The difference between the Amish and Mennonites is more in the way they live and respond to the world around them than in belief.
The following are beliefs officially held by both groups.
The Bible is the inspired word of God
There is one God eternally existing as Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit (Romans 8:1-17).
God loved the world so much that he gave his only son, Jesus, to die on the cross for the sins of the world.
Through faith in the shed blood of Jesus we are reconciled to God.
Salvation is by grace through faith in Christ, a free gift bestowed by God on those who repent and believe.
As Christians, we should live as brothers
The Holy Spirit convicts of sin, and also empowers believers for service and holy living.
The church is separate from the State
We are committed to peace.
Faith calls for a lifestyle of discipleship and good works service and holy living.
But you have to understand that one cannot simply say that "this" is the difference because there are so many different sects among the Amish and the Mennonites.
I am going to list another website for you to look at that hopefully will answer some of your questions.
Much of the information provided on this website in a restatement of what I wrote earlier. Some in greater detail.
Some of it is in addition to what I wrote.
When you read this information you will note that some of it is even different than what you read in the posts about individual practices in various areas of the country.
One thing that you will not find written in the answers is that Mennonites are now serving in government. You probably also won't find anything about the Amish fellow that became an MD and caters primarily to the Amish people.
You won't read either that the Amish don't have middle names. Just initials. My grandmother was born Sarah C. Yoder. The C stands for my great-grandfather's first name which was an obscure old Testament name "Chilion". All of her natural brothers and sisters have the same middle initial. This is common amongst the Amish.
Here is the website:
http://www.holycrosslivonia.org/amish/amishfaq.htm#diff
And you can't overlook that as the Mennonites like the group that I grew up in are virtually in distinguishable from everyone else... (I mean that until I was 8-9 years old my mom wore a head covering when we went to church but when we got home it came off and stayed off until the following Sunday. - Head coverings are a thing of the past in that group. Take one step down the ladder and head coverings are worn every day and ladies don't cut their hair - They curl it into a bun). What I am getting at is that the Mennonites I grew with officially believe the statements made above. And for the most part they could be the official beliefs of just about any other denomination the difference is in how they go about putting those beliefs into action.
One example would be MDS - the Mennonite Disaster Service. No doubt that some who have experiences devastation in Florida from Hurricanes and Tornadoes in Texas probably had MDS volunteers show up to help with the cleanup. They have been doing this forever... many times they are leaving to help within hours of an event.
The Amish don't as a rule participate in this venture.
Another example would be the Mennonite Relief Sales. Pretty much every conference has one. Different churches sell different things that are handmade. Somethings are not but most things are. They have a huge "garage sale". In Indiana, cousins of mine who started a company back in the 50's called Nelson's Golden Glow and are Mennonite spend Memorial Day weekend at the county fairgrounds barbecuing chicken halves, pork chops, beef ribs, smoked sausage, shrimp and whatever else they have found they can do in their "diptisseries". Other groups make food items to sell that are uniquely Mennonite or Amish like homemade apple butter and homemade noodles. They bring in items handmade by indiginous peoples in other countries to sell. But the biggest draw is the quilt auction on Saturday morning. There are still groups like the MWSC "Mennonite Womens Sewing Circle" that meet once a week and set around a quilt frame and handsew quilts. There are individual ladies that will take an entire year to build a quilt for the relief sale. Now over the past few years machine quilts have been accepted as well. The big thing is that some of these quilts sell for thousands of $$.
The website for the relief sale for the conference that I lived in is listed below. My mom is still the coordinator for the church I grew up in. See if you can find reference to Yellow Creek somewhere on the site. Also see if you can find a link to Third Way Cafe somewhere.
http://www.mennonitesale.org/Home
My backline on my Dad's side of the family and my Mom's side the family crisscross a couple of times between the mid 1700's as they moved across country from PA to OH & IN. In fact, the backline contains some rich history such as one of the first, not the "1st" but one of them, Amish Bishops in America.
My mothers grandfather on her dad's side of the family was an Conservative Mennonite minister named Martin Ressler and her great-great uncle - yeh that's it - was the first Mennonite Missionary in India. Jacob Andrews Ressler was his name.
That's another thing about the Mennonites and Amish. You have to be able to play the "name game" at the gatherings and reunions. If you can't you really have a hard time fitting in. It's kind of like the begats in I & II Chronicles in the Old Testament.
OK... like I said yesterday in my post. There are some fundamental flaws that caused me to leave the MC.
One of them is this hypocrisy of being fundamentally closed to outsiders at the church/community level and then when you get to college you have the Bible & Religion Dept trying to teach traditional beliefs at odds with the Humanities Dept which is teaching self-actualization and all sort of humanistic ideas and nobody from the board of overseers to the elders in the local church seem to see what is going on. And the worst part is that this new age kind of stuff comes in dressed as a wolf in sheepskin. The the conference leadership reacts too late because the damage has already taken place.
In the year after I finished my BA in Accounting and minor in Bible and Religion. Two professors were left go because someone complained that one had made comments in class that it was ok to experiment with same sex relations - this was a female PE teacher trying to come on to a student. The other happened to be my advisor in the Accounting Dept. I never noticed anything but back then I was too busy lobbying for automatic door openers and wheelchair accessible water fountains and curb cuts. That was right after my spinal injury. The secretary complained that she was tired of taking phone calls from his male companions. Soon after that the campus pastor... not affiliated with the Bible Dept, thank God, lobbied for inclusion of homosexual students on certain committees. She was eventually dismissed for that after parents expressed disapproval.
You know the college can't close it's doors to these students because it does accept federal funding but there is something fundamentally wrong they can spend thousands of $$ on these types of issues and then say that if a physically challenged student wants to attend school there they have to be almost self-sufficient and provide practically no support for them. OK I'm done ranting. That was 15 years ago.
Anyway like I was saying yesterday. We don't get to choose to know or not to know who Madonna is. We have it shoved in our face. The same with all this same sex marriage crap and the removal of the basic tenets on which our country was founded.
How is it ok for a homosexual student to write a paper or give a speech blasting the conservative Christians for their stance and then a crime of hate speak for the conservative Christian to cite their stance based on Biblical knowledge and conscience?
How is it ok for the Muslim community to be able to proseletyze in our nations schools but the Wednesday afternoon Bible class that we used to have is now outlawed? Can't use the idea of seperation of Church and State because Muslims go to church in a Mosque and not a "church" It is still religion any way you look at it.
Yeh, I know I took a tangent. Anyway the real point that I am getting at is that I have much more respect for most Amish than I do for the Mennonites. I mean the Mennonites do a lot of good things. They really put the basic tenents of their faith into action by doing good things but... ask any one of the young people why they do these things and I believe that not very many can tell you.
Ask them why they believe that pacifism is the way to go.
Ask them why the Church practices infant dedication and then believer's baptism.
Ask them why at the communion service there is also the washing of feet and the "holy kiss".
Ask them why they believe anything and for the most part I think that answer will be because we've always done it that way.
JMO