the failure of the dress experiment. A conservative mindset says that the women were not dressed modest enough, so we need to make the women even more modest. We decide that for a girl or woman to be completely “modest” and to make it as difficult as possible for a man to sexually abuse her, she needs to wear panty hose, two pairs of pants, two cape dresses, and then to totally veil her hair and her whole body with a sheet that hangs to the ground with two holes to look out. She also needs to wear dark sunglasses so that she cannot captivate any man with her eyes looking out of the holes (“…neither let her take thee with her eyelids.” Proverbs 6:25). Obviously this extreme “modesty” is not commanded in scripture. God said it will not work, it is the wrong thing to do, and yet people think that somehow higher modesty standards will work for them.

Extreme Modesty Case Study: Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS)

An Illustration that Extreme Modesty does NOT prevent Sexual Abuse

We will look at another conservative religious group to show that the pattern of failure of conservatism and the bondage it puts women under is not limited to Amish and Mennonites.

The FLDS is a very conservative Mormon group that practices extreme modesty.

“Experts told ABC News that women in the cult, which is also known as FLDS, wear as many as three layers of clothing underneath their dresses, including an undergarment they consider holy, three pairs of stockings and sometimes pants.”…

“Of all the different garments sewn and worn by the women of the Yearning for Zion Ranch, former cult members told ABC News the underwear is the most important. Covering the skin from neck to ankles and wrists, it is worn year-round underneath regular undergarments and said to be symbolic of the clothes that God provided for Adam and Eve to use in the Garden of Eden.

“Seen as a kind of spiritual defense, some women don’t remove the underwear even in the most intimate of situations. ‘My grandmother and aunts and some of the people I knew wouldn’t even take them off to bathe,’ said former polygamist Spencer. ‘They would leave them on one leg and bathe the rest of their body and put them back on.’ She added that some women keep the garments on even while giving birth or having intercourse with their husbands. ‘They were told that [the undergarments] were supposed to be a protection and nothing would happen to them if they wore them,’ Spencer said.”

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=4673093&page=1

The FLDS like some conservative Mennonite churches today has grown more and more conservative and “modest” in their dress regulations since the 1950’s. The bondage of their conservatism has increased over the years.

Carolyn Jessup, who left the group says:

“This clothing started being restricted after the 1953 raid (on a polygamist compound in Colorado City, Ariz.). And at first, it was just that women couldn’t wear pants any longer and they had to wear a dress or a skirt that was a certain length, and long sleeves and no low necks. Their hair had to be combed on top of the head. It couldn’t be left hanging. Then, every five or six years, there would be another restriction added. And eventually, the restrictions just were so limited that there’s only about one pattern that you can make a dress out of and there’s only a few colors, pastel colors, that you can use. No prints, no plaids, nothing with flowers.”…

“You have so many limitations on what you’re allowed to do, and then, if you want to do something different than the standard hairstyle, then you may get away with it, and you may not. But one thing is it’s going to have to meet standards. And the standards are, your hair has to be up. It can’t be loose and it can’t be hanging.” 

“Why?

“That’s been forever. That was something they started way before I was born. The concept is that, if you’re trying to entice a man — it’s sexual to leave your hair hanging…”

“Well, I just remember as a little girl, we were taught that to wear something like shorts, that was immodest, or to wear something with short sleeves was immodest, or a low neck where you could actually see a cleavage — that was just considered just as immoral as you could be. I remember, as a little girl, being in the car with my mother and other children and a lady walked by and she was not wearing very much. And everybody was like, ‘Oh, she’s wicked, look what she’s doing!’ It was more something where, if people dress different than what we were accustomed to, it was a kind of like a shock to our system. We were taught that we were supposed to cover our bodies and God wanted our bodies covered. So, we were taught to look down on people who put on shorts and short sleeves.” www.cbsnews.com/news/why-do-they-dress-that-way/

This extreme modesty did not work in preventing horrific sexual abuse of children in the FDLS, just like it has not worked for the Amish or conservative Mennonites. In 2006, Warren Jeffs, the leader of the FDLS group, was put on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list for sexually abusing children and arranging for illegal marriages to minors.

