100 Fun Facts About Christian Denominations

At Latter-day Saint Sunday services, the bread-and-cup ordinance passed on trays to the congregation uses which liquid?

Water replaced wine after an 1830 revelation told Joseph Smith that it did not matter what was eaten or drunk in the rite, and warned him against buying wine from enemies.

The Salvation Army, which calls its ministers officers and its leader the General, leaves what out of worship?

The sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion are not celebrated, because the Booths feared Christians had come to rely on outward signs rather than on grace itself. The movement began in London's East End in 1865.

Which breakfast food was created in 1894 for patients at the Adventist-run Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan?

Corn flakes are said to have begun as a batch of wheat dough that John Harvey Kellogg left standing overnight; his brother Will worked out how to flake it reliably and went on to found the Kellogg Company.

Which pop star became a Jehovah's Witness in 2001 through his friendship with funk bassist Larry Graham?

Prince called the change a 'realization' rather than a conversion, and afterwards he sometimes knocked on strangers' doors to talk about his faith.

Which singer, raised in an Assembly of God church in Tupelo, won all three of his Grammys for gospel records?

Elvis Presley found his first inspiration as a singer in the Pentecostal congregation his family attended, and his competitive Grammy wins came for 'How Great Thou Art' and 'He Touched Me' out of fourteen nominations.

Which Oscar-winning actor joined the Greek Orthodox Church before marrying his Greek-descended actress wife in 1988?

Tom Hanks took his wife's faith before their wedding, and after she saw Nia Vardalos's one-woman stage show the couple produced it as the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Who was the first Catholic elected US president, a milestone Joe Biden matched six decades later?

John F. Kennedy won in 1960 after telling Protestant ministers in Houston he was the Democratic candidate who happened to be Catholic; Al Smith, the first Catholic major-party nominee, had lost to Herbert Hoover in 1928.

Which US president taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church into his nineties?

Jimmy Carter quit the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000 after it voted that women should not be pastors, yet he kept teaching the Maranatha class and was still occasionally taking it in 2019.

Which Christmas carol was written by Charles Wesley, the Methodist co-founder credited with over 6,500 hymns?

Hark the Herald Angels Sing first opened 'Hark how all the welkin rings' until fellow Methodist George Whitefield rewrote the line in 1753, and its tune was lifted from a Mendelssohn cantata for a Gutenberg festival.

Orthodox churches that keep the Julian calendar, such as Russia's, celebrate Christmas on which Gregorian date?

7 January is simply 25 December on the Julian calendar, and after the 2022 invasion Ukraine moved its official Christmas to 25 December to distance itself from the Russian church. The two calendars currently differ by thirteen days.

The Latter-day Saint health code, the Word of Wisdom, bars 'hot drinks', read as coffee and which other drink?

Tea and coffee are read as the 'hot drinks' of the revelation, and the church teaches the ban applies whether or not the drink is actually hot; herbal tea and hot chocolate are generally allowed.

Which successor to Joseph Smith led the Latter-day Saint pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley on 24 July 1847?

Brigham Young's arrival on 24 July 1847 is kept in Utah as Pioneer Day; the valley then belonged to Mexico, and he served as church president from 1847 until his death in 1877. The trek had staged through Winter Quarters in Nebraska.

Which politician served in the 1980s as Latter-day Saint bishop of a ward in Belmont, Massachusetts?

Mitt Romney held the unpaid lay post alongside his business career, then led the church's Boston area, with more than a dozen wards and almost 4,000 members, work that took 30 or more hours a week.

Which civil rights leader served until his death as co-pastor with his father at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church?

Martin Luther King Jr. shared the Ebenezer pulpit with his father, and at his widow's request a recording of his 1968 sermon there, in which he imagined his own funeral, was played at the service.

Mount Athos, the self-governing Orthodox monastic peninsula in Greece, bars which group by Greek law and tradition?

All women are prohibited from entering the area governed by the monks, which tradition holds was consecrated as the garden of the Mother of God. The ban is written into Greek law as well as monastic custom.

Churches of Christ, heirs of America's 19th-century Stone–Campbell movement, are known for banning what from worship?

