The Riddle of Amish Culture

by Donald B. Kraybill

  Confession in front of the gathered body ritualizes an individual’s subordination to the group. It strikes at the heart of individualism and heralds the virtues of Gelassenheit. In its cathartic value, it bears a rough resemblance to modern psychotherapy, but it is less expensive and much more humiliating. In contrast to psychotherapy, most Amish confessions are initiated by the call of the church, not the individual. The ritual of Amish confession, one of the costs of community, has been largely untouched by modernity. A minister emphatically claimed that “not a thing has changed” in the confessional procedure over the years.

  EXPULSION: PURGING THE WAYWARD

  Corporations are not afraid to dismiss insubordinate employees, but contemporary churches, in the name of tolerance and love, are reluctant to dismiss deviant members. When confession fails, excommunication is the final recourse among the Amish. If baptism is the front door to Amish life, excommunication is the exit. The back door, however, is not slammed quickly. It can only be closed by the unanimous vote of a congregation after efforts to win back the deviant have failed. The German word Bann means ‘excommunication.’27 The English word ban is also used. From the internal perspective of Amish culture, the ban is designed to purify the body and redeem the backslider. The separation unites the community against sin, purges deviance, and reaffirms the moral order. In the same way that punishing criminals reaffirms the legal code of modern society, expelling sinners clarifies and rejuvenates the Amish Ordnung.

  If persons refuse to come before the church to confess their sins, they will face excommunication. A congregational vote (der Rat) is taken to endorse a proposed expulsion. Hoping for the best, members may ask the deacon and minister to make a final visit with the offending member and plead for his or her return. If stubbornness persists, the congregation will eventually vote to excommunicate.

  A final rite concludes the series of sad events. The deacon and a minister visit the wayward person and inform him or her of the church’s action. Following an old Benedictine formula, the elders repeat the following verse: “To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” This quote from Luther’s German translation of 1 Corinthians 5:5 terminates the membership.28 If the member refuses to come to the door, the verse is repeated aloud outside the house.

  Although expulsion sounds harsh to Moderns, who value tolerance, the Amish demonstrate considerable patience and leniency. A young farmer is given six months, until the next communion service, to remove the rubber tires from his tractor. A businessman using a computer is allowed to complete a major eight-month project before he must “put it away.” A family that buys an “English” house outfitted with electricity has a year of grace before the wiring must be torn out. In the case of adultery, divorce, or purchase of an automobile, excommunication is virtually automatic unless the deviant confesses the wrong. In most cases, ordained leaders display considerable patience as they work with their members and “try to win them back.”

  If all else fails, the back door to the Amish house will close. An old bishop was fond of saying: “The ban is like the last dose of medicine that you can give to a sinner. It either works for life or death.” Leaders believe that errant members bring excommunication upon themselves by their stubbornness. But the back door always remains open a crack. Expelled members are always welcome to come back and will be reinstated if they are willing to kneel and confess their error. One man, excommunicated for dishonest business practices, decided to repent and confess his faults after nearly a year of exile. Others occasionally rejoin the church after many years. A senior bishop, in explaining the ban, emphasized the importance of love: “If love is lost, God’s lost too. God is love, doesn’t the Bible tell us God is love? And I sometimes think that love is worth more than fighting about this and that. You lose friendship through it.”

  The doctrinal statement of the Amish emphasizes the importance of maintaining the church’s purity. “An offensive member and open sinner [must] be excluded from the church, rebuked before all and purged out as a leaven and thus remain until his amendment, as an example and warning to others and also that the church may be kept pure from such ‘spots’ and blemishes.”29 Although the theological intent of excommunication is to purge sin from the body, its social consequence is maintenance of the Ordnung. The ban is the ultimate form of social control. When mavericks sidestep the Ordnung or “jump the fence too far,” they are disowned to preserve the integrity of the moral order. Order, authority, and identity take precedence over tolerance. These practices may seem harsh to modern sensitivities, but even Moderns, who cherish tolerance, are ready to imprison criminals and expel dissidents, political traitors, illegal aliens, and insubordinate employees.

  MEIDUNG: SOCIAL QUARANTINE

  A unique feature of Amish excommunication is the practice of Meidung, often called “shunning.” As a reminder of the seriousness of their infractions, expelled people are shamed in ceremonial ways. Contrary to popular opinion, members can talk with persons who are under the ban, but certain forms of interaction are taboo. “Compared to other church disciplines, ours has teeth in it,” said one member. Meidung, the “teeth” of Amish discipline, is designed to bring the wayward back and to preserve the moral boundaries of the community.

