Jeff Bach, director of the Young Center at Elizabethtown College, provided space, practical support, and, most importantly, encouragement as we wrote the manuscript. We owe enormous gratitude to our Young Center colleague Cynthia Nolt, whose probing questions helped us to clarify our arguments and whose tireless efforts, keen eyes, and meticulous copyediting skills honed our rough prose at every turn through multiple revisions. Developmental editor Valerie Weaver-Zercher offered helpful suggestions for improving the organization and flow of the text. We also thank her for pointing us to Lipovetsky’s work on hypermodernity. A team of capable assistants—Ambre Biehl, Sarah Biedka, Kayla Roush, Lauren Stoltzfus, Elaina Truax, and Julia Ward—aided us in gathering and tabulating data, editing, and fact-checking. The graphics were expertly prepared by Linda Eberly and the maps by Carol Cady.
Stephen E. Scott, research associate at the Young Center, was instrumental in gathering information on Amish affiliations, migrations, and new settlements. His remarkable mastery of the details of Amish life and his friendships in many Amish communities were indispensable for our research. Our gratitude to him is mixed with profound sadness over his sudden death in December 2011.
We thank David Luthy for access to the resources of the Heritage Historical Library and for his counsel and help over the years, which contributed in many ways to this book. We benefited from stimulating conversations with Carl Desportes Bowman at the beginning of the project and especially thank him for alerting us to Bauman’s work on liquid modernity. We give special thanks to John Cross and Martha King for their contribution to the chapters on agriculture and health, respectively, and to James Cates and Richard Stevick for helpful critiques of the chapter on Rumspringa.
The accuracy of our text was improved greatly by the feedback and critical suggestions of those who generously contributed time to reading a draft of the manuscript. We thank the anonymous peer reviewer selected by our publisher and sixteen Amish readers and other colleagues, including Herman Bontrager, Edsel Burdge, Eli Burkholder, James Cates, Eli Ebersol, Henry Erb, Larry Gretzka, Cephas Kauffman, Linda King, Jill E. Korbin, Orie Lehman, Wilma Lehman, Mark L. Louden, Thomas J. Meyers, Floyd Miller, Levi P. Miller, Lynn Miller, Ben Riehl, Gracia Schlabach, Judith Stavisky, Victor Swartz, David Weaver-Zercher, Marvin Wengerd, Wayne Wengerd, and Erik Wesner.
Most essential to our cultural description were the scores of Amish people who spent time visiting with us, answering questions, and explaining various aspects of their way of life. For their patience and time, we thank them.
It is hard to image a better editor to work with than Greg Nicholl and his superb team at the Johns Hopkins University Press. Their extraordinary enthusiasm, support, and advice at every turn of the publication process were invaluable.
We thank our spouses, Fran, Bruce, and Rachel, for their enduring patience, support, and interest in what was at times an all-consuming project for us.
ABOUT THE MAPS
The ESRI data and maps DVD data used to construct the U.S. state and county boundaries for figures 1.1 and 3.1 were provided by TeleAtlas North America, Inc., Lebanon, NH; and for Canadian geopolitical boundaries by Government of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Earth Sciences Sector, Geomatics Canada, Surveyor General Branch, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (Geobase www.geobase.ca/geobase/en/data/index.html and GeoGratis www.geogratis.gc.ca/geogratis/en/index.html).
European data for figure 2.1 was obtained from GADM database of Global Administrative Areas ver. 2.0 www.gadm.org/; and VMap1 from mapAbility.com (www.mapability.com/index1.html?http&&&www.mapability.com/info/vmap0_intro.html).
The maps were prepared by St. Lawrence University Libraries GIS Program using materials from the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency and are reproduced with permission. The constructed maps have neither been endorsed nor authorized by the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency or the U.S. Department of Defense. Map projections are North America Albers Equal Area Conic NAD83 and Geo-spatial Coordinates WGS84. Amish content information provided by the Young Center of Elizabethtown College.
I
ROOTS
CHAPTER 1
WHO ARE THE AMISH?
* * *
Levi and Annie Fisher had a restless night. Earlier on that September day in 1953, a constable had come to their daisry farm and arrested Levi for refusing to send their fourteen-year-old son to ninth grade. Levi and Annie believed that eight grades of school were enough to lead a faithful and productive Amish life. Now Levi was struggling with what to say at his upcoming hearing. Should he pay his fine and send his son to high school, or should he heed his conscience? On September 22, Levi pleaded not guilty and was sentenced to five days in prison, leaving the farm chores in the hands of his family. By January 12, 1954, Levi had been arrested and imprisoned four times. But he was not alone. Authorities near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had arrested some one hundred Amish people that fall. The national crusade for educational progress in the mid-twentieth century had hit a bump on the back roads of rural America.