CNN stated that: “Warren Jeffs fathered some 60 children with some of his estimated 78 wives. The elder Jeffs is serving a life sentence, plus 20 years, after he was convicted in 2011 of the aggravated sexual assaults of a 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl who Jeffs claimed were his ‘spiritual wives.’”

www.cnn.com/2015/09/29/us/warren-jeffs-children-allegations/

An article in The Daily Beast reported: “An audio recording of the violation of the 12-year-old, used as evidence during Jeffs’ 2011 trial, helped a jury swiftly convict him. It plays over a simple black screen in Prophet’s Prey, leaving viewers to fill in the horror of the scene in one of several skin-crawlingly effective moments that makes the latest from Oscar-nominated Amy Berg (Deliver Us From Evil, West Of Memphis) one of the more disturbing films in recent memory.

“But the victims named in that case represent just two of many heinous sex crimes Jeffs allegedly committed against children during his pre-incarceration reign as the self-appointed prophet of the FLDS flock…

“A key witness in Jeffs’ trial was his own nephew, Brent Jeffs, who first appears in Prophet’s Prey explaining the blind obedience that is hammered into every FLDS member from birth so that no one is willing to question the authority of church leaders.

“Later, Brent reveals that he was sexually abused by Warren Jeffs from the age of five in the basement of a former FLDS school. There, he says Warren kept an office overlooking the playground, using its god’s eye view of youngsters at play to pick victims he’d molest under the guise of monitoring dress code.”

www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/27/inside-warren-jeffs-polygamist-cult.html 

The FLDS is an illustration that a focus on extreme modesty does not work to prevent the sexual abuse of children. Making dress standards more and more modest and more and more conservative does not work to prevent immorality. Instead, the control of regulated modest dress gives men power over women and children to abuse them emotionally and sexually. Even having 78 wives did not help Warren Jeffs to control himself so that he would not sexually abuse children. Instead, strict church rules regulating modesty and requiring specific conservative dress styles are a powerful tool that gives sexual predators power over their victims.

With the strong emphasis and great importance that conservative Christian groups put on modesty, you would expect that the Bible would have a lot to say about modesty and would say that it is a sin for a woman or girl to be immodest. But that is not the case. A mountain has been made out of a mole hill. The word modest is only used one time in the KJV Bible and the word immodest does not occur at all. In 1 Timothy 2:9 it says: “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array…” The Greek word translated “modest” means “orderly and decorous” – Strong’s Dictionary.

The only other place that Greek word is used is in 1 Timothy 3:2 where God gives us the qualifications of a bishop, and the word is translated “good behavior”. It does not have the definition of modest that many conservative Christian groups have been giving to it. The focus is not on modest or immodest clothing, but rather stating that she should wear decent, appropriate and attractive clothing.

A bondage of conservatism and the modesty experiment is the false guilt trip it puts on women who are already dressed modestly by the standards of those outside of their conservative circle. Conservative Christian women have wrongly been saddled with the guilt of committing a “sin” of being immodest that does not have a definition in the Bible of what the “sin” is and what the “sin” is not. The terms modest and immodest are totally subjective terms with a wide range of potential interpretation and applications.

God has called us to stand up for the poor, the weak and the children. We are not to be the oppressor, the abuser, the one who puts others in bondage. Will you be that man or woman who stands up for the sexually abused and let the oppressed go free? Or are you one who is taking advantage of them for your own sexual gratification or to protect your image and reputation or the image and reputation of your church? “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?” (Isaiah 58:6-7) Will you undo the bondage of conservatism?

The guilt that conservatives have placed on women in the area of modesty, and the hypocrisy by which women are judged is paralleled by the conservatives in Jesus’ day. The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman that they claimed they had caught in the very act of adultery. What is conspicuously missing is the man who should also have been caught in the very act of adultery if it really was adultery. The woman was being tried for committing a sin, but not the man. Many sexually abused women in Amish and Mennonite groups can identify with this woman. They feel like they too are the ones that were tried by their Amish or Mennonite church leaders, and the men who sexually abused them are not.