Musical instruments are absent because the New Testament never mentions them in worship, so congregations worship a cappella, often pitched from a pitch pipe and led by a song-leader. Alexander Campbell himself opposed their use.

In 1917 some 250 Salvation Army volunteers went to US soldiers' camps in France and became famous for frying what?

Doughnuts served to the troops earned the volunteers the nickname 'Doughnut Lassies', and the Army honoured them in 1938 with the first Doughnut Day, a Depression fundraiser in Chicago that is still marked each June.

Who was Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, the first Black African to hold the post?

Desmond Tutu, the 1984 Nobel Peace laureate, moved into the archbishop's Bishopscourt residence without the permit needed to live in a 'white area', and in 1990 he hosted the newly freed Nelson Mandela there.

Who, once England's chief nursing officer, became the first female Archbishop of Canterbury in 2026?

Sarah Mullally was ordained in 2001 while still chief nursing officer and worked as an unpaid curate in Battersea until she gave up the government post in 2004 for full-time ministry.

The 'Holy Club' of John and Charles Wesley, whose methodical piety gave Methodists their name, met at which university?

Oxford's Lincoln College had John Wesley as a fellow and later a lecturer, and George Whitefield, the great open-air preacher, was another Holy Club member. The label began as mockery of the club's disciplined routine.

Jehovah's Witnesses, known for evangelising with The Watchtower, call their plain, unadorned meeting places what?

Kingdom Halls got their name in 1935, when Witness leader Joseph Rutherford suggested it for a building in Hawaii; they carry no religious symbols, and volunteers can raise a standard-design hall in a few days.

In the Western liturgical colour scheme, which colour is set for Pentecost Sunday and may also be used for ordinations?

Red is the colour of fire, recalling the flames of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and as the colour of blood it also marks the feasts of martyrs, while green covers the long weeks of Ordinary Time.

Which Seventh-day Adventist co-founder left extensive writings that the church still holds in high regard today?

Ellen G. White reported some 2,000 visions and dreams over seventy years, and one in June 1863 on healthy living steered Adventists towards health reform and a vegetarian diet.

Which practice, modelled on Acts chapters 2 and 4, sets the Hutterites apart from the Amish and Mennonites?

Community of goods was given up in the late 17th century and revived in the 1760s after Lutheran exiles from Carinthia joined the remnant in Transylvania; each colony still owns its land and equipment in common.

Old Order Amish church districts of 20 to 40 families hold worship every other week in what kind of place?

A member's home or barn hosts the district in turn, whereas the car-driving Beachy Amish meet weekly in church buildings; each district's bishop, ministers and deacons are picked by nomination and the drawing of lots.

The Lambeth Conference, first called by Archbishop Longley in 1867, gathers the Anglican Communion's bishops how often?

Every ten years or so the Archbishop of Canterbury calls the bishops together; only 76 of the 144 invited came in 1867, when the Archbishop of York and several other English bishops refused to attend.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant body in the United States, is administered from which city?

Nashville houses the convention's executive committee and archives; in 1995, 150 years after the split that created it, the convention voted to apologise for its founders' defence of slavery.

Southern Baptists split from the north over slaveholding in 1845 at the First Baptist Church of which Georgia city?

Augusta hosted the May 1845 meeting after the northern-led Triennial Convention would not treat slaveholders as fit for mission work, and the northern side is today's American Baptist Churches USA.

Roger Williams founded the first Baptist church in America in 1638, two years after founding which city?

Providence, founded by Williams in 1636, saw him hold services at home for nearly a year before forming the church, yet within months he left it to live as a 'seeker' tied to no denomination.

Modern Baptists descend from John Smyth's exiled English congregation, which adopted believer's baptism in 1609 where?

Amsterdam's English exiles saw Smyth baptise himself in 1609, earning him the nickname 'Se-baptist'; he later sought union with the Mennonites while Thomas Helwys carried on as a Baptist.

Adventism grew from the 'Great Disappointment' of 22 October 1844, when whose predicted return of Christ did not come?

William Miller, a New York farmer and Baptist lay preacher, read the '2,300 days' of Daniel 8:14 as years ending about 1843; it was a follower, Samuel Snow, who narrowed that to 22 October 1844.