* * *
A Thriving People
North America is home to hundreds of ethnic and religious groups, each with particular practices that may seem strange to outsiders. Yet even in such diversity, the Amish stand out. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a group more at odds with the plot of America’s narrative. As many Americans celebrate their love affair with the automobile, Amish people continue driving horse-drawn buggies.1 As electronic media have accelerated the pace of communication, Amish churches have resisted telephones and remain unconnected to the Internet. The best Madison Avenue marketing has not enticed Amish families to buy televisions, change their hairstyles, or adopt the household conveniences—from vacuum cleaners to dishwashers—that Americans of all stripes consider necessities. Amish children end their schooling at eighth grade, unmoved by the promises of higher education. Meanwhile, the Amish have refused to fight in America’s wars, held at bay the country’s social welfare programs, and shown little interest in feminism or other widespread social movements. In a society that celebrates the individual and supports freedom of choice, they insist on submission to God, communal tradition, and the church.
Yet despite the yawning gap between Amish culture and mainstream society, the Amish are thriving. They are doubling in number every eighteen to twenty years and defying the predictions of twentieth-century observers that they would dwindle. From a mere 6,000 in 1900, their population has now grown to some 275,000 across thirty states and the province of Ontario.2 While more than half live in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, growing numbers call Wisconsin, New York, Michigan, Missouri, and Kentucky home.
Although these horse-and-buggy-driving people comprise less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the 315 million Americans, they are widely recognized for their distinctive culture. Fleeting references to “the Amish” appear in cartoons, late-night talk shows, print media, and even in promotions for new fashion. Television programs in the United States and abroad feature vignettes of Amish life. Thousands of online ads hawk the merits of “Amish made” products, and the tourist industry invites visitors to “Amish Country” to explore their curiosity about these unusual Americans. From Amish romance novels to food and furniture, the Amish brand sells. Although the Amish themselves do little to invite such attention other than quietly living in a way the rest of the world finds peculiar, public curiosity about them is flourishing.
So who are the Amish? How are they coping, and why are they thriving in the twenty-first century? And why do people find them so fascinating? Before exploring these questions, we offer a brief overview of Amish society and then turn to the ongoing discourse between the Amish and modernity.
Overview
A Protestant Christian group that reaches back to sixteenth-century Europe, the Amish church emerged in 1693 under the leadership of its namesake, Jakob Am-mann (b. 1644).3 Amish families immigrated to North America between the 1730s and 1850s, and their last European congregation dissolved in 1937. Since
that time, Amish people have lived only in the United States and Canada.4
The Amish embrace orthodox Christian beliefs, seek to practice the teachings of Jesus in daily life, and baptize only those who voluntarily confess their faith in him and commit to follow the regulations of their church. The children of Amish parents are not members of the church unless they choose to join—typically in their late teens or early twenties. Some 85 percent of Amish youth on average opt for baptism and thereby make a lifelong commitment to the church. Because few outsiders convert to the group, the Amish resemble an ethnoreligious community more than a denomination.
Amish church and community life is anchored in a church district—what other Christians might call a congregation or a parish. The district has physical boundaries and consists of twenty to forty Amish families who live among English-speaking neighbors, whom the Amish refer to as “the English.” Members of the congregation are bound by frequent—often daily—interaction and regular church attendance. They meet every other Sunday morning for three hours of worship in members’ homes or barns, rotating their meetings from one household to another throughout the year.5 The church district is the locus of ecclesiastical authority and the primary unit of social organization, ensuring that Amish life remains grounded in small-scale, face-to-face interactions.
Church districts that share a common history in a given geographical area constitute a settlement. Some settlements, such as the one in Ohio’s Holmes County, have more than two hundred districts. Most settlements are much smaller, however, with only a dozen or so districts—or in some cases just one. Often the smaller settlements are newer ones founded by a few families moving to a new location. Robust growth and ongoing migration have produced more than 460 settlements that together claim more than two thousand church districts, as shown in figure 1.1.
To Be or Not to Be Modern
The Amish saga threads through the larger narrative of modernization in America, a story shaped by the development of machine power, technological invention, industrialization, communication, and a rational market economy. The process of modernization transforms societies on two levels: structure and consciousness. The changes wrought by modernization both revamp the organizational patterns of societies and penetrate human consciousness, altering social values and ways of thinking.6
More important for understanding the Amish story than the process of modernization is its consequence: modernity. The salient markers of the modern era are specialization of work and social activities, separation of time and space, an expanding diversity of lifestyles, a rational and calculating outlook, an accent on individualism, the rise of large abstract organizations, and an ever-expanding range of choices. In fact, some analysts contend that this last marker—choice—is the most pronounced trait of modernity. From lifestyles to food, from religious practices to hobbies, the indelible imprint of choice is stamped on the fabric of modern life.7
FIGURE 1.1. Amish Communities in North America. Communities are also found in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. Map prepared by St. Lawrence University Libraries GIS Program
Although Amish people live in rural areas of North America, many no longer earn their livelihood by farming. Doyle Yoder
As we listened to the stories recounted by Amish people, one thing loomed large: their encounter with modernity has been a continuous and complicated struggle. Sorting out how to survive in a modernizing world without losing their religious commitments has not been easy. They have wrestled with how to respond to technological inventions (the car, electricity, television), religious innovations (Sunday school, mission activism, seminary education), and a pervasive scientific outlook that has transformed education, health care, and many other aspects of contemporary life.