“And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” (John 8:3-11)

The Pharisees treated the woman as if she had committed adultery all by herself. It is similar to the way conservative women are often treated in the modesty issue, as if a woman could commit adultery all by herself by dressing “immodestly”. Women are judged for dressing “immodestly” without proof that a man has looked on them and committed adultery with them in his heart. At the same time, hypocritically, as much as three fourths of the guys have secretly habitually viewed pornography and committed adultery with a mental prostitute and little is said about that.

Knowing how the Pharisees made up rules and went to extremes in expanding God’s commands, I have to wonder if the adultery that the Pharisees were accusing the woman of committing was a manmade “sin” that they called adultery and was not sin at all. Similar to the manmade sin of “immodesty” that has been hung over women’s heads. Two clues that it probably was not the true sin of adultery is that there was no man present, and Jesus did not condemn or rebuke her for what she had done. Whatever the case, there is a strong parallel between the way the Pharisees judged this woman and the way many conservatives judge women in the areas of modesty and sexual abuse.

It is an error for a church to regulate “modest” clothing when God does not define what is modest or immodest. Instead of putting the responsibility for a man’s lust on the woman, Jesus, who is the true Judge and Law giver, puts the responsibility firmly on the shoulders of the man and his thoughts –“But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Matthew 5:28

It is the man who commits adultery in the case of looking on a woman and lusting. It is the man that commits the sin. The man is fully responsible for his thoughts and lusts. He does not have to commit adultery with a woman in his mind when he sees an “immodest” or “modest” girl or woman. It is his choice and decision. It is his sin of adultery and a sin that will bar him from heaven, even if he is a professing Christian, unless he repents.

God further puts the responsibility on men to abstain from sexual immorality in 1 Thessalonians 4:2-7: “For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God: That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.” The word defraud does not have the meaning of not defrauding by dressing modestly, as many conservatives have implied, but rather it means “to take advantage of” another. Defrauding is what happens in sexual abuse when a sexual predator abuses their victim.

Men who blame the women for the sins that they themselves commit are behaving just like Adam, when he tried to put the blame on Eve in the Garden of Eden. If it was not possible for Christian men to control their minds from lusting after a woman whose body was not “properly concealed”, there would be no hope for Christian men. We would all commit adultery in our minds every time we saw an immodestly dressed girl or woman; or an immodest magazine cover at the grocery store checkout line. 

Each man is responsible for his own lust and is not to take advantage of or abuse another sexually. God tells us again that He will avenge, He will even the score, for anyone that is sexually abused and punish the perpetrator. At the same time, women do not have a license to dress or act in a way to try to sexually seduce men. God commands Christian women to adorn themselves “With shamefacedness and sobriety” 1 Timothy 2:9.

The Bondage of Women Submitting to Church Leaders

The conservative church puts women in bondage when they usurp the authority of the husbands and fathers and regulate how the women have to dress. God commands wives to submit to their own husbands, not some other woman’s husband who is a church leader. This is what God commands: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” (Ephesians 5:22-24)

The church is not part of the authority structure in this passage. A pastor has no God-given authority to tell another man’s wife how to dress, what styles of clothes she can wear, how she can fix her hair, and what color, size, and style of headcovering she must wear, or the color and length of her socks.

The instruction for wives to follow the leadership of their own husband is stated again in the instruction of what older women are to teach the younger women. “That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” (Titus 2:4-5) Wives are to be obedient to their own husbands. It does not say, “Wives, be obedient to your pastor.”

1 Corinthians 11:3-7 “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. 5 But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven. 6 For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. 7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.”

There are some important concepts that God teaches us in this passage that are often overlooked by Amish and conservative Mennonite groups. They get the instruction that a woman should cover her head when praying or prophesying right, but they make big mistakes on these other important points:

• God does not list the church here in 1 Corinthians 11 as part of the authority structure. The church and the pastor are totally left out. The Greek word for man is singular and means an individual male. If the word was plural, meaning men, then it could possibly be argued that the church was part of the authority structure over a man’s wife.
• The head of every Christian man is Christ, not the leaders and manmade rules of the local church. Each man needs to go to Christ and get his direction from Him. Each man needs to know how to hear God speak to Him and how to communicate with Christ.
• The husband is the God-given leader for his wife and children. Many men have allowed the church to be the “head” of their wife and family in areas that are not the church’s responsibility. The pastors of the local church are not to act as the head of another man’s wife, as it is in most conservative Mennonite and Amish churches in the area of dress.