By its own figures for 2024, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had how many members worldwide?

17.5 million members includes more than 6.8 million in the United States, so most Latter-day Saints now live outside the country where the church began.

When a president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dies, who has invariably succeeded him?

The longest-serving apostle takes over because seniority in the Quorum of the Twelve is counted by continuous years of service, and the next most senior then presides over the quorum. The rule has held without exception.

The Church of Scotland's General Assembly elects which presiding officer each year, usually named the previous October?

The Moderator is a chairman, not a head of the church: any minister, elder or deacon can be chosen, and in 2004 Alison Elliot became the first woman and the first elder in about 400 years.

Which US president, born in a Presbyterian manse in Staunton, Virginia, ran Princeton before entering politics?

Woodrow Wilson's father Joseph, though raised in Ohio, backed the Confederacy and helped found the southern Presbyterian church when it split from the north in 1861.

Eastern Orthodox Great Lent opens not on Ash Wednesday but on which day, a public holiday in Greece and Cyprus?

Clean Monday opens a 'Clean Week' of confession and housecleaning, and Greeks spend the day outdoors flying kites and eating shellfish and a flatbread baked only for that day.

Which Boston newspaper did Mary Baker Eddy found in 1908 in reply to press attacks on her?

Christian Science Monitor was partly Eddy's answer to hostile coverage in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, so its seven Pulitzer Prizes carry some irony.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church claims its Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion at Axum holds which biblical object?

The Ark of the Covenant is said to lie in a chapel that only its guardian monk, confined there for life, may enter, and every Ethiopian church must hold a tabot, a consecrated replica, to function.

The World Council of Churches, founded in 1948 and joined by most Orthodox and Protestant bodies, is based where?

Geneva's Ecumenical Centre serves as the administrative hub, though the council has no head office as such, and the Catholic Church sends only observers rather than joining. Delegates of 147 churches attended the founding assembly.

Which Lutheran pastor, a founding member of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church, was hanged at Flossenbürg on 9 April 1945?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer died at dawn, weeks before the Nazi collapse, alongside Admiral Canaris and General Oster of the resistance; his prison letters and theology are still widely read.

Which African country, a former German colony, is the only nation outside Europe where Lutherans are the largest religious group?

Namibia owes its Lutheran churches, which claim almost half the population, to German and Finnish missionaries; Ethiopia and Tanzania each have several times more Lutherans, but as minorities.

The Presbyterian Church (USA), formed by a 1983 reunion of northern and southern churches, is based in which Ohio River city?

Louisville, Kentucky became the headquarters after the reunion ended a split dating from the Civil War, replacing the northern church's offices in New York and the southern church's in Atlanta.

In the Disruption of 1843, some 450 ministers walked out of the Kirk to found which body?

The Free Church of Scotland eventually drew 474 of about 1,200 ministers, who gave up their livings, manses and pulpits rather than accept a patron's right to install a parish's minister.

The Lutheran World Federation was founded in 1947 in the university city of Lund, in which country?

Sweden's Lund hosted a striking sequel in 2016, when Pope Francis joined Lutheran leaders in its cathedral to mark the 499th anniversary of the Reformation's start.

Lutheran confessions including the Augsburg Confession and the two catechisms were gathered in 1580 under what title?

The Book of Concord appeared in Dresden on 25 June 1580, exactly fifty years after the Augsburg Confession was presented to Emperor Charles V. It opens with the three ecumenical creeds to show continuity with the ancient church.

Which son of emancipated slaves, blinded in one eye by smallpox, led the 1906 Los Angeles revival behind Pentecostalism?

William J. Seymour led the mission at 312 Azusa Street, where worship mixed races in a way that unsettled the Topeka preacher Charles Parham. He was the second of eight children from Centerville, Louisiana.

Which Canadian-born evangelist, a 1920s pioneer of radio preaching, founded the Pentecostal Foursquare Church?

Aimee Semple McPherson built the domed Angelus Temple in Echo Park, advertised as the largest single congregation in the world, and opened a commissary there in 1927 to hand out food and clothing.

The Coptic Orthodox calendar counts its years from AD 284, the accession of which persecuting Roman emperor?

