The Riddle of Amish Culture

by Donald B. Kraybill

  7 | Passing on the Faith

  1. For a chronology of Amish court cases involving educational disputes as well as the landmark 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision, see Keim (1975) and Meyers (1993). Historical overviews of Amish education are provided by Cline (1968:73–121), Ferster (1983), Hostetler and Huntington (1992), and Huntington (1994). Two important source books for documents that trace the rise of Amish schools in the Lancaster settlement are Kinsinger (1997) and C. S. Lapp (1991).

  2. Keim (1975:163).

  3. Wickersham (1886:168).

  4. The Diary (1972:4:155).

  5. Fisher (1978:312).

  6. Harnish (1925).

  7. This series of anonymous articles appeared in the Intelligencer in four installments in 1931 (19, 20, and 21 February, and 10 March).

  8. The East Lampeter Township dispute of 1937 and 1938 is chronicled in two local Lancaster papers, Intelligencer Journal and New Era. It also received national press coverage. See especially the Intelligencer for 1937: 26 March; 29 April; 13, 15, 27, and 28 May; 12 and 24 June; 3 and 7 July; 20 August; 30 September; 2, 5, and 30 October; 6, 10, and 11 November; 4, 6, 7, 24, and 30 December. For 1938: 4, 9, and 24 February; and 28 June.

  9. Because lawyers were involved, the Amish community was divided internally over the East Lampeter Township dispute. However, a substantial portion of Amish residents in the township supported the resistance to the consolidated school. Approximately twenty Amishmen rode the train to the Federal Court Building in Philadelphia to attend a hearing on 12 May 1937 as reported in Intelligencer 13 May 1937.

  10. Historical documentation of the Amish school movement in Lancaster County is preserved in The Papers of the Amish School Controversy (1937–68). This excellent collection of Aaron E. Beiler’s papers contains the petitions, correspondence, and minutes of the Old Order Amish School Committee, which first met on 14 September 1937 at the home of Stephen F. Stoltzfus, its first chairman. When Stoltzfus moved to Maryland in 1940, Beiler was appointed chairman and served in that role until his death in 1968 (Directory 1973:20–21). A booklet describing the move to Maryland in 1940 was published twenty-five years later (Amish Moving to Maryland, 1965). Unless otherwise indicated, this chapter’s citations of Amish positions, attitudes, and actions are based on documents in The Papers (1937–68). Several documents from this collection were published by Eli M. Shirk (1939) as part of a booklet he prepared on the history of the school controversy. Shirk was an Old Order Mennonite leader who worked closely with the Amish School Committee. Other documents from The Papers were compiled and published by C. S. Lapp (1991).

  11. Gemeinden (1937:4).

  12. For documentation related to this case, see Keim (1975:94) and Intelligencer (17, 18, and 24 November 1937, 2 December 1937, 29 January 1938, and 1 February 1938).

  13. The sale of public one-room schools is reported in Intelligencer (10 November 1938). Directory (1973) provides a chronological listing of the opening of Amish schools from 1938 to 1973. The first two opened in November 1938.

  14. Some three hundred pages of documents and newspaper reports covering the arrests and political struggle in the Lancaster settlement between 1949 and 1955 were compiled by C. S. Lapp (1991).

  15. Keim (1975:95).

  16. For a review of the court cases that were tested during these years, including several in Lancaster County, see Cline (1968:109–15).

  17. “Statement” (1950).

  18. Intelligencer (30 September 1950).

  19. Intelligencer (21 September 1950).

  20. Smith (1961:247) and Keim (1975:96).

  21. The first vocational school classes were held at the Aaron F. Stoltzfus home in Upper Leacock Township. The vocational program was supervised by the Old Order Amish School Committee; see Directory (1973:21). It marked the end of the legal battles begun in 1937 and ushered in a new era of peaceful coexistence in Pennsylvania. The vocational school solution became a model for some other localities as well. In some states legal disputes continued until they were silenced by the Supreme Court decision of 1972, which affirmed the right of the Amish to keep their children out of public high schools. For an excellent discussion of the Supreme Court ruling, see Keim (1975). The vocational program continues in the Lancaster settlement out of respect to the agreement negotiated with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania between 1953 and 1955. In some other localities the program has been discontinued.