In this passage, God is giving women freedom from the bondage of conservatism by the church and church leaders. God has not placed Christian women under two heads like women in the Amish and conservative Mennonite churches are, and like women in many other denominations as well. God’s command for women to be obedient to their own husbands is a protection to keep the church from having too much power and control over the family. It also is a motivator for men to take an interest in spiritual things and the spiritual leadership of their homes instead of just being church pew warmers like so many men are.

An Amish couple in Kansas, driving to town in their “car”. In this Amish community, they are allowed to have tractors and can drive the tractors to town for shopping. Their church strictly controls how this woman dresses and her appearance. The preachers have instituted controls on her body. She must conform to the way the rest of the women in her church look. She is in bondage to conservatism.

Men, it is important that we understand the bondage that many Amish and Mennonite women are under and the bondage that women in other conservative religious groups are under and its effects on them emotionally and spiritually. We must not continue to repeat it. Linda Boynton Arthur spent 8 years interviewing and researching the women in a Holdeman Mennonite community in California. She wrote a research paper that I recommend you read in its entirety titled: “Clothing is a Window to the Soul: The Social Control of Women in a Holdeman Mennonite Community”. While it addresses Holdeman Mennonites, in many ways it applies to Amish, Mennonite and other conservative groups as well. The following are some excerpts about the bondage of women by conservative church groups:

“The use of symbolic boundary markers has long been a cultural practice of conservative Mennonite groups. Visual symbols, such as “plain dress” provide a window through which one can examine issues of social control…”

The Holdeman Mennonite community under examination exerts control over women’s physical bodies through conformity to a strict religious value system. Since strict conformity is equated by the Holdemans with religiousness, compliance with strict codes of behavior, specifically dress codes, is considered symbolic of religious commitment…”

“While a woman’s level of religious devotion cannot be objectively perceived, symbols such as clothing are used by Holdeman Mennonites as evidence that a woman is on the “right and true path.” Consequently, appearance is constantly scrutinized and interpreted as a measure of a woman’s relative level of religiousness. If the symbol of clothing is interpreted negatively, in that she deviates from established dress and grooming codes, the woman in question is defined as deviant and subjected to both formal and informal constraints. Holdeman Mennonite women and their clothing practices are controlled by other women, by their husbands, and by their ministers. Becky, a 23 year old Mennonite woman, stated it succinctly: “When I put on Mennonite clothing, I put on all of the Church’s rules….”

“The Holdeman Mennonites refer to appearance metaphorically as “a mirror to the soul,” because they perceive appearance as the external manifestation of inner attitudes. Consequently, the Holdemans look for signs and symbols of a church member’s spirituality. Visual cues, particularly related to appearance and consumer goods, are analyzed for signs of non-conformity. The appearance of a home, including its design, landscaping and interior decoration, is evaluated. Paint on cars and designs on trucks are checked, but more than anything else, women’s clothing is scrutinized. At issue is conformity to social norms that are rationalized by religious dogma…”

“Within the Mennonite community, the ideal member is well enculturated and needs little external social control in order to remain within societal norms. This behavior pattern is evidenced by orthodox women, who are sober in demeanor and appearance as they enact the ideal gender performance. On the surface, it appears that clothing is rigidly controlled in this sub-culture. However, what is controlled is the body itself, from its physical appearance to its emotional and sexual expression…”

