What is a Mennonite? Can anybody become a Mennonite? Most people who identify as "Mennonite" treat it as if it is an ethnicity, as if you are born into it. They are unaware that you cannot be a Mennonite if you are not descended from Menno Simons and/or if you do not follow his teachings.
Mennonite is not something you are born into. It is a denomination within Christianity. Anybody can become a Mennonite if they choose to. Those who call themselves Mennonite today are a hollow husk of what Mennonites of the past were. They do not understand Menno Simons' teachings.
Your last name does not determine if you are a Mennonite or not. It may determine if you are German, but it has no relation to you being a Mennonite because Mennonite is a denomination within Christianity, not an ethnicity. If you regularly attend a Baptist, Pentecostal, Reformed, or any other denominational church, then you are not a Mennonite, you are a Baptist, a Pentecostal, a Presbyterian, etc. There is no such thing as a "Mennonite Baptist" or a "Mennonite Pentecostal" or a "Mennonite Reformed." You are attempting to amalgamate two different denominations, two different theological belief systems.
Depending on the type of Mennonite, they believe you can marry your cousins, even down to second cousins. They attempt to use Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as their proof text to support this (Gen. 24:4, 38; 28:1-2), but fail to realize that this is descriptive language and not prescriptive (a rule or direction). God did not command Abraham to do such a thing, and just because he did so does not mean we should follow his example. Even if God did tell Abraham to do so does not mean we follow suit because that was the Old Testament era and we are under the New Covenant. The Old has nothing to do with us. You are reading someone else's mail and attempting to apply it to your life. We gentiles never had any part of the Law. For us, it is the New Covenant or nothing.
Abraham had sex with Sarah's maid, Hagar, outside of his marriage to Sarah (Gen. 16). Jacob had two wives (Gen. 29) and had sex with both their maids outside of his marriages to them (Gen. 30). Should we take that as prescriptive, too? Should we be marrying more than one woman and having sex with other women outside of our marriages? Seriously. Let us think before we do things or attempt to defend them.
Mennonites often will not even marry another person unless they are Mennonite, too, even if they are a Christian of a different denomination. Sorry to say, but all of this (marrying your cousins and only marrying within a certain community) can lead to inbreeding. Any Christian denomination, such as Mennonite, that believes you should only marry people from that denomination has become cult-like. They take commands given to Israel as a nation and eisegete it for themselves (as do racists when they say we should not marry someone of a different ethnicity). Marry whomever you want, preferably in the Lord.
Obviously certain types of Mennonites believe they should "keep it in the family" rather than 'Keep it in the faith.'
We need to stop holding on to blind traditions that are the inventions of men. Cling to the New Covenant Scriptures and understand your new identity in Christ Jesus our King.