  22. Guidelines for the Vocational School Program were spelled out in memorandums from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Instruction (22 September 1955 and 16 January 1956) and are included in Papers (1937–68). The program conceived by the Amish was first approved in a joint meeting of the bishops and the school committee on 30 September 1953. A printed version of the principles governing the program was later distributed in pamphlet form (Vocation 1956). For another discussion of the vocational school program, see Hostetler and Huntington (1992:40–41). Amish views and vocational school policies can be found in Vocation (1956) and Standards (1981).

  23. Papers (9 August 1954).

  24. This summary of the reasons behind the protest of consolidated high schools was gleaned from numerous source documents in Papers (1937–68).

  25. This quote is in the summary paragraph of a four-page review of the history of the Amish School Controversy, covering the years 1937–50. It was likely compiled by Aaron E. Beiler sometime after 18 February 1950, and the statement is probably his. The undated historical review “Repeal from 1947 Enactment” is with Beiler’s documents in Papers (1937–68).

  26. For an extended treatment of Amish schools and childhood socialization, see Hostetler and Huntington (1992). Fisher and Stahl (1986) provide an insider’s view of the daily routines and organization of the one-room Amish school. See Esh (1977) for an Amishman’s account of the development of Amish schools.

  27. Blackboard Bulletin (January 2001:16–17). This annual listing of schools shows 158 Amish schools in the Lancaster settlement for the 2000–2001 school year. An average of 30 pupils per school yields a total of 4,740 pupils.

  28. Standards (1981:2).

  29. Pathway Publishers in Aylmer, Ontario, owned and operated by Amish people, is a major supplier of textbooks and teaching aids and is the publisher of the Blackboard Bulletin, a monthly teachers magazine with a wide circulation.

  30. For a history of the development of the special schools, see Beginning (1996), C. S. Lapp (1991:573), and Kinsinger (1997:111–20). Some of the services to these children are provided by the S. June Smith Center in Lancaster.

  31. Standards (1981:30).

  32. Guidelines (1981:12).

  33. The Old Order Book Society evolved out of the School Committee, which first met in 1937 to protest the new school-attendance laws.

  34. Standards (1981:31).

  35. Hostetler and Huntington (1992:93–95).

  36. Outley (1982:45).

  37. A record of the negotiations, from the Amish perspective, over a variety of legal issues can be found in Kinsinger (1997).

  38. Kinsinger (1997:34).

  39. President Bush spoke at the Penn John’s School, the last school operated by a local public school board in Lancaster County for mostly Old Order Amish and Mennonite youth.

  40. Transcript of the President’s Remarks, Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, 22 March 1989.

  41. I received more than fifty phone calls from radio, television, and print media (in the United States and abroad) within a two-week period. New Yorker and Time magazines covered the story as well as the major TV networks.

  42. Philadelphia Magazine printed an extended story on Amish youth titled “Party On, Amos,” August 1997, 137–44.

  8 | The Riddles of Technology

  1. For extended treatments of the Moses Hartz incident, consult J. A. Hostetler (1993:284–87), Nolt (1992: 204–7), P. Yoder (1987b:103–6), Hartz and Hartz (1965), and Mast and Mast (1982:83–87). The most detailed analysis of this never-ending affair and a list
of source documents are provided by Paton Yoder (1991:266–73). Virtually all of the published accounts were written by Mennonites or Amish-Mennonites. Amos J. Stoltzfus (n.d.), who witnessed the episode as a young church member, wrote from an Old Order Amish perspective.

  2. The Hartzes were received into the Conestoga Amish-Mennonite congregation after making a “kneeling” confession of failure—one of several options recommended by an out-of-state committee called in to investigate the matter. Old Order Amish preacher David Beiler is typically cited as the person spearheading the renewed shunning of the Hartzes. Paton Yoder (n.d.) points out, however, that a single minister could not have brought about the reversal without the support of others, including the bishops.

