The Beachy Ten Commandments

In which I attempt to distill Beachy Amish-Mennonite tendencies (good and bad) into ten sentences

I. Thou shalt do many good works.

II. Thou shalt have a vision for missions.

III. Thou shalt follow thy emotions more than the church guidelines.

IV. Thou shalt be skeptical of authority.

V. Thou shalt feel a little shame of thine Amish heritage.

VI. Thou shalt not have a clue why you believe what you believe. For it is important to just kinda float along, doing what is cool and acceptable and trending.

VII. Thou shalt not wear florals and plaids unless the church allows it or thou canst get away with it.

VIII. Thou shalt become ADC if thou wantest wedding bands and worship bands. (and if thou wantest to sing This Is Amazing Grace rather than Amazing Grace at church.)

IX. Thou shalt not have the radio, only Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Netflix, and Prime Video.

X. Thou shalt bring energy and life to the conservative Anabaptist world.

God Bless the One Big Beautiful Beachy Constituency.

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A Real Note From The Morose Menno: I realize this picture isn’t very nuanced and doesn’t represent the mindset of every Beachy person out there. As a life-long Beachy, I sure hope it doesn’t! However, I do think it captures certain overarching strengths and weaknesses of those of us in Amish-Mennonite culture.