Diocletian's reign gave the calendar its name, the Era of the Martyrs, with dates written Anno Martyrum. Its epoch falls on 29 August 284 and it keeps the months of the ancient Egyptian calendar.

Coptic Orthodox Christians fast on some 210 to 240 days a year, generally keeping to which diet?

Vegan eating, with no meat, eggs or dairy, is the rule for up to two-thirds of the Coptic year, and the 55 days of Great Lent also bar the fish that some lesser fasts allow.

Moravian refugees renewed their church in 1722 at Herrnhut, a new village built on whose Saxon estate?

Count Zinzendorf, raised in Pietist Lutheranism, agreed to the carpenter Christian David's request to let the 'Hidden Seed' settle on his Berthelsdorf lands in Upper Lusatia.

Which juice brand began in 1869 when a Methodist dentist in New Jersey bottled an alcohol-free communion wine?

Welch's was Dr Thomas Welch's answer to his church's ban on alcohol: he pasteurised grape juice to stop it fermenting, and the firm he founded still sells it.

Which fast-food chain closes every Sunday because of the Southern Baptist faith of founder S. Truett Cathy?

Chick-fil-A has rarely bent the rule: in December 2017 its Atlanta staff cooked on a Sunday to feed passengers stranded at the city's airport by a power cut.

Which pop star, the daughter of two Pentecostal pastors, released a Christian gospel album under her birth name at 16?

Katy Perry's debut, titled Katy Hudson, sold an estimated 200 copies before her label folded; at home, secular music had been generally discouraged.

Which denomination, formally the Religious Society of Friends, traditionally worships in silence without clergy?

Quakers got their nickname from mockers after founder George Fox told a judge to quake before God's authority; the movement went on to share the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize.

Which celibate sect, led to colonial America by Mother Ann Lee, became famous for its simple, finely made furniture?

Shakers are also credited with inventing the flat broom, but celibacy left them reliant on converts and adopted orphans, and the sect dwindled.

Which English king broke with Rome after Pope Clement VII refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon?

Henry VIII had earlier been named Defender of the Faith by Pope Leo X for a book defending the seven sacraments, a title English monarchs kept after the split.

Which hymn was written by John Newton, an Anglican clergyman who had once worked in the Atlantic slave trade?

Amazing Grace grew out of a 1748 storm at sea that drove the profane young sailor to cry out for mercy; one biographer estimates it is now performed about 10 million times a year.

Which term names the period when Amish teenagers may sample the outside world before choosing adult baptism?

Rumspringa means 'running around' in Pennsylvania German, and despite its wild pop-culture image almost 90% of Amish teenagers go on to be baptised and join the church.

Which hotel chain, founded by a Latter-day Saint family, places the Book of Mormon beside the Bible in its rooms?

Marriott grew from a nine-stool root beer stand that J. Willard Marriott opened in Washington, D.C., in 1927, after serving a two-year church mission.

Before the Second Vatican Council allowed local languages, Roman Rite Mass was normally said in which language?

Latin had been fixed by the missal of 1570 and held for about four centuries, until the bishops of the 1960s council encouraged wider use of each people's native language.

Unitarians take their name from rejecting which doctrine held by most other Christian churches?

The Trinity, the teaching that God is one essence in three persons, struck Unitarians as a breach of strict monotheism; they hold that God is one being and one person.

Which former pawnbroker's apprentice founded the Salvation Army in London's East End and became its first General?

William Booth, a Methodist preacher, started it with his wife Catherine in 1865 as the Christian Revival Society, then gave the movement a quasi-military structure and government.

Jehovah's Witnesses, who also decline military service, refuse which medical procedure on biblical grounds?

Blood transfusions break God's law as the Witnesses read Acts 15, which tells believers to abstain from blood, and a member who accepts one can be disassociated.

Which angel, said to have shown Joseph Smith buried golden plates, tops many Latter-day Saint temples as a statue?

Moroni statues usually face east, and the trumpet held by the one on the Salt Lake Temple was shaken to the ground by a 5.7 magnitude earthquake in March 2020.

Pentecostal churches have long taught that which practice is the biblical evidence of baptism with the Holy Spirit?

