The Riddle of Amish Culture

by Donald B. Kraybill

  A more public form of bonding occurs among readers who follow the endless stories of local scribes who write for Die Botschaft and The Budget, Amish weekly newspapers, and for The Diary, a monthly magazine. Accounts of local happenings—church services, accidents, visiting, harvesting, travel, medical problems, and much more—are shared in these publications for Amish audiences across the country. The reunions, circle letters, and newspapers not only disburse information, they also build solidarity and confirm identity in the Amish community.

  MUTUAL AID

  Mutual aid runs deep in the Amish soul. Church membership carries responsibility to care for the material and social needs of fellow members. An Amish farmer in another state summarized the assumptions about mutual responsibility this way: “When I am plowing in the spring, I can often see five or six other teams in nearby fields, and I know if I was sick they would all be here plowing my field.”11 When disaster strikes in the form of illness, flood, or fire, the community rallies quickly to help the family in need.

  The barn raising after a fire is the classic symbol of mutual aid. In a matter of eight hours, more than a hundred men will erect a new barn, and dozens of women will prepare the food that sustains them. Under the quiet directions of a wise foreman, the complicated task flows smoothly, seemingly almost without effort.

  An Amishman described it this way:

  There isn’t a crane poking its long boom skyward, hook dangling. There are no white-hatted foremen dashing about with squawking radios. Now watch as, just for the last 500 years, a forty-six foot long line of straw hatted men, facing east, bend down. Forty-six feet of rear ends face westward, with all hands on the top timber of the assembled frame. All are ready to push it skyward. The moment is dramatic, everyone is quiet as several late comers rush up the barn hill to help. Reuben says, “Take her up”—not a holler, but a positive command—in a voice filled with experience. With some minor grunts the ponderous frame moves up, hands outstretched.12

  The observer also noted that over the years a few things have been added—porta-potties, colorful coolers of drink, and battery-operated hand drills, for example.

  Describing the clamor as dozens of men gather around a wagon loaded with coffee, hot chocolate, and cookies, one participant said, “There’s a lot of visiting going on here. There are cousins, and friends from other settlements here who haven’t seen each other for years.” By 4:00 p.m. the structure is secure and most of the tin roof and siding is finished. The barn raising not only addresses a member’s material need but also symbolizes the enormous collective resources of the community. Said one Amishman, “Barn raisings are for us what the World Series is for the non-Amish.”

  Although the barn raising is the traditional symbol of mutual care, many other forms of mutual aid flourish, as well. As many Amish moved into nonfarm jobs and as the community has interacted more closely with the outside world, new patterns of aid have emerged. Because of their belief that members of the church should be accountable to and responsible for each other, leaders have strongly discouraged commercial insurance, which would undercut aid within the community and drain away the precious social capital.

  A variety of informal aid programs have developed within the church to assist with special needs related to fire, storm, health care, liability, and product liability. Although some of these programs require an annual premium, most of them gather special collections within the community as major needs arise. For example, a collection may be taken to assist a farmer faced with excessive liability charges for selling spoiled milk or a family faced with an overwhelming medical bill. Adjoining church districts also help each other as needs arise. As noted in Chapter 4, the remarkable feature of all these aid programs is their spontaneous response to need without bureaucratic red tape, formal offices, or paid employees. Unlike commercial forms of insurance, transaction costs and administrative overhead are virtually nil.

  The community gathers and quickly erects a new barn after a fire.

  Auctions have also been used in recent years to help members with special needs. Known as “benefit auctions,” these sales of crafts, quilts, food, and barbecued chicken help families with excessive medical bills or a paraplegic injured in an accident. An annual benefit auction supports the Clinic for Special Children that provides medical care for Amish and Old Order Mennonite children. From frolics to benefit auctions, the community surrounds its members with care and in the process rejuvenates its pool of goodwill. In so doing, it distinguishes itself from the broader society, where needy individuals often have to haggle with lawyers and insurance providers to solve their problems.

  HELPING OUTSIDERS

  The spirit of caring and sharing does not stop at the borders of Amish society. Although the Amish have historically emphasized separation from the world and shunned worldly involvements, they also extend a helping hand to those beyond their fold. By supporting local fire companies, benefit auctions, the Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Disaster Service, and Christian Aid Ministries, Amish care extends beyond the confines of their ethnic community.

  Although the Amish typically frown on civic involvement, they have readily joined local fire companies. Indeed, in some communities as many as 75 percent of the members of local firefighters are Amish. In some townships they may own the bulk of the farms and homes protected by the fire companies. Although they don’t drive the fire trucks, they do drop their work at a beeper’s notice and scramble to fight the fires.

