An Amish Paradox

by Charles E. Hurst

  Greater success in business can mean greater wealth for certain individuals and greater inequality in a community. The hierarchy of wealth and one’s place in it is not a primary source of Amish diversity, but rather a product of the interaction of external and internal forces cited in our model. For example, whether or not a church Ordnung (an internal factor) allows certain technologies in response to an external force such as shifts in demand or a newly opened economic opportunity will have an influence on how prosperous an affiliation or a person will be. However, the resulting inequality, in turn, creates a potential seedbed for greater individualism and larger egos, both of which stand in stark contrast to the focus on community and the attitude of Gelassenheit strongly encouraged by the Amish. Like other dilemmas, this one calls attention again to the “crucible” nature of the Amish lifestyle.

  The meeting of external and internal pressures takes place also on the terrain where the relative effect of a community’s structure and the role of individual agency collide. The “structure” of a community, that is, its traditions, rules, and organization, places limits upon the freely chosen behaviors (the “agency”) of its members. This fact is reflected in the kind of border work in which Amish engage. On the one hand, if the owner of a company decides to change by adopting a new technology or exploring a different market, he or she will encounter new elements within the English community. One New Order employer commented that while the style of work with the local Amish and English is “the same,” “things change” when the firm branches out to work with English in larger cities in Ohio or surrounding states. Having to work with larger numbers of distant strangers, an employer may have to “change down the road” and hire sales representatives instead of relying on word of mouth for sales or adopt more formal and “stringent guidelines of what you are willing to [do] and what you’re not willing to [do].” If, on the other hand, a group chooses not to change but to maintain tradition in response to pressure, they will likely have some change imposed upon them, if only to survive. This appears to be increasingly the case for the more traditional, conservative affiliations, such as the Swartzentrubers. As discussed earlier, many of those families have had to move because of their reluctance to adopt newer technologies or ways of living. Within the Andy Weaver group, there continue to be debates about the adoption of milking machines, which would open up another occupational outlet for them.

  Each group provides a sense of security to its members, and the Amish community in general does the same. But to gain that security, one has to adhere to the rules of the community that often restrict and direct an individual’s behavior. Consequently, in an objective sense, the individual’s freedom becomes limited. But both freedom and security are generally considered desirable. The clash between the freedom of the individual and the security of the community constitutes a third terrain of tension. Freedom in choosing one’s lifestyle is restricted if one wants to be a community member in good standing and retain the security that comes from being a part of the larger group. In this sense, the benefits of security may come at the expense of freedom. But as discussed in the next section, this dilemma can be and has been negotiated psychologically through creative interpretations of the meaning of security and freedom. For most churches, it has also been dealt with behaviorally by granting youth some freedoms through the loosening of restrictions to explore alternative lifestyles before joining the church, so that when they do join the church, they can benefit from the security that comes from being an effective participant in their community.

  When faced by dilemmas on several terrains, the Amish have utilized both interpretive and behavioral techniques to address them. The economic example of market expansion presented above involves a behavioral response to pressures. One example of an interpretive response has been to reinterpret meanings of the terms associated with sources of tension in ways that blunt the stress created by the contradictions. In the dilemmas in which the individual and his or her interests are pitted against those of the community and its values, for example, issues of inequality versus equality arise. They are often dealt with by interpreting equality and related concepts in a particular manner. The concept of equality has an ambiguous meaning among the Amish. For example, although they believe that men should be the leaders in the family and the community, men are not supposed to be bosses, because all are considered equal in the eyes of God. When asked about the meaning of the term equality to them, Amish women in our interviews frequently asked, “What is that?” or said, “We don’t dwell on it as a big deal.” The term “doesn’t come up in conversations” or was “puzzling” or “didn’t make sense,” or the term was “a real hard one” for the respondents. The broad meanings and occasionally contested nature of terms like equality, freedom, authority, and tradition create opportunities for variations in interpretations and flexibility in responses. These, in turn, allow for negotiation and justification of practices.

  In reacting to the stresses a group faces, the group may also reinterpret tradition. Rather than acting against tradition by adopting something new, or being seen as doing so, a group may redefine or broaden the meaning of tradition to allow incorporation of new elements; or it may focus on aspects of tradition that its members consider more central to the culture than others in order to justify change in a less important area. For example, emphasis on the spiritual rather than the material elements of tradition may allow a group such as the New Order to adopt some technologies that another affiliation, such as the Andy Weaver or Old Order Amish, would not accept because they believe in honoring the material tradition at least as much as the spiritual. In education, members of the New Order are much more likely than others to homeschool their children, because they argue that, as parents, they are personally responsible for the spiritual enlightenment of their offspring. Old Order Amish are more likely to stress the importance of the parochial school as a place where, together, Amish children can learn the traditions of their culture. Homeschooling would be considered by the Old Order an act of arrogance or individualism, characteristic of “uppity” persons.

