An Amish Paradox

by Charles E. Hurst

  Complicating the Liberal-Conservative Continuum: New and Old Order Approaches

  Within this broad context of changing external circumstances, Amish affiliations, church districts, and families have responded in very different ways. The signature accomplishment of the New Order churches, for instance, has been the extent to which they have been able to gain control over the lives of their young people during this period. The New Order not only adopted the more evangelical position that the world could end at any time (emphasizing that everyone must be prepared, including those who are not yet baptized), they also took several practical steps to eliminate traditional courtship patterns and experimentation with alcohol and tobacco. Over time, the New Order did in fact develop a reputation for “clean living.”18

  The first strategy was an intentional attempt by New Order adults to reform the “singings,” which had become synonymous with parties in many Amish church districts. “Singings” are a little-known aspect of Amish life that youth attend on Sunday nights after their sixteenth birthday.19 The official agenda is religious—to sing hymns in high German—but the unofficial social goal is allowing teens to interact with their peers and eventually find a mate. For many years before the New Order split off from the Old Order, drinking, dancing, and listening to music had become commonplace before and after the prescribed hymn singing. The founding church leaders and parents of the New Order decided their singings would be different from what they had experienced. They drew up strict rules for singings and began chaperoning the youth.

  Volleyball is a popular activity whenever young people gather. Some Old Order and New Order singings require more than ten volleyball nets to accommodate the turnout. Photograph by Doyle Yoder.

  In conjunction with increased control over singings, the New Order church districts took the drastic step of requiring that young people become candidates for membership in the church before they could date. The result is that New Order youth tend to join church two or three years earlier than their peers in other affiliations and tend to marry a year or two later. Some Old Order Amish see this approach as problematic because it is not always clear whether New Order youth are joining church out of a desire to keep the Amish lifestyle or to be able to “go with the young folks” and find a “special friend.”

  Finally, New Order Amish actively abolished the traditional practice of bed courtship, or bundling. Stevick notes that the custom of bundling, brought by European immigrants to the United States, probably originated when couples were courting in houses without heat.20 From the start, bundling has been controversial in certain areas, and in many settlements it has waned in popularity or been dropped. Where it is still practiced, it retains the basic cultural script followed by the parents and grandparents over the years. Usually on a Sunday night, after a girl’s parents have gone to bed, a boy visits the girl in her bedroom, where they lie together, without shoes but fully clothed, until the wee hours of the morning. Stevick estimates that only 10 percent of Amish communities still practice bundling,21 but the precise figure is difficult to discern. What is clear is that the New Order Amish categorically reject it, as this parent describes: “As for ‘keeping company,’ this has changed so much. We want to see more communication in daylight, not at night, and we want them to be downstairs, not upstairs in a bedroom. We also discourage dating for an overly long time, like one to two years. You do not ask for a date just for a date. You have to have a goal of searching for a lifelong companion. Some of our young boys, when they desire to keep company with girls, will go to the father and ask his permission to keep steady company.” In addition to discouraging “dating around,” New Order parents preach “pure courtship,” which includes “hands off” in the early stages and no “bodily contact for the purpose of gaining unchristian liberties” before or after the engagement.22

  How effective have these New Order approaches been? An interesting indicator can be seen in the timing of first births in relation to marriage. Using data from the Ohio Amish Directory, Elizabeth Cooksey and Joseph Donnermeyer found that the percentage of premarital conceptions among New Order women who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s (after the New Order split off) is roughly half that of the overall figure for 1940–59 birth cohorts. In addition, the percentage of premarital conceptions occurring among the New Order youth was less than half the level for the Andy Weaver youth and less than one-third of the level for Old Order youth. Cooksey and Donnermeyer conclude that the New Order Amish are, in fact, doing a better job of protecting their young people from pre-marital sex.23 Apart from sexual behavior, there is widespread agreement across the settlement that New Order youth are also less likely to drink, smoke, and do drugs.

  To more conservative Amish minds, though, the ultimate indicator of effective socialization is the rate of retention of young people—and by this standard, the New Order group fares poorly in relation to other affiliations. Based on analysis of the 2005 Ohio Amish Directory, the New Order retained only 67 percent of its young people overall.24 The more permissive stance on technology is probably one reason that the New Order loses so many young people and becomes a de facto “feeder system” for the Beachy and Mennonite churches. But, as Kraybill points out, the more individualistic way of thinking about salvation among the New Order may also be significant: young people who move up a step have only to acquire a car and electronics rather than a whole new mind-set.25 It is worth noting, however, that average retention rates among the “second generation” of New Order families have crept up from a low of 48 percent in the early 1980s.26

  Old Order attitudes and practices toward rumspringa show much more variation. Even within congregations, there can be sharp disagreement over what is acceptable behavior for the young people. Still, two broad Old Order positions are discernible. On the one hand, some Old Order families have adopted the thinking of the New Order that the young people are within the restrictions of the Ordnung at all times. One Old Order woman put it this way: “The idea of a period of freedom for a teenager is not biblical. Somewhere in past generations it became accepted as normal.” An Old Order businessman agreed. “If there’s an Ordnung, it should apply in all stages of our lives.” In the early years, Old Order families who took this position and restricted the freedoms of their teenage children were known as Midways. Scattered within various Old Order church districts, Midway parents have tried to keep the singings free of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs and ensure that their teenagers court youth from like-minded families. Although a few Midways have joined the New Order, most have not, for several reasons. For one, they believe their position is biblically justified and consistent with Old Order theology. In addition, they are comfortable with Old Order regulations on technology and fear that their children would be more likely to leave the Amish if they switched to the New Order. As a result, the Midway philosophy has taken root in many families in the absence of any official changes in Ordnung across Old Order church districts. Nevertheless, many New Order Amish have cast the growth of this loose network of Old Order families as vindication of their views.

