An Amish Paradox

by Charles E. Hurst

  From a bird’s-eye view, this panoply of shared history and culture has created one of the most remarkable stories of cultural persistence in American history, perhaps in the world. Like a high-quality filter, these cultural dispositions seem to have insulated the Amish from the most detrimental aspects of modernity while ensuring an enviable level of community-mindedness. To many non-Amish, the costs—limitations on educational and job opportunities, sharply prescribed gender roles, and provincialism, among others—are too high, but it is indisputable that the Amish approach demonstrates how security and quality of life can accrue to people who collectively have the courage to rein in the negative excesses of personal freedoms and ambitions.

  A worm’s-eye view, however, provides a picture that is somewhat at odds with conventional accounts that portray Amish culture through a series of generalizations about “core values.” For one, in spite of the success of micro-enterprises and the high retention rate of young people staying in the church, the Amish themselves continue to worry about the internal state of their faith. It is increasingly difficult to get the youth to appreciate the hardships suffered by earlier generations. The English language is being used in more and more situations, and learning high German is not always a top priority for the young people. For another, the range of practices included under the tent of Gelassenheit or under the umbrella injunction to remain separate from the world is increasingly diverse. There may be agreement in theory that all Amish maintain a “spirit” of nonconformity, but in practice there is a huge cultural chasm, for example, between those Amish groups that can own computers (with some restrictions on use), at one end of the spectrum, and those who are not even allowed to buy processed Velveeta cheese, at the other. Amish definitions of what is “worldly” have evolved over time, but such definitions have also become increasingly differentiated within the Amish community. As usual, the proof is in the details, for the realities of Amish life are far more complicated than the idyllic portraits in tourist guidebooks would suggest.

  Central Concepts and Guiding Questions

  The central argument of this book is that the Holmes County Amish are involved in an unprecedented and complex process of change that is driven both by external (global, national or regional, and local) forces and by internal social and cultural distinctions. This dialectic results in “border work” that transforms everyone, but not in the same way. Unraveling how and why the process of change is unfolding similarly and differently across families, church districts and affiliations, workplaces, schools, and health care institutions is one of our major goals. In telling this story, we have tried to dispense with scholarly jargon in favor of a more readable account. Still, we believe it is important at the outset to introduce three key components of the conceptual model we use to explain dynamism and diversity in the Amish community.

  First, we see social change and difference among the Amish as a product of crosscutting external and internal forces.30 In the Amish case, the external conditions and pressures come in many forms but include economic competition from abroad, federal regulations, and land pressures created by tourism and urban sprawl.31 But most external pressures in the Holmes County Settlement have their origins at the state or local level (for example, highway safety, zoning, or health regulations) and affect different segments of the Amish in different ways. At the local level, the health department’s concern over “gray water” primarily affects the Swartzentruber Amish,32 while a school board decision about whether to “cater to the Amish” may affect Amish of all affiliations who live in a particular school district. At the state level, the attempt to establish a streamlined sales tax primarily affects Amish furniture makers who ship outside the county, whereas the decision to require that assistance for the mentally and physically handicapped be channeled through Medicaid forces accommodations in the financial strategies of Amish families who have special-needs children. Assuming that both outside pressures and internal responses are multidimensional, our study takes a fine-grained approach by asking which external pressures lead to what kinds of responses.

  Although many Amish practices are shaped by outside forces, the seeds of change sometimes lie within. Internal characteristics such as settlement type (age, location, size, and history) and the number and distribution of affiliations within a settlement shape responses to external forces in powerful ways. Internal doctrinal disagreements, sometimes triggered by personality conflicts and hidden from outsiders, lead to different degrees of separation from the world among Amish church districts and affiliations. In the Holmes County Settlement, disputes over the application of shunning, the use of tobacco, control over the young folks, and the assurance of salvation have been at the center of several high-profile schisms.

  These external and internal forces interact in complex ways. The increasing entanglement with the market economy, for example, has lead to greater socioeconomic disparities in a “flat” society that has long downplayed differences in wealth. One New Order man we interviewed referred to Amish who focus on educational and economic attainment as the “uppity-class Amish.” His comment, though atypical, raises questions: how widespread are the seeds of class consciousness, and how do Amish millionaires and other wealthy individuals use their money in culturally appropriate or inappropriate ways? Our study examines how the growing purchasing power of the Amish has created new hobbies, patterns of consumption, access to health care, ways of thinking about leisure time, and forms of influence within Amish church districts.