  Disagreements about the practice of Meidung helped to trigger the Amish separation from other Anabaptists in 1693. It has remained a distinguishing feature of Amish life. An Amish bishop explained: “In the Martyrs Mirror, you read that if there’s a ban and no shunning, it’s like a house without doors or a church without walls where the people can just walk in and out as they please.” The application of shunning varies in Amish settlements, but in principle, it remains a cornerstone of Amish polity.30

  The Dordrecht Confession of Faith includes an article on shunning that spells out its theological justification:

  If anyone whether it be through a wicked life or perverse doctrine is . . . expelled from the church he must also according to the doctrine of Christ and his apostles, be shunned and avoided by all the members of the church (particularly by those to whom his misdeeds are known), whether it be in eating or drinking, or other such like social matters. In short that we are to have nothing to do with him; so that we may not become defiled by intercourse with him and partakers of his sins, but that he may be made ashamed, be affected in his mind, convinced in his conscience and thereby induced to amend his ways.31 (emphasis added)

  A statement by the Lancaster bishops calls for shunning members “if they behave in a way that is offensive, irritating, disobedient or carnal, so that they may be caused to turn back, or till they come out of their disobedience.”32

  Shunning is a ritual of shaming that is used in public occasions and face-to-face interaction to remind the ostracized that they are outside the moral order. Shunning does not reflect personal animosity, but rather it is a ritual means of shaming the wayward and reminding everyone of the boundaries of membership. Conversation is not forbidden, but members may not shake hands or accept anything directly from the offender. However, members are encouraged to help, assist, and visit people under the ban.

  Thus, shunning is an asymmetrical, one-way relationship. Members can help offenders, but offenders may not have the dignity of aiding a member. A grandmother who is a member may not accept her baby grandson directly from the hands of her shunned daughter. A check or a Christmas gift should not be accepted directly from a shunned person. Gifts, money, or payments from an offender, following the ritual formula, are placed on a table or counter and picked up by a member in a separate transaction. Members cannot accept a ride in the car of someone under the ban. Members of a volunteer fire company should not ride on a fire truck driven by a former member. Said one member about to face Meidung, “You suddenly lose all your security, and you become a goat, like a piece of dirt.”

  The symbolic shaming also takes place during meals at weddings and funerals if shunned persons are
present. The practice makes some family gatherings awkward. The banned person may attend but will likely be served at a separate table or at the end of a table covered with a separate tablecloth. In one case, an adult male who was shunned was excluded from the plans for his father’s funeral. Soon afterward, he decided to make amends with the church and return to the fold. A woman who persisted in attending a non-Amish Bible study was placed under the ban. Although continuing to live with her Amish husband, she eats at a separate table and abstains from sexual relations. Parents must shun adult children who are excommunicated. Brothers and sisters are required to shun each other.33 Members who do not practice shunning will jeopardize their own standing in the church.

  The application of shunning varies widely from family to family. Many times it is relaxed in private homes but tightened in public settings if other church members are present, attesting to its ritual character and ceremonial role in the community. Many families treat family members under the ban with love and care in the privacy of their homes. Despite its theological purposes, shunning is a painful process. One woman said, “I’m not responsible for being born into a church that practices shunning. I have an uncle and aunt and cousins in the ban, and it may separate us on the social level, but it could never sever the cord of love.” Another person, whose parents are shunned, said, “Most people learn to live with it and not make a big deal of it. But it’s always there casting a shadow over all the relationships with people that are Amish.”

  Excommunicated people are shunned until they repent. Upon confessing their sins, they are fully restored to membership in the church. But for unrepentant people, shunning becomes a lifetime quarantine. Amish-born people who never join the church are not shunned. Only those who break their baptismal vow by leaving the church or falling into disobedience are ostracized. Shunning places a moral stigma on the expelled because as “blemished” ones they have broken their baptismal vows and have turned their back on the church and God.

  Meidung also clarifies an important principle in Amish life that is hard for Moderns to grasp. The church holds higher authority than the family. Individuals are accountable first to the church and then to their families. Only the church can divorce members. Only the church can separate families, because its authority reigns over all other spheres of life. Whereas in modern life the ranking of moral authority is individual, family, church; the order is turned upside down in Amish life. The threat of shunning is a powerful deterrent to disobedience in a community where everyone is linked by family ties.

  The possibility of Meidung cautions those who would mock the church, scorn its Ordnung, or spurn the counsel of ordained leaders. To be shamed for life is no small matter when it means separation from family, friends, and neighbors. Meidung is a potent tool for social control. “It has holding power,” an Amish minister said. A former Amishman, shunned for more than fifty years because he joined a liberal church, said: “Shunning works a little bit like an electric fence around a pasture with a pretty good fence charger on it.” When asked about the ability of the church to hold its members, one person said: “That’s easy to answer, it’s the Meidung. If it weren’t for shunning, many of our people would leave for more progressive churches where they could have electricity and cars.”34

  Shunning is the cornerstone of social control in Amish society. Baptism, communion, and confession are redemptive means to encourage compliance with the Ordnung. When those modes fail, the Meidung is there—a silent deterrent that encourages those who think about breaking their baptismal vows to think twice! Indeed, it is one of the secrets of the riddle of Amish survival.