  Many of the fire companies have benefit auctions, sometimes called “Mud Sales” because thousands of people walking on soggy fields in March can quickly turn grass into mud. The Amish donate merchandise and labor for these sales, which attract thousands of outsiders. Many people drive from eastern seaboard cities to bid on quilts, buy some shoofly pie, and witness the Amish in action. Proceeds from such a sale may generate several hundred thousand dollars. The Amish also support disaster relief auctions sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee to aid international refugees. In addition, they support an auction for the Light House, a local rehabilitation center, and the Haiti Benefit auction for the needy of Haiti. Quilts, lovely furniture, crafts, construction materials, and farm equipment are among the many valuable items the Amish donate to these auctions as well as their labor.

  As members of the larger Anabaptist family, the Amish also aid international relief and service projects organized by the Mennonite Central Committee, an international agency with headquarters in Akron, north of the city of Lancaster. One year some 1,200 Amish, in a four-day period, participated in a meat canning project for refugees in Bosnia. A mobile canner moves from area to area, utilizing local labor and donated beef. Sometimes the Amish purchase the beef and then provide the labor for canning it. “We could just buy the meat and send it there,” said one bishop, “but there’s much more satisfaction in helping to do something directly.”

  Some Amish women piece comforters or sew other clothing that is donated to the Mennonite Central Committee for distribution to refugees. Many church districts send volunteers to sort and pack clothing at the Mennonite Central Committee’s warehouse in Akron. In a typical year 2,000 members from 125 church districts volunteer thousands of hours at the warehouse quilting, preparing health kits, and packing clothing to be shipped abroad for victims of disaster.

  The Amish have also been active participants in Mennonite Disaster Service, a national agency that responds in Red Cross fashion to disasters in the wake of hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. Amish crews travel by van and bus to work sites, where they clean up debris and rebuild homes for a day or week at a time.

  The Amish have assisted with cleanup and reconstruction related to Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hugo in 1989, as well as tornadoes that struck in Alabama in 1974 and Somerset, Pennsylvania, in 1998. They also contribute to “hay drives” and “corn drives” in which hay and corn are donated to drought-stricken farmers in other parts of the country or world. In addition they donate heifers to a “He
ifer Relief Sale,” whose proceeds benefit refugees around the world.

  In all of these ways, the Amish extend a hand of friendship and care beyond their ethnic borders, and in the process, they are replenishing their own pool of social capital. For whether it is preparing for auctions, quilting for relief, packing clothes for the needy, or building homes for the homeless, they are doing it together—chattering away, telling stories, building community. This pattern of civic service and philanthropy is much different from the lone volunteer who extends a hand on a civic project or the philanthropist who writes a check in isolation. As they serve the needy, the Amish also build community.

  PASSING ON

  Members draw their final check from their social capital account at death, as the community surrounds the bereaved with care. A funeral director observed that the Amish accept death in graceful ways.13 With the elderly living at home, the gradual loss of health prepares family members for the final passage. The community springs into action at word of a death. Family and friends in the local church district assume barn and household chores, freeing the immediate family. Well-established funeral rituals unburden the family from facing worrisome choices. Three couples are appointed to extend invitations and supervise funeral arrangements—food preparation, seating arrangements for three to four hundred people, and the coordination of a large number of horses and carriages.14

  A non-Amish undertaker moves the body to a funeral home for embalming. The body—without cosmetic enhancements—returns to the home in a simple hardwood coffin within five to six hours. Family members of the same sex dress the body in white garments that symbolize the final passage into a new and better life beyond. Women often are garbed in the white cape and apron worn at their wedding.

  Friends and relatives visit the family and view the body in a room on the first floor of the home during two days prior to the funeral. Said one person, “People come and visit together—it’s almost a social affair.” They stay awhile and visit, with as many as one hundred in a room. Meanwhile, community members dig the grave by hand in a nearby family cemetery as others oversee the daily chores of the bereaved. Several hundred guests attend the funeral in a barn or home, typically on the morning of the third day after the death. During the simple hour-and-a-half-long service, ministers read hymns and Scripture, offer prayers, and preach a sermon. Singing and eulogies are missing, and there are no flowers, burial tents, or sculpted monuments.

  The hearse, a large black carriage pulled by horses, leads a long procession of carriages to the burial ground on the edge of a farm. A brief viewing and a graveside service mark the return of dust to dust. Pallbearers lower the coffin and shovel soil into the grave as the bishop reads a hymn. A small tombstone, the size of all the rest, marks the place of the deceased in the eternal community. Following the burial, friends and family members return to the home for a meal prepared by members of the local congregation. One widower, recounting the funeral meal for his wife with tears of appreciation, repeatedly asked, “Where else could you ever get support like that?”

  Community solidarity is expressed at death as a funeral procession follows a hearse.

