An Amish Paradox

by Charles E. Hurst

  Staff members of hospice in both Wayne and Holmes counties are trained on Amish beliefs, values, and practices, as well as the diversity within the Amish community. They also communicate with Amish bishops about hospice services and provide caregiving classes for potential users. These outreach efforts have led to a greater Amish awareness of the services provided by hospice and have resulted in heavier Amish involvement in the program. Often a nurse from hospice will be called to the home after a person has died to make the formal pronouncement of death.

  Acceptance of death appears almost naturally because it is viewed as part of God’s divine plan. In a recent book organized by an Amish author, parents and others were asked to write letters about the deaths of family members. The letters relate the events surrounding the deaths as well as family reactions and adjustments to the deaths. The aim of the author was to “help the healing process of the grieving, to preserve family history and food for the soul to the reader.”46 Several common themes running through the letters demonstrate basic Amish beliefs and values.47 One of these is the refusal to question the deaths involved and the belief that death is part of God’s larger plan: “God helped me to see that this is His will and the thought came to me, that I don’t want to fight against God’s will for me.” “The good Lord knows best. We want to put our trust in Him.”

  There is also a common belief that the deceased is in a better place, is with God, and will be later joined with family members: “How wonderful to know they are safe in the arms of Jesus.” “God gives and God gathers His children home again.” “Having a family started in heaven gives us a longing to go there and gives us a greater desire to leave this world for a better place, where there will be no parting or tears.” Another theme is that God provides signs to help people understand and adjust to the deaths of loved ones: “I dreamed I saw him and he was so happy. I feel God showed me this dream so I could let go and go on.” “An angel tapped me this morning … God has helped us so much and I trust He will in the future.” Pervading the letters are expressions of thanks to friends and relatives who have helped during the viewings and the funerals. There is a clear sense of belonging to a larger community.

  The arrangements for funerals and burials have some distinctive features among the Amish. If the person dies at home, the body is embalmed at a funeral home or, in the case of a Swartzentruber death, at home, and is available for a “viewing” at the home to allow friends and relatives to see the deceased for the last time. Usually a person is designated to escort guests into the room where the body lies. Typically, little cosmetic work has been done on the deceased. How the body is displayed tends to vary with the order of the deceased. Swartzentruber Amish usually place the body on a board stretched over two chairs, whereas the Andy Weaver Amish place the body on a cot. New Order and some Old Order Amish use the wood coffin to display the body. Swartzentruber Amish do not put the body in its coffin until the day of the burial. Coffins are plain on the outside, without handles, but are often given a polyurethane finish. In 2008 there were eight coffin makers in the Holmes County Settlement.

  Amish coffins are most often made of cypress and lined in cotton with no ornamentation. Swartzentruber Amish generally use poplar, which is cheaper than cypress. The picture on the bottom shows a buggy that the casket maker has modified to carry coffins. Photographs courtesy of Charles Hurst.

  The time between death and the funeral service, held in a shop or other building on the family’s property, is usually about three days. The service itself begins about nine in the morning and lasts one to two hours. For Old and New Order services, memory cards are available as mementos or keepsakes. The burial after the service is in an Amish cemetery on someone’s property and is usually attended by only the extended family. Located inside the grave is an rough oak box into which the coffin is lowered with the use of cloth straps. Because the box is wood, over time the grave may sink, and so there are some undulations in the ground across the cemetery. A plain Arlington-style headstone is used to mark the grave. After the burial, a light lunch is usually provided for the family by church members, and perhaps an evening meal. Although there are surface variations among the Amish in the trappings used in the funeral and burial process, the process of dying and events associated with death, like most aspects of Amish lives, are treated as parts of the cycle of life. The Amish leave life as they enter it—simply.

  Facing Conflicts and Offering Lessons

  It should be evident from this survey of health care that there are many variations and disagreements within the Amish community regarding giving birth, getting health care for physical and psychological problems, and accepting remedies from health care givers. Some Amish more readily accept traditional beliefs and practices and are skeptical of modern medicine, although the acceptance and use of modern medicine appears to be increasing, especially among New Order and many Old Order Amish. Swartzentruber Amish remain steeped in tradition in regard to lifestyle and most health care matters. But in all the churches, there is some mixture of traditional and modern components in the use of health care services, even though the mixture varies.