  Our interview with an Old Order minister who was an informal leader of the Midways in the early 1980s provided a fascinating glimpse into the origins of this movement. He related that by the 1960s Sunday night singings had become synonymous with partying in many Old Order church districts: “Youth would invade a home and really the parents couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything about it.” As a result, many parents refused to host singings for about a twenty-year period. Finally, fearing that their own teenage children would start going with the “rowdy crowd,” this minister and his wife spread the word among like-minded families that they were going to host a singing on Easter evening. “I just decided, ‘We’re going to do this’ because I wanted to see for myself what the conditions at a singing were really like.” He continued:

  We had about 30 young people downstairs and had finished supper and were preparing to sing, when just like that, the autos started pulling up in front of our
house. It was mostly boys, but some girls, and they hauled the beer out and marched straight upstairs and started drinking. I’d say there were 50 upstairs and 30 downstairs, and then the ones drinking upstairs started rolling bottles down the stairs. So I went upstairs and one of the leaders, bein’ as they were real brave, came right up to me and said, “And is there anything you want up here?” I said, “Yes, very much. Apparently, you were never taught what this day represents.” They were stunned and didn’t know what to say. I said, “It’s important that you understand [what Easter means] and repent.” Then the leader demanded, “Are you trying to preach to us?” I said, “No, I’m just telling you the truth.” The next day we found any number of bottles that were only half empty, and that was an eye-opener that we needed to talk with our young people. After that, the rowdy ones stopped coming to the singings. We always invite them, they are welcome, but they never come.

  This minister estimates that the Midway philosophy has come to be shared by roughly half of the Old Order families in the Holmes County Settlement. One result is that singings and related youth group meetings are not only supervised but coordinated by committees of nonordained parents rather than by individual church districts.27 Importantly, the Midway movement in the Holmes County Settlement has spread to Pennsylvania and Indiana. Stevick describes the “supervised singings” that have resulted from the Midway movement as “one of the most profound changes that has occurred in the last 25 years.”28

  On the other hand, a sizable proportion of Old Order parents hold firmly to the belief that if young people do not experiment with the world, they will find it difficult to be completely satisfied with the Amish lifestyle. Usually, the parents themselves have gone through rumspringa with no serious side effects and therefore wonder, “How could you not ask the young people to get it out of their system? I did that when I was young.” Such Old Order parents view the New Order struggles to retain their youth as a result, in part, of their restrictions on rumspringa. For instance, one Old Order man told us he notices that New Order youth who do not experience a wild rumspringa compensate by “going overboard” in fancying up their buggies. Parents who condone the logic of a wild rumspringa usually provide passive support, but they will occasionally serve as active facilitators. We heard of a mother who bought jeans for her boys and of a father who lent his credit card to a child to pay for a snowboarding trip to upstate New York. In general, these Old Order parents find the attempt to restrict rumspringa by the New Order and the Midways to be somewhat self-righteous, and they are less likely than either group to view the temporary adoption of English practices before baptism as jeopardizing one’s prospects of going to heaven.29

  The most far-reaching practice of these Old Order parents is the permission they give their sons (and much less commonly, daughters) to buy a car once they turn sixteen to eighteen years old. According to several Old Order leaders, about one-third to one-half of the Old Order church districts in the settlement condone this practice, and as a result cars can be found discreetly parked behind bushes or barns at numerous Amish homes. “I worshipped my car,” recalled one forty-year-old Old Order bishop. “Oh yeah, they have the best [cars],” commented a non-Amish businessman whose work force is mostly Amish. “These kids put a lot of money into their cars.” Cars driven by Old Order teenage boys have become a fixture on the roads in the settlement as they take Amish construction crews to work, shuttle family members on shopping trips, or carry their peers to ball fields, parties, or other gatherings. Though they are expected to “put the car away” once they join church, the temporary availability of transportation allows some Old Order youth to have a much broader set of experiences than most other Amish young people have.

  Does Lower Equal Wilder? Andy Weaver and Swartzentruber Youth

  As we move down the Anabaptist escalator, the general view among the Amish is that the lower the group, the wilder the youth. The cultural logic seems to be that the more conservative the affiliation one is joining, the greater the necessity of “sowing one’s wild oats” because the restrictions on adult life will be harsher. This generalization does not always hold up, however, as the variation within the Old Order affiliation attests. The Andy Weavers confound the generalization as well, because their affiliation-wide ban on young people living at home if they purchase a car is stricter than the stance of many Old Order church districts. Yet the Andy Weaver young people also have a reputation for drinking that exceeds that of the Old Order. An elderly Andy Weaver man acknowledged outright, “We do have an alcohol problem among our young people.”