“Cultures create order by exaggerating gender differences, and punishing transgressions. In doing so, the culture inscribes the social body on people’s physical bodies. As Judith Butler has argued, however, the boundaries of the body provide evidence, not just of social order, but of social hegemony [“the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group.” Webster’s Online Dictionary]. In Holdeman society, control of the body led to the investiture of great symbolic value in the head covering, which allows us to see hegemony at work. Attempts to change the head covering, as I have noted earlier, were met with great resistance by the ministers who seem to have seen in this change a threat to the patriarchy. The symbolic power of the head covering was especially apparent to expelled women who immediately removed it when they left the church. They reported an incredible sense of freedom with the removal of the covering and often immediately cut off their hair. The symbolic power of the head covering lasted for a long time in the minds of ex-Holdemans. Judith, a minister’s daughter, left the church twenty years earlier. She relayed an interesting example of the cap’s longevity as a symbol of Holdeman hegemony:

‘I have had dreams that I had to put the head covering back on – it’s like a horror dream. And I have woken up in horror … it’s when I have to go back and see my parents that the dreams come, and I just wake up with this horrible feeling. I feel such pressure to do as they want. Before I go back to that community, have to be in that mold. I find myself making dresses to please them. I think it’s from all of the years of living around them and knowing that is what they expect.’

“On the surface, it appears as though women and their clothing are rigidly controlled in this sub-culture. Fundamentally, however, what is being controlled is the body itself.”

http://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/499/499

This gives a window into why so many Amish and conservative Mennonite women stop wearing the head covering  when they leave their church group. They have been taught to fear the church more than to fear God and follow Christ’s commands. To them, their church’s regulated head covering style symbolizes bondage and control by the church over their bodies. The Amish and many conservative Mennonite churches have made a symbol out of their required head covering style. God has made the woman’s covered head the symbol, not the covering itself. It is a subtle deception.

I address this more in the article “Myths About the Headcovering”, “Myth #9 A specific veiling or covering style established by the church is the only thing that truly covers the head.”

www.biblicalresearchreports.com/headcoveringmyths.php

Men, the bondage of conservatism that is placed on girls and women needs to stop. It is not part of following Christ. It is not what it means to live the Christian life. It is part of a false gospel and is a false teaching and practice.

The Bondage of a Spirit of Fear – The Conservative Culture of Fear

One of the things that God has been revealing to me is the powerful bondage of fear that many conservatives, especially women, are living under. A spirit of fear seems to be a consequence and bondage of conservatism. Some do not really realize that they have fears or how much their fears are affecting them and their relationships. Their reaction, aggressiveness and assertiveness may be a cover-up of the fear that is motivating their actions. They may exhibit a false bravado. Or they may respond with what appears to be irrational thoughts and actions. These fears affect their family and other personal relationships and have brought division in families.

Fears appear to be one of the consequences of a conservative mindset and practice because these fears are not just a problem among Amish and Mennonites, but are also prevalent among other conservative Christian groups and homeschool groups as well. These fears are not limited to those who hold to a particular view of salvation. It is prevalent among those who hold to the eternal security doctrine, as well as those who have more of an Arminian view of salvation.

Fear is not a fruit of the Spirit. God tells us: “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” (Romans 8:15)

Many of the dress regulations and other church rules are based on fear:

• The fear of what others will think and say.
• The fear of being shunned.
• The fear of being rejected by family and friends.
• The fear that someone will get angry or upset.
• The fear of a visit from the preachers.
• The fear that they might be sinning or that they might commit a sin without intending to.
• The fear of being responsible for inadvertently causing a man to sin by lusting after them because of how they are dressed, or by what they say or do.
• The fear of speaking out against sin because saying something negative about someone might be the sin of gossip.
• The fear of hearing something negative about someone else, especially a church or Christian organization leader, because it might be listening to gossip.
• The fear of change – where things will go if a small change is made in dress or other rules of the church.

When there is a pattern of a spirit of fear it is an indication that a false gospel is being preached or at least that a false gospel is being understood. We are told in Scripture: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7) As Christians, we should not be motivated by fear but of a love for Christ and a desire to serve Him with all our heart. A church that uses fear to motivate people to follow Christ and to follow their rules and guidelines is not following Christ as they should be. They do not really understand what it means to love Jesus.

“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18)

“That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life.” (Luke 1:74-75) God’s desire is for us to live the Christian life without fear all the days of our life.