  The differences carry a potential for conflicts within the Ohio Amish community. For example, to what extent should certain birthing centers have to follow state requirements that apply to other such centers? Should a community be allowed to follow its unique beliefs even if professionals believe that a common standard of care should be imposed in these facilities? As health care costs rise, to what extent are lower-income Amish members going to be helped by other Amish who are cost-conscious? And to what extent do they want to be helped, given their desire not to be a burden to others? How can education about health care charlatans, superstitious beliefs, and ineffective and sometimes dangerous remedies be pursued among some groups of Amish without violating their ideas about the role and extent of education needed in life? To what extent does obedience to an authority figure, religious or professional, take precedence over one’s own knowledge and concerns? What consequences do differences in “enlightenment” and wealth have for the solidarity within the Amish community? There are significant differences in all these areas. The Ohio Amish are a heterogeneous group about whom broad, meaningful generalizations are hazardous.

  General agreement exists among the Amish, however, in certain areas of their overall philosophy about health, about others, and about the place of death in the life cycle. Their views are very pragmatic: health means being able to function properly. It has less to do with “feelings” than with “behavior.” In tune with their values of humility and selflessness, there is a prime concern for others. “How will my illness and its treatment affect others?” is a central question when an Amish person is confronted with a life-threatening disease. Finally, the deep religious beliefs of the Amish provide a clear and comforting perspective on death and its meaning.

  Although the English community may think of itself as more modern and therefore more advanced or enlightened, there are significant lessons to be learned from the Amish approach to health matters. Among these are parts of their pragmatic philosophy. Being cost-conscious and prudent in the use of health care is important. At the same time, so is preventive care, which, though an expense, can yield long-term benefits. The relationship that exists between Amish patients and doctors also seems worthy of emulation. Honesty, directness, and willingness to follow professional directions are hallmarks of the most effective relationships. In addition, thinking of oneself as only one part of a community whose members are tied together creates a network upon which a sick person can rely for comfort and economic support. Some people simply cannot pay the costs of needed medical care. Moreover, observing the Amish model to reduce costs may provide us with clues about what we need to do to formulate a “sustainable” medical plan for all our citizens,48 although in the process, difficult choices may need to be made. These are all lessons from which ordinary citizens and national policymakers may be able to benefit.

  CHAPTER
8

  Stepping Back and Looking Forward

  What will happen to the next generation with the way things are going?

  —A New Order Amish man

  In the previous chapters, we have discussed numerous dimensions of the Holmes County Settlement as if they were discrete and isolated from each other. But of course they are not. In everyday life and in reality, they are woven into the single tapestry of the Amish lifestyle and culture. In this chapter we present a model that explains the dynamism and diversity among the Amish, and we speculate on how cohesion is maintained in spite of the change and diversity that are so characteristic of the Holmes County Settlement.

  Paradoxically, the Amish of Holmes and surrounding counties have had to remain open to connections with English society to preserve the integrity and separateness of their own culture. As a consequence, it is the interplay of internal and external forces that operates to produce the unique character of the Amish community. The complex boundaries that separate Amish and English communities require continual boundary-maintenance work to balance in-group and out-group pressures in different institutional domains. As a result of these pressures on the boundaries, various kinds of tensions are generated to which responses are made. The dialectical processes of change and the seemingly incompatible forces of community and the individual in terms of values and interests, structure and individual agency, and security and freedom, exist as terrains of tension operating through the institutional fields of religion, education, work, family, and health care. But despite the centrifugal forces at work within the Holmes County Settlement, centripetal forces maintain a high level of cohesion. In addition to close ties, these include several mechanisms and interpretations of social control that serve as sources of trust and solidarity in the Amish community. These are the aspects of the Amish paradox examined in the following sections.

  We have also identified some consequential trends that suggest lessons from the Amish lifestyle that might serve all of us. And we revisit the issue of trust and the need to find effective solutions to the problems that arise in the relationship between the community and the individual.

  Inside the Amish Crucible

  A crucible is “a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development.” It is also defined as a “severe test or trial.”1 In many ways, the Amish community is a crucible. There is no question that the lifestyles and belief systems chosen by Amish churches and their members are buffeted by powerful, contradictory internal and external forces on a regular basis. These pressures constitute a fundamental test of the mettle of Amish culture and its representatives and provide the immediate context within which decisions about change and constancy are made.