  Similarly, the new occupational niches occupied by the Holmes County Amish have created new challenges for family life. The shared labor and rhythms of daily life on the farm, which created a coherent, if not uniform, worldview among the Amish, have given way to a multiplicity of work situations with very uneven cultural implications. A husband who takes his lunch pail and “works away” may leave his wife at home alone with the children, while his own day may involve interaction with primarily Amish co-workers at a local factory or working side-by-side with non-Amish on a construction crew in a nearby town. Alternatively, he may wake up and simply walk next door to his furniture shop; its proximity keeps the family together but potentially brings new technologies closer to the home. Or the entire family may participate in running a greenhouse business, just as everyone would have pitched in on the farm. Each of these work situations has different implications for gender roles and for the socialization of children, as well as for contact with worldly values such as individualism, pride, and competition. A framework in which social change is viewed as a product of crosscutting external and internal forces allows us to ask how the Amish negotiate cultural boundaries in a context of competing pressures for integration and separation.

  A second key component of our theoretical model is a focus on border work, the redefinition and defense of cultural boundaries that goes on at cultural margins. Periods of rapid social and economic change often involve the deployment of new symbols and practices to distinguish one group from another.33 Rather than seeing only one cultural border between the Amish and the non-Amish, however, we believe the various Amish affiliations themselves function as status groups in the Weberian sense, namely, that “above all else a specific style of life is expected from all those who wish to belong to the circle.”34 Each group, the Swartzentruber Amish, the Andy Weaver Amish, and the Old and New Order Amish, can be seen as trying to exercise its status privilege by monopolizing certain material goods, dress, and even potential marriage partners.

  In some cases, the construction and defense of boundaries become more significant than the cultural practices that differentiate two groups. The difference between Old Order buggies with steel-clad wheels and New Order buggies with rubber on the rims, for instance, is usually interpreted as a result of different value orientations. Yet the Old Order Amish have adopted other technologies that are far more progressive than rubber tires. A more probable explanation was offered by one Amish man: “The only reason the Old Order don’t have rubber w
heels is because the New Order did it first.”

  Our study thus explores the status rankings among Amish affiliations and the contemporary symbols of purity and pollution that are used to maintain boundaries both within the Amish community and with the non-Amish world. We look especially closely at the edges of community, which are defined by rules and rituals that designate who belongs, who has authority, and who can communicate with whom.35 For example, we analyze the experiences of the ex-Amish as a window on the struggle to maintain the integrity of community, as well as teenagers who are in the rumspringa period and hold a “liminal” status in Amish society.36 On the one hand, this focus leads us to ask very specific questions about which cultural boundaries are relatively permeable, which ones are fixed, and under what circumstances. On the other hand, it allows us to raise more general questions about the development of internal contradictions within a group and whether regular breaches of cultural rules should be seen as problematic (the Amish are sometimes accused of hypocrisy, for example) or as a key component of cultural renewal.37

  The third and final piece of our conceptual model involves the notion of terrains of tension, which we define as the broad cultural dilemmas that are triggered by the interaction of internal and external forces. We argue that these dilemmas generally center on competing interpretations of the relative importance of community and the individual and, more specifically, on how to weigh values and interests, structure and agency, and freedom and security. At the broadest level, the relationship between the community and the individual is open to different interpretations. To some, community is seen as smothering rather than providing security for the individual. In this image, the community and the autonomous individual are in an antagonistic rather than complementary relationship. To others, the relationship is positive because the individual reaches perfection through the community, with the community providing economic, social, and religious security, thereby eliminating the danger of the loss of freedom that can come from insecurity. Advocates echo the sentiment related by the poet William Watson: “The stars of heaven are free because in the amplitude of liberty their joy is to obey the laws.”38

  The sociologist Emile Durkheim conveyed a similar view of the relationship between the requirements of community and the freedom of the individual: “The individual submits to society and this submission is the condition of his liberation. For man freedom consists in deliverance from blind, unthinking physical forces; he achieves this by opposing against them the great and intelligent force of society, under whose protection he shelters.”39 This latter view is one that is often attributed to all Amish by outside observers, but we argue that internal debate about the relative importance of the individual and the community is a recurring feature of Amish life.

  More specifically, the relative weight given to values or interests may vary by affiliation, by church district, and even by particular circumstances. Like the rest of us, Amish individuals often make decisions that are informed by a mixture of cultural-religious values and material interests. The weight of community traditions, rules, and organization may also vary in the extent to which it limits the agency of individuals and their ability to freely choose particular paths of action. The connection between freedom and security is equally complex. Some define freedom in terms of choices and independence (i.e., freedom “to”), while others privilege a Rooseveltian view of freedom, freedom “from” insecurity, want, and fear.

