Amish
The Church Today and Tomorrow, edited by David Wieand, is a collection of papers from the Bethany Faculty Series. The main idea of this book is to look at the Brethren church and recognize the psychology and the meaning behind the Brethren ways. When the book talks about the church, it mentions that the Brethren church focuses on the New Testament. Jesus was more the source of spiritualism and moral truth (12). The book also states the churches' view of church and state. The Brethren believe in peace, and of staying out of war. Many members have accepted military duty, though, and have developed a "just war" theory (37). Conflicts have arisen between the church and state during the past 100 years. The Brethren do believe in voting and in expressing opinions to the government. With this belief, the understanding of keeping church and state separate is still understood. Brethren try to work with the government to solve problems. The church is a follower of God first, and to the country second (47). The Church Today and Tomorrow also looks at the downfalls of the church. Religious illiteracy is a major issue that is addressed and there are possible solutions to help fix this problem. A final focal point of this book is
The Church Today and Tomorrow shows how the Brethren feel that there is a great deal of religious illiteracy and a lack of knowledge for the church (80). The main value they are working towards is to get more religious literacy throughout the Christian communities. They feel that the teaching depends on three basic points. The first thing is that the people need to be taught according to the Christian philosophy. Second, the teachers need to be well educated and dependable for teaching at such a great level. The leaders need to be committed to the Christian way, and devote themselves to the students that they are teaching. The third point is that there should be adequate and several meeting times for the young students. There should be an established Bible study, service, discussion, club, social, and athletic activity. Adult education is also not to be neglected. Instead of it being the family's responsibility to teach the young adult after baptism, there should be a continued educational program (84). Peter C. Hiebert felt the desire to teach, to continue with school, and finally to start his own college. This shows his strong feelings towards the importance of religious education and the continuation of education after high school. A total of nine people were on the first board to start and gather ideas for the new Mennonite college. The religious education broadened when in the third year a Bible Normal was instituted at the college. People from the community were invited to join students at the college to study the Bible. Today this tradition still holds true and is practiced every year (42). Hiebert's main purpose when teaching and preaching was to teach the Bible. He felt that the Scripture was God's authoritative and his inspired revelations (115). Today there are many more Mennonite colleges, and many efforts within the churches to help educate the young and old about the Bible and about Jesus' life. the mission of the Brethren church today. The church focuses on teaching the young about the Brethren religion and about teaching new members right from wrong according to Brethren beliefs. These were the main points that were picked up from reading this book edited by Wieand. The Amish was a more fun and interesting book for me to read. This narrative book tells stories about an Amish family, but along with this it tells a lot of about the Amish culture. The stories reveal differences between the several types
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1661
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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