  3. Bericht (1943).

  4. The text of the “demand” for a more lenient interpretation of shunning and a threat to secede from the Old Order Amish, dated 29 September 1909, was reprinted in Bericht (1943). No names were signed to the “demand,” and in their response the bishops curtly noted that “ordinarily one pays little attention to letters without names” (Bericht 1943:5). The bishops also argued that their interpretation of shunning simply followed “what the old bishops and ministers taught concerning separation and shunning, some forty, sixty or up to 100 years ago. We want nothing else than to stay in what we have been taught” (Bericht 1943:5).

  5. The separation began when the dissenting group made its demand on 29 September 1909. The first worship service with ordained ministers present, on 27 February 1910, marks the formal culmination of the division. Thus, I have used the year 1910 in the text to mark this schism. For a chronology of the events surrounding the division, see Glick (1986) and F. E. Lapp (1963). The most extensive discussion, written from the progressive point of view, is included in Elmer Yoder’s (1987:103–12) history of the Beachy Amish.

  6. Christian J. Beiler (1850–1934) was a spokesman for the dissenting group, but the name Peachey church was used because Samuel W. Peachey and, in a lesser role, Christian D. Peachey from Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, were instrumental in providing ministerial leadership to the group in its first two years (E. Yoder 1987:108–9). After Christian L. King was ordained bishop on 24 April 1913, the group was sometimes referred to as the King church. With a small following, Christian L. King broke off from Peachey church in 1925 and formed a separate King church, which eventually became defunct. The Peachey church remained a viable group under the leadership of John A. Stoltzfus, who was ordained bishop in April 1926. After that, the Peachey church was sometimes called the “John A. Church,” but the Peachey label prevailed until the group began worshiping in the Weavertown Church building in 1930.

  The local historian of the group traces the further evolution of the name: “After the church house at Weavertown was acquired it [the group] became known as the Weavertown Amish-Mennonite Church. When the Church joined the Beachy Affiliation it became known as a Beachy Amish-Mennonite denomination” (F. E. Lapp 1963:11). The group affiliated with the Beachy Amish in 1950. For a history of the congregations in that affiliation, see E. Yoder (1987). Today three congregations (Weavertown, Pequea, and Mine Road) represent the growth of the original body. Since 1969, several small groups springing from the Old Order Amish division of 1966 have also affiliated with the Beachy Amish. The membership of all Beachy Amish congregations in Lancaster County today is less than a thousand.

  7. E. Yoder (1987:125–27, 351–55).

  8. F. E. Lapp (1963), E. Yoder (1987), and Glick (1986), writing from the progressive perspective, emphasize the strict interpretation of shunning as the cause for the division.

  9. The written demand of the withdrawing group and the response of the bishops, recorded in Bericht (1943), identify strict shunning as the ostensible reason for the division.

  10. This perception was confirmed by several leaders and oral historians when asked about the reasons for the 1910 division. Regardless of the actual role of the telephone in the division, its importance in the schism may have increased over time in the Amish mind as a means of diverting attention from the severe enforcement of shunning. Of the Amish use of phones, Amishman John K. Lapp (1986:7) says, “Some were willing to put them away and others were not, so that is when the Kinig gma [Peachey church] started, the phone was one of the issues but I suppose there were some more.” Amish minister Joseph Beiler, in the foreword of Gingerich and Kreider (1986:14), says the 1910 schism was “caused by indifferent views in church discipline, most concerning newly invented contraptions that our conservative church leaders could not tolerate.” In contrast, oral historians in the progressive group contend that as late as 1916 members of the Peachey church were asked to take out phones when they bought a farm that had them. This suggests that the Peachey church did not accept the phone until at least six years after the division.

  11. For an intriguing social history of the Amish and Old Order Mennonite struggle with telephones, see D. Umble (1996).

  12. Fletcher (1955:525).

  13. One Amishman said: “I remember when the phones came. The church didn’t say anything about them. It was thumbs up. Two of my wife’s uncles had the phones in and there were quite a few others that had them and then an issue came up. Two people talking on the phone were gossiping about someone else and it went so far that it became a church issue. They were asked to come to church and make a confession about it. Then the church decided that we just better not allow these phones.”