  Nolt and Meyers point out that Amish diversity is created by (a) variations in migration histories, Ordnung, and ethnic backgrounds; (b) the use of divergent means to reach common goals within the community; and (c) differences in the local contexts in which Amish groups reside.2 These contexts vary in their social, economic, and legal features. In other words, both internal and external factors shape the contours of specific Amish settlements. Internally, constancy and change are also conditioned by the differing histories of settlements and demographic variations within them, by the presence of several noncommuning church affiliations with distinctive sets of regulations, and even by the force of individual personalities. The key internal factors that foster Amish diversity are these:

  Church district Ordnung

  Affiliation

  Settlement

  Size

  Age

  History

  Location

  Population dynamics

  Growth rate

  Age distribution

  Personality conflicts

  When these internal elements interact with external pressures such as land availability, tourism, technological developments, and legal issues, they create uneven rates of change within the Amish community, because affiliations frequently react differently to these pressures. For example, as we have noted, while Swartzentruber Amish may react to the lack of land availability by moving to new locations, other groups may pursue new occupations to compensate for the scarcity of available farmland. Differences in the interpretations and weighting of the traditions and core values of Amish culture often lie at the heart of variations in responses.

  Sometimes the external economic and political pressures faced by the Amish community are national or even international in scope, as seen in this list of key external forces producing Amish diversity:

  Global Forces

  Economic competition and markets

  Energy resources

  Outreach communities and mission work

  Flows of outside information

  Scholarly work and conferences

  National, Regional, and State Forces

  Technological innovations

  Financial trends

  Court cases and legal requirements

  Highway safety and funding

  Cost and availability of health care

  Local Forces

  Township and county zoning ordinances

  Law enforcement

  Health department regulations

  Tourism

  Local monitoring agencies

  Cost and availability of land

  An Amish bishop told us of his concern for the many local small woodworking and furniture businesses that have been established in recent years. He worried that the 2008–9 national housing and mortgage crisis might force some of these enterprises out of business because of downturns in the demand for furniture and other house-related products. One owner of a very successful furniture company indicated that business had indeed dropped because of this national issue. Competition from less-expensive furniture imports from China has also been a concern that has moved some Amish manufacturers to shift their tactics and the markets they target.

  More locally, regions vary in numbers and types of employers, ordinances, and populations. Individual behaviors in workplaces differ, for example, if in one local area the economy is dominated by English employers who use sophisticated technologies and a particular management philosophy while in others the employers are mostly Amish people who are reluctant to use many new technologies and utilize a different management approach. Work is also conditioned by internal differences in the Holmes County Settlement. In the legal arena, behavioral reactions to external demands like state requirements for buggy safety vary; some affiliations adapt fairly rapidly, and others follow more slowly or resist any departure from tradition. For example, all affiliations in the Holmes County Settlement except the Swartzentrubers display orange triangles on their buggies for safety. Even within the Swartzentruber affiliation, some groups have placed two lights on their buggies while others continue to use only one light. In the workplace, as we’ve seen, even within a given company, the specific jobs carried out by Amish employees will not be the same because the Ordnung is not the same in all affiliations, nor are the personalities.

  The combined pressure created by the interaction of external constraints and internal demands often leads to negotiated settlements that must then be legitimated. For example, internally there may be a concern that an Amish business is becoming too big; externally, there may be a lower demand for some products and consequently a lower demand for labor. What is to be done when a population is growing but the demand for labor is low? Whereas a conservative Swartzentruber response might be to avoid internal change by moving to another region, several Old and New Order Amish businessmen argued that they felt an obligation to provide employment for the next generation; therefore, their enterprises would need to grow, despite the possible dangers of too much growth or success. They would also have to be creative in identifying production areas where demand is still high or growing. Demand may be stimulated by greater amounts of visible, widespread advertising, but then there is the question of how much an Amish employer should advertise. The chang
es and resulting decisions that need to be made are often interlinked, creating a cascading and ever-present set of quandaries.

  The vise created by crosscutting forces from the inside and the outside is not restricted to economic matters. Differences in context and in Ordnung are also manifested in the arena of education. For example, the absence of easily accessible parochial schools in the immediate neighborhood is one factor that helps explain why some Amish children go to public schools even if the family’s church prefers for Amish students to attend a parochial school. Others, most likely some in the New Order, may choose to homeschool their children rather than send them to the local public school. As was found in the Sam Yoder and Andy Weaver instances, unique internal events in the histories of different affiliations and disagreements about policies have also instigated divisions in the religious sphere. In health care, the presence or absence of local birthing centers and their relative costs, along with the reputations of given health care givers in the area, interact with internal determinants such as church rules and wealth differences to affect birthing methods. In sum, a battery of shifting external forces act upon changing internal diversity within the Holmes County Settlement to produce a highly complex, sometimes bewildering set of differences, rendering the local Amish community anything but simple.