Speaking in tongues was at first believed to produce real foreign languages, so early Pentecostals expected that missionaries would no longer need to learn the local language.

Baptist churches baptise only professing believers, and they traditionally do so by which method?

Total immersion was meant to match the New Testament pattern as Baptists read it; rejecting infant baptism, they baptise only people able to profess faith for themselves.

Which US denomination, organised after the American Revolution, is America's member of the Anglican Communion?

The Episcopal Church separated because Anglican clergy had to swear loyalty to the British monarch; its Washington National Cathedral is the second-largest cathedral in the United States.

Martin Luther is said to have posted his Ninety-five Theses against indulgences on a church door in which Saxon town?

Wittenberg's church door was where university staff pinned up notices, so a professor posting theses for debate was routine; Luther chose the eve of All Saints' Day.

Which preacher, once a prisoner rowing in French galleys, led Scotland's Reformation and shaped its Presbyterian church?

John Knox spent 19 months in the galleys after French ships took St Andrews in 1547, and ten years after his release he came home to lead the Scottish Reformation.

Which Belfast-born Anglican layman turned his wartime BBC radio talks into the book Mere Christianity?

C. S. Lewis had fallen away from faith as a teenager and returned at 32, nudged by his friend Tolkien; his book has stayed popular with readers from many denominations.

Which country, home to an ancient Apostolic Church, was the first state to make Christianity its official religion?

Armenia made the change around 301 under King Tiridates III, who had persecuted Christians before he was converted by Gregory the Illuminator, the church's first primate.

The Coptic Orthodox pope has lived in Cairo since 1047 but still takes his title from which Egyptian city?

Alexandria is where Coptic tradition places the church's founding by Saint Mark, so its leader is still styled pope of that city and patriarch of the see of St Mark.

Which Anglican liturgy, first issued under Archbishop Cranmer, shaped the marriage rites of many other denominations?

Book of Common Prayer services of 1549 were the first complete forms of daily and Sunday worship in English, and Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian prayer books later borrowed from them.

What name was given to the French Protestants who fled abroad when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes?

Huguenots numbered up to a million by 1685; although the king banned emigration, refugees reached the Dutch Cape Colony, the Caribbean and the English colonies of North America.

Which Czech priest, burned at the stake at the Council of Constance, is often called the first church reformer?

Jan Hus had travelled to the council under a safe conduct; a century before Luther he had been defending the ideas of John Wycliffe at the University of Prague.

Which Southern Baptist evangelist led stadium 'crusades' and grew close to Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon?

Billy Graham insisted on racially integrated revivals as early as 1953, and may have preached in person to more people than anyone else in the history of Christianity.

The Maronite Church, an Eastern Catholic body in communion with the Pope, has its patriarch's seat in which country?

Lebanon's Maronites are named after Saint Maron of the Taurus Mountains and belong to Syriac Christianity by liturgy and tradition, while staying loyal to Rome.

The ancient Christian community of Kerala in southern India traces its origin to the preaching of which apostle?

Thomas is said to have brought the faith to India in the 1st century, and Kerala's Saint Thomas Christians still mostly worship in the rites of Syriac Christianity.

Which Baroque composer wrote hundreds of cantatas while directing the music of Leipzig's main Lutheran churches?

Johann Sebastian Bach was hired in 1723 to run the music of four city churches, and set himself to compose whole annual cycles of cantatas for their services.

Which monarch sponsored the 1611 English Bible translation after hearing Puritan grievances at Hampton Court?

James I had his translators avoid marginal notes wherever possible, because the notes in an earlier popular Bible had been criticised for promoting anti-monarchical views.

Which French-born reformer wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion and taught the doctrine of predestination?

John Calvin published the first edition in Basel in 1536, after fleeing violence against Protestants in France; Scotland's Presbyterian churches still hold to his theology.

The word 'catholic', first applied to the church by Ignatius of Antioch, comes from a Greek adjective meaning what?

Universal is the sense in which Lutherans, Anglicans and Methodists also call their own churches catholic: in continuity with the one original church founded by the apostles.

Which university, named for a Puritan clergyman who left it his library, at first trained Congregational ministers?

Harvard, founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, never formally joined any denomination, and in 1708 it got its first president who was not a clergyman.