One of the most powerful messages that I ever heard was titled “The Fear of Man”, by Del Fehsenfeld, preaching from Proverbs 29:25 “The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe.” It was a message that God gave to Fehsenfeld to give to a group of conservative fundamentalist preachers shortly before his death from cancer. He addressed the fear of man that these conservative pastors were living under. Yes, conservatism affects men and church leaders too in the area of the fear of men. The main point of the message was that when we become concerned about what others will think and we act accordingly, we are exhibiting the fear of man and it is bondage. Instead, we must have the fear of God and be concerned about what God thinks and act accordingly, regardless of what others think about what we are doing.

Simon Fry, writing about fear in Anabaptist groups, said: “The Radical Reformation began with men who boldly stood up for what they knew was Biblical truth. They were willing to speak fearlessly and even to die for what they believed. Somewhere through the generations since then, however, we have changed to become a people imprisoned by fear. We became the “quiet in the land” so that we would no longer need to fear losing our lives or our families. We began standing for values that were also motivated by fear. We fear losing our culture. We fear our children will lose their heritage of plainness. We fear outsiders may have a greater influence on us than we do on them. We fear teaching on the Holy Spirit; we fear hearing the voice of God because of what it could lead to.

“Many of our rules are developed out of fear of what things may lead to. We fear that God’s standards as outlined in Scripture are not enough to keep our people, so we add fences around them to make sure we don’t break any commandments. We fear being questioned about some of those rules that we don’t really have a Biblical answer for, so too often our response is anger at those who question the rules.

“Fear is rooted in not trusting God. Fear manifests itself in attempting to control whatever situation we feel insecure or powerless in. But the One who is actually in control wants us to stop trying to do what He never meant for us to do. Only He can take away our fear of “what might happen” if we don’t do everything in our power to keep our people where they need to be.

“It is time for us to take a radical, fearless stand once again for Truth. We have access to Truth, and that Truth is enough. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Radical Shepherding

The use of fear to motivate people to follow the church or the teachings of a church leader is a serious error. When a person is trying to please the church or a church leader they are not truly following Christ. “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10) That is serious! And yet, how many Amish and conservative Mennonite churches teach the opposite, that in order to be a servant of Christ, a church member must please the church in the way that they dress, or the color of the car they drive, etc.?

The Bondage of False Guilt and a “Super-Sensitive” Conscience

Another bondage and failure of conservatism is the significant number of women who frequently feel guilt for committing “sins” that are not sins. They have been wrongly labeled as having a “super-sensitive conscience.” It is actually a misguided conscience. When the church adds commands of men, church traditions, and Old Testament laws along with picking and choosing from some of the commands of Christ in the New Testament, they confuse people about what is sin and what is not. People are not sure if they have sinned because they don’t have an absolute standard – Christ alone – to follow, because the church and church leaders have added church rules and applications to Christ’s commands. They feel guilty and think that they have done something wrong, but they have not disobeyed a command that God has given. Their misguided conscience leaves them feeling guilty and confused. It takes away their peace. These poor women bear the brunt of many of the manmade regulations of the conservative groups and they are the ones most impacted emotionally from them as well.

Regulations are different from one conservative group to another and yet the rules are made as binding on the church members as if they were the commands of Christ. Subconsciously, it causes confusion in a person’s mind in other areas that are not under church regulations.

This false guilt plagued my Mennonite grandmother into her 90’s. She was fearful that she was not going to heaven because of something that was not even a sin. One of her daughters tried to help her overcome that guilt, but was unsuccessful. She found freedom from that guilt several weeks before her death. There are many Amish and Mennonite girls and women who are/were plagued with this type of false guilt and fears. The bondage of false guilt affects men as well. Please, men, do not put this kind of guilt on women by confusing them with manmade religious commands.

The false guilt and “super-sensitive” conscience is yet another bondage and failure conservatism.

The Conservative Bondage of the Man’s Hat and Having to Submit One’s Mind to the Church

A number of Amish and conservative Mennonite groups require the men to wear hats most of the time in public. They remove their hats when they are in church and when they are inside their homes or when they pray at meal times. But much of their day they are expected to cover their head with a hat or cap.