  Taken together, these terrains of tension suggest that viewing the modern and the traditional as singular opposing forces is far too simplistic to capture the dynamics of change in Amish communities. We assume rather that Amish groups experience “modernity” and “tradition” in different ways.40 It is certainly true that, in general, the Amish do not adhere to key dimensions of modernity such as specialization, pluralism, rationalization, individuation, and choice.41 But if the “modern” emerges in the form of “customary practice” (that is, if “new” cultural practices become routine and are perceived as “the way we’ve always done it” in a relatively short period of time), then it is hard to overlook the multiple interpretations of tradition and modernity that exist among the Holmes County Amish.42 We must ask how and why each affiliation and each church district has made different choices in defining separation from the world. We must also inquire about the consequences of these competing definitions of tradition for interaction among the Amish themselves and for their integration with the larger world.

  One outcome of our theoretical model is that we view Amish cultural identity in plural terms. The popular notion that the Amish are “plain and simple” has perpetuated the myth of a homogeneous people that is increasingly at odds with the complexity and diversity of Amish identities. It is no longer a secret that Amish church districts of every persuasion have negotiated compromises with worldly influences ranging from telephones and state bureaucracy to the modern health care system, tourism, and transportation by motor vehicle.43 In emphasizing change and diversity, we do not deny the continuities with the past, nor do we disagree that all Amish share certain cultural inclinations and sensibilities. But we believe that many popular and academic accounts of the Amish have overstated the degree of coherence and integration in Amish communities, failing to even raise questions about the points of conflict and convergence between cultural knowledge and practices produced in the different contexts of work, family, church, and school. Thomas Meyers and Steven Nolt’s image of Amish culture as “a patchwork quilt that combines different colors and shapes with a common thread” aptly captures this diversity amid unity, though perhaps not the accompanying tensions.44

  The Origins and Growth of the Holmes County Settlement

  Though centered in Holmes County, the Holmes County Settlement actually includes small parts of Wayne, Stark, Tuscarawas, Coshocton, Knox, and Ashland counties, as shown in the map of Ohio Amish settlements. The Holmes County Settlement is both the oldest and the largest in Ohio, but it is by no means the only one. More than fifty smaller Amish settlements have been established in other parts of the state, including the Geauga Settlement, the fourth-largest in the world (see appendix B for the location, the date of origin, and the affiliation of each settlement and the number of church districts each has). The roughly thirty thousand Amish who live in the Holmes County Settlement are about one-seventh of the total population of the Amish in the United States, well ahead of the population estimates for the two next-largest settlements, those in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and in Elkhart and LaGrange counties, Indiana. The large size of a settlement has many implications, but in the Holmes County context, it means that most Amish live relatively close to a town and that they have ample opportunity to interact with Amish from several affiliations as well as with non-Amish tourists and locals.

  Amish settlements throughout the United States and Canada show considerable variation in not only size and age but also migration history, regional and local context, and mix of church Ordnung.45 Like all Amish settlements, the Holmes County Settlement is distinctive in several ways, including its history. According to local historians, “Ohio fever” began running high among the Amish in the early 1800s. The first Amish settlers arrived in the Sugarcreek and Walnut Creek areas from Somerset County in southwestern Pennsylvania around 1809 as part of the westward expansion of the first wave of migrants who settled in Lancaster County. President Thomas Jefferson signed deeds for land near Walnut Creek settled by a young Amish man named Jonas Stutzman. Several years later other Amish moved to Smithville in Wayne County, a settlement that eventually died out. Although the Amish clearly benefited from the systematic and violent expulsion of native peoples by the U.S. government, no reports exist of Amish settlers joining in the aggression; in fact, in the early days of the Holmes County Settlement, Indian and Amish farmers lived side by side on peaceful terms along the Sugar Creek.46 By 1835, roughly two hundred fifty Amish families were living in the Holmes County Settlement.47

  Ohio Amish settlement
s, 2008. Ohio is home to nearly fifty Amish settlements that vary in age, number of church districts, affiliation, and community of origin. Adapted from Ohio Amish Directory; and Luthy, “Amish Settlements across America.” Compiled by Mary Schantz.

  The years between 1850 and 1870 are known as a time of division between conservative-minded and progressive Amish in the large settlements in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana; however, the conflict in Holmes County was particularly bitter. Members differed over whether the church Ordnung was to be changed only in rare cases or whether it was to be used as a tool of adaptation, “a necessary means of remaining relevant.”48 In Wayne and Holmes counties, for example, some leaders argued over whether stream baptism was acceptable. Change-minded Amish such as Bishop Jacob D. Yoder, who also engaged in other “worldly” practices such as mule racing and horse trading, argued that stream baptism should be as valid as traditional baptism as part of an indoor church service. But other issues of adaptation to the world lurked behind the conflict over mode of baptism. To try to achieve reconciliation, leaders organized a national ministers’ meeting attended by seventy-two ordained leaders from five states and held in Wayne County in June 1862. But most of the attendees were progressives, and the reports were disappointing to conservatives, leaving one bishop to lament, “If we wish to destroy a weed, we must pull it up by the roots; otherwise, it will just keep growing.”49