  A bereaved woman signals her mourning for a close relative by wearing a black dress in public settings for as long as a year. This symbol reminds and invites the community to respond with thoughtful care. Families who have lost a loved one will typically receive Sunday afternoon visits from friends for several months. A painful separation laced with grief, death is received in the spirit of Gelassenheit—as the ultimate surrender to God’s higher ways. Surrounded by family and friends, and comforted by predictable rituals filled with religious meaning, the separation is humane by many standards. The tears flow, but the sobs are restrained as people submit quietly to the rhythms of divine purpose. From cradle to grave, the mysteries of life and death unfold in the context of loving families and supportive ritual.

  This sampler of the rhythms of Amish society demonstrates the many ways in which cultural capital and social capital are mobilized to assist individuals and bolster the common good. Longstanding Amish traditions and the organizational structure of their community provide powerful means for mobilizing collective resources for the common good. Indeed, one way to interpret Amish history and its related puzzles is to see it as an ongoing struggle to preserve social capital. Ample resources of cultural and social capital have enabled the Amish to prosper many ways—from financial to social and emotional well-being. The solidarity and identity of their community results in part from their success in thwarting four challenges that threatened to diminish social capital and weaken their community: modern education, technology, nonfarm occupations, and government intrusion. The Amish struggled with all four of these challenges in the last half of the twentieth century—challenges that we explore in the following chapters.

  CHAPTER 7

  Passing on the Faith

  Too much worldly wisdom is poison for the soul.

  —Amish minister

  THE RIDDLE OF EDUCATION

  Groups facing cultural extinction must indoctrinate their offspring if they want to preserve their unique social heritage. Socialization of the very young is a potent form of social control. As cultural values slip into a child’s mind, they become personal values—embedded in conscience and laced with emotion. Socialization legitimated by religion is more powerful than law in directing and motivating personal behavior. Concerned that the dominant culture will demolish their traditional values, the Amish carefully guide their children.

  The Amish believe that the Bible commissions parents to instruct their children in religious matters as well as in Amish ways. For example, day care centers, nursery schools, and kindergartens are not permitted because children are to be taught by their parents. Child rearing is an informal process where children learn the ways of their culture through interaction, observation, and modeling. Unlike modern youth, Amish children have little exposure to diverse ideas and cultural perspectives beyond their family and ethnic community.

  Given their fears of the outside world and their convictions about parental instruction, it is surprising that the Amish sent their children to public schools for more than a century. However, the peaceful coexistence was shattered in the mid-twentieth century when a bitter clash erupted between the Amish and state officials that resulted in dozens of arrests and imprisonment. What disrupted the century-long peace?

  The rise of the Amish school system chronicles a fascinating dialogue between the Amish and the forces of progress. The Amish were willing to negotiate on some issues, but on the education of their children they refused to budge. Many parents paid for their stubbornness with imprisonment. Why were these gentle people willing to sit behind bars? Why did they resort to courts, petitions, and politics to preserve humility? Those intriguing questions thread their way throughout the story.

  The voices of progress trumpeting the virtues of education were not about to be insulted by a motley group of peasant farmers. Through a variety of legal actions, the Amish were subpoenaed back to the bargaining table again and again.1 Finally, in 1972, the United States Supreme Court ruled in their favor, stating that “there can be no assumption that today’s majority is ‘right’ and the Amish and others are ‘wrong.’ A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no rights or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different.”2 But that is getting ahead of our story.

  THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE

  “We’re not opposed to education,” said one Amishman. “We’re just against education higher than our heads. I mean education that we don’t need.” Indeed, for many years Amish youth were educated in public schools alongside their non-Amish neighbors.3 When one-room public schools were established in Pennsylvania in 1844, the eldest son of an esteemed Amish bishop was a member of a school board.4 The enforcement of compulsory attendance laws in 1895 stirred some criticism, but for the most part, the Amish supported public education in one-room schools.5 Even in t
he twentieth century, Amish children attended public elementary schools, and their fathers frequently served as board members. In fact, in some schools Amish children held the majority. Policies and curriculum reflected local sentiment. Teachers affirmed the rural culture, often their own, and complied with local requests. In rural Pennsylvania, children typically attended school about four months of the year. Providing a practical education in basic skills, local public schools were ensconced in a rural context that dovetailed smoothly with Amish culture. All of that was about to change as state officials, in the name of progress, decontextualized education.

  Amish children at the blackboard in a one-room public school ca. 1950.

  The changes began in 1925, when the state legislature lengthened the school year. Eventually it raised the age of compulsory attendance, enforced attendance, and encouraged the consolidation of large schools. At first the Amish took the changes in stride. But when they realized that the forces of modernity would pull schools away from local control, away from their rural roots, the Amish began to resist.