Wearing the distinctive Amish or Mennonite man’s hat is one part of the man submitting his mind to that church. Some have observed that it is as if when a person joins a conservative Mennonite or Amish group, the person needs to give part of their brain to the church to do some of their thinking and decision making for them. The submitting of their thinking to the church is true also in conservative Mennonite churches that don’t require the men to wear a hat.

It is amazing how many conservative men follow, with strict conformity, the rules of their church that are not given in the Bible. They don’t question the inconsistency of some of the rules of the church, such as non-conformity to the world in dress, but then using modern technology such as cell phones and the internet; not using electricity from the power company, but having a generator on the farm to provide electricity; or requiring members to drive only black cars but at the same time permitting them to have a red or any other color tractor or combine.

An Amish man with a steel wheeled wagon in Wisconsin. This man has submitted his thinking to his church’s strict dress and other regulations. His church does not allow him to have rubber tires on his wagon. Rubber is not really the issue. It is resistance to change on specific issues. There are many items that have rubber parts on an Amish farm. Photo credit: FairchildGiftCompany.com

Two Amish boys with their identifying symbol of conforming to their Amish church’s lifestyle (Amish hats) on their heads. When they join the Amish church, they too will submit their minds to the thinking of the church.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gadjoboy/

Bondage of A Cappella-only Music

Amish and conservative Mennonites have kept their people in bondage in the area of music by prohibiting musical instruments in their worship services and only allowing acappella singing. Some are not allowed to even own instruments or recorded music with instrumentation at all. Part of the bondage is a fear of losing four-part singing, or of wrong music styles coming into the church if they allow musical instruments.

There is no command in the Old or New Testaments prohibiting the use of musical instruments in the worship of God. To the contrary, the Bible tells us that God likes musical instruments and that there are musical instruments in Heaven. In spite of there being no command in Scripture, Amish and conservative Mennonites have held strongly to their manmade rule of not having musical instruments and only having acappella singing in their church worship services. This practice is based on the tradition of their churches and holding to the way their forefathers worshiped.

God loves musical instruments. It can be claimed that God has instructed us to sing with instruments. In Ephesians 5:19, The Greek word translated “making melody” means to pluck or play a stringed instrument. “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;” (Ephesians 5:19)

The same Greek word for plucking or playing a stringed instrument is used in three other verses in the New Testament and is translated “sing”. Because these verses were translated “sing” instead of “play a stringed instrument”, conservatives have stated that nowhere in the New Testament does God instruct that we should use instruments. In the following verses, the Greek word translated “sing” could be translated “play a stringed instrument”.

“What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.” (1 Corinthians 14:15)

“And that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy; as it is written, For this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name.” (Romans 15:9)

We see here that playing musical instruments can be an important part of evangelism. Music speaks to a person’s spirit is a way that words alone can’t.

“Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms.” (James 5:13)

The human voice tends to not stay perfectly on pitch and will often go out of tune by the end of a song. It is usually called sharping or flatting, but when a musical instrument does it, it is called going out of tune. If you listen to a cappella music on a CD, immediately at the end of a song, go back to the beginning of the same song. It is not uncommon for the group singing to have gone out of tune enough that it sounds like they changed keys. This is true even of some of the better a cappella groups. Most human voices need a quality, well tuned musical instrument to keep them accurate and on pitch. An out of tune piano does not work to keep voices well tuned, nor does a guitar played with distortion.

Churches that require a cappella only singing have made a mistake, and are requiring their people to follow a manmade command that is the opposite of what God has told us in the New Testament. It is not wrong to sing without instruments, but it is wrong to make a rule that all music in the church has to be a cappella. As a result of a cappella singing being a command of man, their a cappella singing is done to please man (conservatives) rather than Christ and often results in a spiritual deadness to the music regardless of how well or how poorly it is sung.

The bondage of conservatism is real. Please don’t put yourself or your family in this type of bondage. It is not worth it!

The Next Chapter – Religious Conservatism: Additional Failures and Consequences