A 1943 Supreme Court win for Jehovah's Witnesses means public schools cannot force pupils to recite what?

The Pledge of Allegiance and the flag salute were idolatry in the Witnesses' eyes, and their children were being expelled from schools before the justices ruled compulsion unconstitutional.

John Wesley led the Methodist revival as an ordained priest of which denomination, which he insisted he had not left?

Church of England liturgy was dear to Wesley, who took up open-air preaching reluctantly in 1739 and more than once used his father's tombstone at Epworth as a pulpit.

Which domed cathedral, the chief church of Eastern Orthodoxy for some 900 years, became a mosque in 1453?

Hagia Sophia, completed in 537 under the emperor Justinian, stayed the world's largest church for more than five hundred years and became the model for Orthodox church architecture.

Which statement of faith, adopted in 325 and amended in 381, is shared by Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches?

The Nicene Creed is recited after the homily at the Roman Rite Mass and sung at the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, and Lutherans, Anglicans and Methodists profess it too.

Which country has the largest Catholic population in the world, ahead of Mexico?

Brazil's Catholic majority has shrunk fast all the same: about 57% of Brazilians called themselves Catholic in the 2022 census, down from 90% in 1970.

Presbyterian churches take their name from the Greek word for which officers, who govern them in assemblies?

Elders, or presbyters, govern through representative assemblies instead of a hierarchy of prelates, a system Scotland secured for its national church in the 1707 Acts of Union.

Hillsong, the Pentecostal megachurch known for its contemporary worship music, began in a school hall in which country?

Australia's Hillsong started in 1983 as the Hills Christian Life Centre in New South Wales, and in 2018 it left the Assemblies of God family to become a denomination of its own.

Lutheran rulers gave Protestants their name in 1529 by lodging a formal protest at which imperial assembly?

The Diet of Speyer had voted to enforce the Edict of Worms against Luther after all; six rulers and 14 free cities objected, and their 'protestation' gave the movement its label.

The Oriental Orthodox churches of Egypt, Syria and Ethiopia left the imperial church after a 451 council in which city?

Chalcedon's bishops defined Christ as one person acknowledged in two natures, wording those churches rejected; opponents came to call the council 'Chalcedon, the Ominous'.

Which Swiss city's Reformation began in 1522 when a printer served sausages during Lent, an act Zwingli defended?

Zurich's 'Affair of the Sausages' led Zwingli to preach that Christians are free to fast or not, because the Bible does not prohibit eating meat during Lent.

Iglesia ni Cristo, the independent church registered by Felix Manalo in 1914, is based in which country?

The Philippines counted 2.8 million members in its 2020 census; followers hold Manalo to be God's last messenger, and by his death in 1963 the church had 35 cathedrals.

In an Eastern Orthodox church, what is the screen of sacred paintings that divides the nave from the sanctuary called?

Iconostasis screens usually have three sets of doors, with the central Beautiful Gates flanked by an image of Christ on one side and of the Virgin Mary on the other.

Which preacher, once enslaved in Delaware, founded the AME Church, America's first independent Black denomination?

Richard Allen did extra work to buy his freedom in 1780, opened his first church in Philadelphia, and in 1816 was elected the denomination's first bishop.

Which California city, a Seventh-day Adventist centre, was labelled a 'Blue Zone' for its residents' long lives?

Loma Linda's longevity was put down by writer Dan Buettner to Adventist health and diet habits; the church has urged a vegetarian diet on its members since the 1860s.

Yoido Full Gospel Church, a Pentecostal congregation Guinness once listed as the world's largest, is in which country?

South Korea's Yoido church began in 1958 in a pastor's living room, outgrew it within months, and by 1993 counted 700,000 members.

The Old Catholic churches of the Union of Utrecht broke with Rome after the First Vatican Council defined which dogma?

Papal infallibility left its Catholic opponents without a bishop after 1870, so they joined the see of Utrecht, which had been defying papal authority since the 18th century.

Married Amish men wear beards but are forbidden which other facial hair, which the Amish associate with the military?

Moustaches remind the pacifist Amish of soldiers, so they are banned, while the beard itself signals manhood and marital status and is meant to promote humility.