  As suggested by one Amish historian with whom we spoke, affiliations vary in the significance they place on different traditions. Concern for maintaining spiritual values as manifested in concrete behavior has created differences between the New Order and the more conservative affiliations, for example. New Order members believe that the “rigors of early pioneer life” led to compromises in the original Amish traditions. The early Ordnungs Briefe (church disciplines) take a clear stand against bundling and the use of tobacco and alcohol (except for medicinal purposes), and New Order leaders argue that this position should not change over time. This historian felt that more conservative churches have lost some of these traditions and consequently have “lost some of the original Amish/Anabaptist vision.” The New Order Amish consider other traditions listed in the Ordnungs Briefe to be more malleable and relative to the times, and thus subject to potential change. These would include restrictions on the adornment of houses, styles of buggies, the use of mules, and other indicators of separation from the outside world.

  The division between material and spiritual aspects of tradition calls attention to the multidimensional nature of the contents of tradition and is a reminder that tradition, as in any culture, is not always internally consistent, nor are its individual traits always closely linked with each other. The more open its boundaries are to outside influences, the more the Amish community will have to negotiate and perhaps even redefine its tradition.

  At the same time, Amish groups differ in how they experience tradition and modernity. Given variations in the geographic, economic, legal, and demographic contexts in which they must survive, the degree to which each affiliation’s traditions are tested is also different. Some groups have to negotiate the meaning of tradition more often: the strains in surviving they experience because of the interaction of forces often appear as a clash between the traditions inside and the modernity outside t
he culture.

  The Ties That Bind

  As our discussion thus far has noted, the dynamism and diversity to be found within the Amish community are a function of the meeting of both internal and external forces along boundaries that trigger dilemmas that are then addressed by members and groups within the community. But despite the diversity, the Amish as a whole still maintain much in common and continue to remain somewhat separate from English society. Leaving behind the discussion of diversity, we turn now to some of the primary factors that create cohesion and commonality within the Amish community.

  Comparisons between the Amish in our survey and Americans overall, in national surveys, suggest that the Amish feel much more connected to others than Americans in general do. They do not experience the levels of alienation found in national studies of adults. For example, in its 2007 national survey of Americans, the Harris Poll revealed that significant majorities of adults feel that (a) “the rich are getting richer and the poor get poorer,” (b) “the people running the country don’t really care what happens to you,” (c) “most people with power try to take advantage of people like you,” and (d) “what you think doesn’t count very much any more.” More than one-third of those respondents also believed that they were “left out of things going on around [them].”10 When these questions were put to Amish respondents in our survey, the results were noticeably different. Less than one-quarter felt that people in power tried to take advantage of them or that what they thought didn’t count. Less than one-tenth felt they were left out of things around them. Just over one-quarter felt that those running the country did not really care what happened to people. The only question in which a slight majority of Amish sensed some alienation concerned economic inequality. About half did feel that the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer in the country as a whole. Another question asked in the national survey, one that was not part of the alienation measure, addressed the issue of whether politicians in Washington were out of touch with people around the country. Three-fourths said “yes.” In contrast, only one out of ten in our Amish survey said that those in the local, state, and federal governments were out of touch with their constituencies. In sum, Amish in the Holmes County Settlement appear to be much less alienated than adults in the society as a whole. Table 8.2 summarizes these differences. Perhaps the lower sense of alienation felt by the Holmes County Amish is due in part to their culture and religion, which foster a perception of their lives as having a clear plan, direction, and meaning.

  In a few cases, the particular affiliation to which the Amish person belongs appears to make a difference. Our Amish survey found, for example, that while only 14 percent of the Amish as a whole felt that Washington, DC, is out of touch with the rest of the country, 38 percent of the Old Order participants in our study expressed this feeling. (This finding should be interpreted cautiously because of the small size of our sample.) Members of the Old Order were also more likely to feel that their views didn’t count much any more (one-third had this feeling), but still, that proportion was smaller than the majority who had this feeling in the national Harris study. Ironically, then, despite their separation from the rest of society, Amish in the Holmes County Settlement appear to be less alienated than the rest of the population.

  However, the lack of alienation does not mean that the Amish believe there ought to be strong connections between themselves and the government. The Amish feel a clear obligation and devotion to their churches, but they do not generally feel that church and state ought to be closely linked. A full 80 percent said that the government and the church should have little or nothing to do with each other; 20 percent said that the two should interact frequently or be closely related to each other. Among these respondents, New Order Amish were more likely than Old Order members to state that the two institutions should remain separate (32% versus 13%). In addition, there is not a majority belief that the government is obliged to help minorities like African Americans. Only 26 percent thought the government had this obligation, 40 percent disagreed, and the remaining 34 percent were split in their views. Affiliation of membership made no difference.