Amish people did not tuck themselves away on the back shelf of a country store as the twentieth-century forces of urbanization, industrialization, government, and technology transformed American society in myriad ways. They actively decided what to embrace and what to reject, discerning just how far they could wade into mainstream American life without compromising their religious values.8 For example, in the 1960s when some state health boards required dairy farms to cool milk in refrigerated bulk tanks, Amish farmers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, did not retreat from dairying. Instead, they installed the tanks and, in lieu of electricity, used diesel-powered refrigeration units. At the same time, however, the farmers reiterated their traditional stand against selling milk on Sunday—a day the Amish consider divinely ordained for rest—and did not allow commercial dairies to haul their milk on that day.
Amish convictions have perplexed many other Americans, especially government officials, who have struggled with what to do with a people who refuse to go to high school and who insist on traveling by horse and buggy on highways built for cars. What should officials do, for instance, with a people who are a magnet for lucrative tourism yet whose horses’ hooves chip away the surface of public roads?
Modernity has indeed shaped Amish society. Yet as the legal system has grappled with how to respond to the convictions of this resilient minority, the Amish have left their distinctive mark on American cultural life as well.9
Bargaining with Modernity
Folks who read by lantern light, travel by horse and carriage, and entertain themselves without televisions or iPods are surely stuck in tradition. Or are they? Walk into a booming Amish manufacturing shop and you may see sophisticated equipment powered by air and hydraulic pressure. Visit an Amish dairy farm and you may see an efficient operation using the latest feed supplements, fertilizers, and veterinary practices. Enter a new Amish home and you may find up-to-date bathroom facilities and a spacious kitchen with beautiful wood cabinets and the latest gas appliances. Certainly, the most conservative Amish do not use such items, but stereotypes aside, many Amish people are quite modern in some ways, even as they reject certain trappings of contemporary life.
Their unusual blend of progress and tradition poses interesting questions about how the Amish have coped with the pressures of modern life. Why have they accepted advances in some segments of their lives while staunchly resisting them in others? Throughout the twentieth century, Amish people tenaciously sought to preserve their traditions despite the persistent press of modernity. Although they have obviously benefited from modernization, they remain skeptical of its long-term impact, particularly in the realm of technology. They fear that modernity is a divisive force that might, in time, tear their families and communities asunder. That worry is not an idle one, for some social analysts argue that the pervasive specialization of modern life unglues social bonds and pulls apart the interconnected components of traditional societies.10
Cultural minorities use a variety of strategies to protect their ways of life. In order to thrive in America, the Amish have employed a three-pronged strategy in their struggle with modernity: resistance, acceptance, and negotiation.
To fortify their way of life, the Amish have constructed certain cultural fences of resistance—plain dress, horse-drawn transportation, religious rituals, and a distinctive dialect. They have rejected high school education, public-grid electricity, the Internet, and television. Some forms of resistance—especially the challenge to educational reform in the mid-twentieth century and, more recently, to certain building codes—have been costly, and the Amish have occasionally paid the price of imprisonment.
Had they simply rejected all things modern, however, they would surely have become a fossilized subculture. Instead, they have also reached across their cultural fences and accepted certain advantages of modern life such as detergents, insecticides, high-precision milling machines, in-line skates, and, in some communities, cell phones. By adopting some innovations from the outside world, they have enhanced their lifestyle and increased the productivity of their farms and shops. The Amish have also accepted the imposition of state and federal taxes (income, sales, and real estate) as well as government guidelines regulatin
g food production and safety standards in their businesses.
Some of the choices they faced in modern America required little discussion because the options seemed so obvious. In the eyes of Amish elders, television clearly offered more harm than good. Other choices, fraught with ambiguity, were more difficult because their long-term impact on community life was uncertain. Trying to sort out such murky issues, the Amish have also negotiated with modernity, rejecting some aspects of a particular practice while accepting others. They selectively participate in modern life on their own terms: riding in cars but not owning them, tapping electricity from batteries but not from the public grid, working in retail sales and light manufacturing but not in the professions. This process of bargaining with modernity has enabled them to maintain their ethnic identity and, at the same time, flourish economically.
Seeking a balance between strict isolation and wholesale accommodation, the Amish strike many cultural compromises that blend aspects of tradition and modernity. Concessions are traded back and forth in a process of social bargaining. When the negotiations involve cultural phenomena—values or ways of thinking—we call the process cultural bargaining. When patterns of social organization are on the negotiating table, the exchange involves structural bargaining—adapting and changing organizational forms and practices.11
The negotiating metaphor captures the dynamic process of give-and-take both within Amish communities—as factions struggle to agree on acceptable practices—and between Amish society and the larger world. It also explains accommodations that may appear inconsistent to outsiders, such as installing propane refrigerators instead of electric ones or using tractors for stationary power at the barn but not for pulling equipment in the fields. These and other adaptations have been hammered out at the metaphorical bargaining table over decades, resulting in diverse ways of being Amish, ways that appear strange to the non-Amish world. Sometimes the Amish have acquiesced to the demands of modernity. At other times the agents of modern life have bent the rules or made special concessions, such as the legal exemption from Social Security granted to the Amish in the United States.
The Amish Page 2