Ex Mennonite

sent in by Marvin

Hi my name is Marvin and I'm an exMennonite. For those who don't know what Mennonites are I'll give a brief description. Mennonites are very fundamentalist Christians who go way beyond the mainstream in their beliefs. For example they believe that television, radios, and other forms of entertainment is wrong. They dress differently than the rest of the world especially the women (almost the same as Amish). They have their own schools and try to avoid contact with the rest of the world as much as they can. I grew up in an environment where I had almost no contact with anyone outside of the Mennonites. With no TV or radio it meant that the influences in my life were almost completely controlled by my parents and the churches school.

I've always been the type of person to question everything though and there were a lot of things that didn't make sense to me. I bought into the Mennonite thing to a degree and joined the church when I was sixteen. I married a someone in the church when I was nineteen.

That's where things started to turn around for me though and I started to question the things that were being shoved down my throat. They controlled you life in and the way you thought in every way if they could. For example they didn't like the length of my hair so they made me stand up in front of the congregation and say I was sorry. If I had not done that they would have told me I'm going to hell and excommunicated me.

After I was married I was able to get away from the really strict Mennonite church and joined a more liberal sect. The only problem was the thinking was the same when you really stripped away all the rhetoric. You had to conform or else you were an ungodly proud heathen who refused to bow to Jesus on the cross who and made the supreme sacrifice for you. Anyone who didn't do that was unbelievably proud and incredibly stupid. The only problem in my mind was that the people who believed the most fervently where the most ignorant.

I actually became a Sunday School teacher for my age group and started to research things from a biblical perspective and discovered that Mennonite beliefs were way our of the mainstream. Instead of swallowing the party line I started teaching things that went against church beliefs and did that get me in trouble LOL. The pastors visited me within a week to see what could be done about the "problem". I refused to accept their interpretation of the bible and they told me that I wasn't one of them until I was ready to accept the teachings of the church.

About a two years later my Mennonite wife had an affair. That was when I realized that all this Christian bullshit was a total waste of time. Anyone that believes this fairytale should be put on medication. After my wife left me all my Mennonite friends deserted me because I was contaminated by adultery or some such crap. In the two years since she left all the people who are filled with the love or Christ have never picked up the phone to call me. When I would meet them somewhere in public it would always be uncomfortable. Within a year I moved out of state and if any of those former friends call I'll be to busy to talk to them. Since then I want nothing to do with Christianity. I have better things to do with my time thank you very much.


City: Calabash

State: NC

Country: USA

Became a Christian: 16

Ceased being a Christian: 25

Labels before: Old order Mennonite

Labels now: What labels, if any would you apply to yourself now?

Why I joined: Why did you become a Christian?

Why I left: there were to many things that didn't make logical sense

Email Address: marvi205@atmc.net

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