  Two cornerstones of Amish faith and practice give it credibility. Young adults clearly have a choice regarding church membership. In this way the church maintains the integrity of adult baptism. Second, those who are excommunicated are always welcome to return upon confession of their transgression. Sins that are confessed before God and the community are forgiven and as much as possible forgotten. These two features—the integrity of adult choice and full restoration of the wayward—lend credibility to the Amish story.

  Amish rites of redemption and purification have stood the test of time and show few, if any, traces of erosion. They symbolize, rehearse, and communicate the essence of Amish culture. Kneeling for the rites of baptism, prayer, ordination, footwashing, and confession portrays the humble stance of Gelassenheit. The Amish have refused to yield their sacred rituals to modern individualism, with its easy tolerance of any behavior. Such a concession would surely erode their moral order. Their attempts to preserve order may seem legalistic and harsh at first blush, yet the personnel policies that shape the ethos of corporate and government bureaucracies are hardly less restrictive. The regulatory mindset is not unique to the Amish; they have simply applied it to the moral bedrock that undergirds their entire way of life.

  CHAPTER 6

  Auctions, Frolics, and Gangs

  Barn raisings are for us what the World Series is for the non-Amish.

  —Amish farmer

  SPONTANEOUS CARING AND SHARING

  The rites of redemption in Amish society are enmeshed in a network of social activities that knit the community together. Spontaneous visiting and informal gatherings create solidarity and generate social capital across the settlement. Somewhat like its financial equivalent, social capital provides a collective pool of resources that contribute to the well-being of the community and benefit individual members.1 The cultural values and social structures of Amish society generate many resources that bolster the common good. An Amishman described it this way: “There’s much caring and sharing in times of need, helping together to raise barns and in funeral and wedding arrangements, to plant and harvest crops if a farmer is laid up.... Much of this caring is done at a moment’s notice, when the neighbors see the crops need to be tended.”2

  The traditional Amish barn raising provides a good example of how cultural and social capital are mobilized for a special need. When a barn goes up in flames, everyone in the Amish community knows exactly what will happen in the next three days, without consulting a book or looking at a Web site. Neighbors will immediately drop their work and help with the cleanup while the debris still smolders. On the next day, a hundred or more people will arrive and raise a new barn in a matter of hours. All the labor is donated. The recovery effort automatically swings into action without lengthy discussions with insurance adjustors, lawyers, and contractors. It happens spontaneously because the barn-raising habit is so tightly woven into the texture of Amish life. Everyone freely donates their time because their house or shop may be next. This simple but powerful tradition is embedded in the cultural capital—the values of mutual obligation, duty, and trust that are simply taken for granted in Amish society.

  A barn raising is perhaps the most dramatic example of how the pool of social capital is mobilized in Amish society. Social capital resources include strong networks of face-to-face relationships, extended family, and longstanding traditions and rituals that support them. Both cultural values and social structures provide the raw materials, so to speak, to mobilize the resources to raise a barn as shown in Figure 6.1. Many social activities in the Amish life cycle generate and expend social capital from birth to death for the well-being of the community. And many of the decisions the elders have made over the years, decisions that may appear silly to outsiders, were in fact attempts to preserve the social capital that energizes the life of the community.

  FIGURE 6.1 Cultural and Social Capital Resources

  CHILDHOOD

  Strong social networks make it easier to generate and store social capital. An Amish child is born into a dense network of extended family relations that will surround and support her for the rest of her life. This web of siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles—as many as a hundred or more people who are directly related to the child—provide a ready-made system of support that is already in place when the infant arrives. The newborn child does not need to develop support group
s or join interest groups because an entire system awaits its arrival. The child inherits these social supports at birth and later reproduces them as an adult.

  Most Amish children are born at home under the supervision of a trained non-Amish midwife. Sometimes the first child is born at a hospital, but later children typically greet the world at home. A birthing is a family affair. Increasingly, fathers attend the delivery and siblings excitedly await the arrival in an adjoining room. A physician who cares for Amish patients noted that whenever a newborn arrives, one or two adult women suddenly appear in the household. These mothers, older sisters, or aunts are experienced: they know the secrets—the wisdom of the culture. Instead of reading books on birthing, they tap the wisdom, the cultural capital afloat in the networks around them. And as children grow up, there is ample help to raise them. A young mother with two children explained that whenever she needs a babysitter, “I can just drop them off at one of my two sisters and three cousins that live within a half-mile of here.”

  Unlike children who are socialized to become independent and successful in a competitive world, the Amish child is taught meekness, humility, and obedience. The child must master these virtues of Gelassenheit in order to prepare for a successful Amish life. Child-rearing practices, school curriculum, and apprenticeship in home and shop immerse children in Amish values and prepare them for adulthood. Most basic of all, the child learns to be obedient to authority—whether embodied in parents, teachers, or leaders. Such obedience is the key to shaping members who will support the habits and sentiments that generate community.