  Table 8.2. Levels of alienation in the nation and in Holmes County Settlement, 2007

  The lower levels of alienation among the Amish suggest that they feel more closely connected and trusting than does the general population. Several of our respondents, both Amish and non-Amish, indicated that in some situations the Amish are more gullible and perhaps too trusting of those outside their community. The high level of trust found within the Holmes County Settlement is rooted structurally in the multilevel network of social capital that has been built up in the broadly distinct community, and culturally in the biblically based and traditional belief systems. It is also maintained by the relative stability of the local population and the personal nature and small size of most local businesses.11 The tight network of social ties consists of relationships that often cut across several institutions, including family, church, school, and work.

  At the most basic level, sets of large interrelated kinship groups knit the community together. Individuals in these families often worship together or belong to the same affiliation, grow up and go to school together, and work with each other or for some other Amish employer. The predictable nature of these relationships is nurtured by adherence to a set of shared customs and religious beliefs. Broader cultural values inform the relationships that structure each of the institutions in which the Amish participate. In the parochial school, for example, “the ethos of the classroom accents cooperative activity, obedience, respect, diligence, kindness, and interest in the natural world. Little attention is given to independent thinking and critical analysis.”12

  One of the critical factors that distinguishes traditional from modern communities is the greater permeation of reflexivity in all kinds of behavior among groups of “modern” people, meaning that assessment of one’s actions is constantly considered and reconsidered in light of new knowledge and has little to do with what was done in the past, that is, tradition. In Amish communities, by contrast, tradition permeates daily behavior, with reflexivity “still largely limited to the reinterpretation and clarification of tradition, such that in the scales of time the side of the ‘past’ is much more heavily weighed down than that of the ‘future.’”13

  While the weight and interpretations of tradition vary among the affiliations in the Holmes County Settlement, it is easy to see that the Amish social structure and cultural tradition are developing social beings who feel connected and responsible to others rather than persons who see themselves as isolated, self-sufficient individuals. Even during school recess, the emphasis is placed upon organized group activities, such as softball games involving both girls and boys. This pattern contrasts sharply with the individualized, free-for-all atmosphere that generally permeates outdoor recess activity at public schools. Repeated, regular involvement in group activities of this type reinforces one’s belief in commitment to others as a member of a group rather than self-identification as an atomized, autonomous individual who stands apart from everyone else.

  The depth at which this message permeates the Amish person is reflected in the meaning and interpretation they give to terms like autonomy. When asked in interviews, most Amish women interpreted autonomy as something negative, requiring decisions by oneself or ignoring ties to others. “I really wouldn’t want to make my own decisions,” said one woman. “I’d rather have someone give me advice,” said another. “I don’t think it would bring satisfaction to me,” said a third participant. As a group, these women feel that “you need to be responsible to someone,” that “you have to consider others first,” and that they “wouldn’t feel right to just live [their] own [lives].”

  In essence, arrangements within the social structures of the Amish community are directly and clearly dependent upon important values in their culture, and both the arrangements and the values shape the kinds of individuals produced in the commun
ity. One consequence is a set of individuals who share a broadly similar existential and normative worldview. The worldviews held by individuals are “broadly similar” because, as we have mentioned elsewhere, there are variations in the specific interpretations of tradition and beliefs and, as a result, variations in the immediate structures and social relationships in which individuals are involved. The overall consequence is that, within affiliations, there is a dense social network held together by social relationships, mutual help, formal social gatherings, church rules, and a mostly common cultural heritage. Because of the variations between orders, the network of ties between affiliations tends to be looser and less dense.

  Nolt and Meyers argue that, in addition to cultural and structural sources that encourage integration, the Amish community is also held together by ongoing conversations with the past, the outside world, and themselves.14 These conversations shape, renew, and solidify the identities of individuals as members of a distinctive cultural group in society. Their continuing conversation across a variety of venues, even in the form of debate, also helps them to address difficulties of adaptation and the pressures to change that arise. The result is a reproduction of their community.

  The intentional and highly organized structures within which Amish individuals grow and mature create a system of control over these individuals that could, under certain circumstances, foment resistance and rebellion on the part of youth and even adults. Like a security blanket, by encouraging loyalty, trust, and a sense of security, this system shelters the individual, but it can also suffocate his or her uniqueness and frustrate the freedom that he or she may seek. The question becomes, How does the Amish community keep its members and grow in the face of this dilemma? How do you keep them “home” when they have seen the temptations of the outside “world”? How do you keep a population “in line” when there are pressures all around to deviate from the narrow path prescribed for them?