  14. J. K. Lapp (1986:7).

  15. Fletcher (1955:525).

  16. Armstrong and Feldman (1986:65).

  17. Some farmers installed phones in sheds near their barns in order to call the artificial inseminator for their cows. This was particularly irksome to some bishops, who were opposed to artificial insemination of dairy cows.

  18. Klein (1941:101).

  19. Fletcher (1955:62–65).

  20. The life story of Isaac Glick is told by his son in a book-length account that provides an overview of many Amish practices in the first two decades of the twentieth century (Glick 1994).

  21. The use of Delco and Genco plants by members of the Peachey church was confirmed by several Old Order Amish informants. Surprisingly, an Old Order Amishman remembers taking his batteries to a member of the Peachey church to have them charged.

  22. Throughout the text, the distinction between 12-volt and 110-volt current is simplified for the sake of clarity. While the distinction for the most part is correct, there are minor technical variations. As electricity was coming into use, different types of batteries produced various levels of voltage. The Amish had always accepted the simple dry cell battery, but they opposed the Genco and Delco plants, which used wet cell batteries and produced a variety of voltages for electric light bulbs. As electrical technology changed over the years, the Amish continued to accept the use of direct current stored in batteries, which typically is 12-volts. They opposed the use of alternating current taken from the public utility lines, which normally is 110-volts. They opposed electricity from public power lines or in other form—even though home-generated—that could be used to operate standard electrical motors and appliances, rather than to the specific voltage level per se. For all practical purposes, this amounted to a distinction between 12-volt and 110-volt current.

  9 | Harnessing the Power of Progress

  1. The scooter craze was featured in the 5 June 2000 Time magazine as well as in Lancaster’s Intelligencer of 18 August 2000. National sales of scooters were expected to top 5 million units in 2000.

  2. Klein (1941:119).

  3. Klein (1941:120). For stories of the arrival of the car in the Lancaster area by a former Amishman, see Glick (1994).

  4. Fletcher (1955:525).

  5. Fletcher (1955:328).

  6. Amish historians and informants are not able to pinpoint a specific date for the ban on car ownership because the church never seriously considered the issue. By 1917 Mennonite bishops in the Lancaster area were buying cars. It is likely that the Amish consensus again
st cars had crystallized before this time. The date 1915, however, is an estimate based on conversations with Amish informants. In any event, the car taboo emerged over several years as cars were coming into popular use.

  7. Flink (1975:2).

  8. Fletcher (1955:330). For a discussion of the social effects of the car, see Allen (1957), who concludes that they are so numerous as to be incalculable!

  9. Flink (1975:40).

  10. For an Amishman’s view of the pros and cons of car ownership, see Wagler (n.d.). Reasons for not owning cars are also provided in One Thousand (1992).

  11. New Era (18 February 1977).

  12. A record of the controversy surrounding the PUC regulation of Amish taxis can be found in Intelligencer and New Era. See especially New Era (18 and 22 February 1977, 2 March 1977, 1 November 1977, 21 April 1978) and Intelligencer (23 February 1977, 2, 9, and 17 March 1977).

  13. Intelligencer (1 March 1977).

  14. Ivan Glick, in a letter to the author on 26 August 1987, reports that this farmer was Martin Shirk of Churchtown.

  15. Tractor use in fields by the Amish was reported by numerous informants and is also documented by Amishman J. K. Lapp (1986:9) in his memoirs.

  16. All of the informants living during the first two decades of the twentieth century agree that the Amish church had few if any restrictions on the purchase and use of new farm machinery at that time. Rather than lagging behind their neighbors, Amish farmers often were the first ones in the community to buy new implements as they became available on the public market. For a history of farming practices and equipment use, see Amishman Gideon Fisher’s (1978) account of social change on the farm.

  17. Similar stories of the tractor to car scenario were given by three other informants. Wagler (n.d.:20) makes the same argument.