  The Andy Weavers further stand out from most of the Old Order churches in their acceptance of tobacco. The incidence of smoking among Andy Weavers has declined somewhat, however, compared to previous generations, when virtually every man smoked a pipe and every house had a spittoon. According to one Andy Weaver church member, changing public opinion about the negative health effects of smoking and of secondhand smoke, which led to a statewide ban on smoking in all businesses in 2006, has been partially responsible for this change.

  The heavy consumption of alcohol by some Old Order and Andy Weaver youth creates challenges for local law enforcement officials, several of whom have an Amish background and speak some Pennsylvania Dutch.30 “Absolutely, there is more underage drinking among the Amish than the English because that is their pastime,” commented one officer. He continued: “In the summer almost every weekend we would get word on where the parties were at. The biggest ones were at the Holmes and Tuscarawas county lines, hundreds of kids from all over. They’d have bands and set up a stage like a semi-trailer. It would be strictly Amish and you just wonder where they get all of the beer. We’d sit there in awe because we’d stop cars going to the party, and they would be loaded to the gills with beer.”31 This officer also noted that they rarely had to worry about being the target of violence from the Amish kids they arrested, though they could be very argumentative and “knew the law.” Interestingly, anonymous phone calls from Amish parents often provide the impetus for law enforcement to intervene. “It’s shameful that we have to depend on the sheriff to keep our young people in line,” admitted an Andy Weaver elder. “But the sheriff’s deputies have helped a lot.”

  The rumspringa experience among the Swartzentruber Amish differs somewhat from its expression among other Holmes County Amish. The continued prominence of farming, coupled with a more restricted lifestyle, has somewhat insulated the Swartzentrubers from outside influences. One result is that courtship still includes the practice of bundling in all three Swartzentruber branches. In bundling the youth retire to the girl’s bedroom, where they lie on the bed—the girl in a special, more colorful “night dress” and the boy clothed, but sometimes with his shirt off—until just before the family awakes. An ex-Swartzentruber woman describes the scene: “After the parents are in bed, the guy shows up, and he sneaks in. Even though they know he’s there, facing them is supposed to be embarrassing—you know, like when you first date, you’re kind of shy meeting the parents the first time—so somehow you’re supposed to do this in secret.” Sometimes the couples will be joined by friends and will eat snacks and talk until the boys “escape” just before dawn. Hugging and kissing sometimes occur, but sexual involvement is supposed to be off-limits. In addition to the regular dating after Sunday evening singings, the Swartzentrubers practice a special wedding-night custom known as the “midnight table,” in which unmarried boys and girls are paired up for dates by middlemen known as “hostlers.”32

  Although more liberal affiliations see bed courtship as immoral, its Swartzentruber defenders argue that it teaches self-discipline. Stevick recounts that a young man who left the Amish to join the armed forces was met with disbelief when he told his barracks buddies that boys in his community went to bed with girls but refrained from sex. “But we didn’t,” the man insisted.33 Even within the most conservative groups, however, there is growing disagreement about these issues. Some Swartzentruber affiliations in Wyomi
ng and Tennessee, for example, have “taken a stand” against bed courtship.

  The experience of rumspringa can be somewhat different for children from the three Swartzentruber branches, or even depending on family traditions, parental expectations, and sibling behaviors within each branch. Some Swartzentruber parents try to prohibit partying, drinking, and smoking altogether. Among those youth who do experiment with prohibited practices, the wilder ones are more likely to smoke regular cigarettes, whereas the more conservative ones will smoke pipes and cigars. The kinds of card games (poker versus UNO), the extent of hat and dress modifications, and the kinds of music listened to (pop versus country or western) all provide symbolic markers of the reputation of a Swartzentruber peer group as “fast” or “slow.”

  Since the ideal culmination of the rumspringa period for all Amish groups is baptism into the church, we wanted to learn how the retention rates of the Old Order, Andy Weaver, and Swartzentruber churches compared with those of the New Order. As shown in table 3.1, the most successful affiliation in the Holmes County Settlement is the Andy Weaver church, with an astounding 97 percent retention rate. Insiders estimate that the Swartzentruber retention rate is about 90 percent, though some believe it has dropped slightly in the past five to ten years. “They are having a lot of trouble with their young people, especially at auctions,” noted an Old Order businessman who employs Swartzentrubers. “They get more exposure, and lots are leaving. It’s a mini-crisis.” The Old Order retain well over three-quarters of their young people, whereas the New Order retain just under two-thirds of theirs. What is clear in this comparison is that a more liberal Ordnung does not necessarily correlate with increased likelihood of youth joining the church. At least one sociologist has argued that when church membership demands less commitment, it is easier to drop out; strict churches, however, “can penalize or prohibit alternate activities that compete for members’ resources.”34