The Amish
Page 7
As leaders met to discuss, debate, and seek consensus, it became clear that they did not agree on the role of the Ordnung in defining their practices. A majority of those who attended the Dienerversammlungen seemed somewhat open to adapting to the times, and some even welcomed change. Others wished to hold tight to the alte Ordnung, the “Old Order,” of their forebears.
By 1865 conservative leaders, who had wanted to keep the old practices (Old Order), realized they were being outflanked. That spring, thirty-four tradition-minded ministers caucused in Holmes County, Ohio, a few days before the larger body of ministers met. The traditionalists prepared a manifesto of their commitment to an Old Order way of life and a list of things to purge from Amish communities, including those that “serve to express pomp and pride and lead away from God.” The list ranged from “speckled, striped, flowered clothing made according to the style of the world” to “unnecessary, grand household furnishings,” and “pompous carriages,” as well as commercial insurance and businesses operated “according to the ways of the world.” The tradition-respecting leaders concluded that the gate on the pathway to heaven “is portrayed for us as straight, and the way as narrow, but it is not therefore ever closed, but stands open for all repentant souls, and as the Savior says … ‘Whoever does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple.’”18
The 1865 ministers’ meeting ignored the conservative leaders’ overture, and in response the tradition-minded churches withdrew from the national ministers’ forum. Change-minded Amish, on the other hand, proceeded down a slow but determined path of greater accommodation to American society. Within two generations, the progress-seeking churches would surrender their distinctive Amish identity and merge with neighboring Mennonites.19
Meanwhile, the tradition-minded “Old Order” Amish came to be identified by plainness, simplicity, small-scale farming, and skepticism of the emerging consumer culture. The Old Order Amish also defined church in small-scale, local terms, rejecting church buildings, denominational structures, and salaried ministry. These adherents to tradition believed that the Ordnung was the best way to maintain church unity and social balance, and they dismissed modern modes of authority such as science, written constitutions, subjective feelings, and professional expertise. In the 1870s, some of the most obvious markers of acculturation to mainstream religion were revival meetings, Sunday schools, and the use of English in worship services—all of which the Old Orders rejected.20
Given the localized authority of the Amish church, the nineteenth-century rift between the change-leaning Amish and the Old Orders was more of a gradual shifting of allegiances than a single schism. One church district’s decision to align with the Old Order camp, for example, might prompt a wavering district in another settlement to follow suit—or to bolt for the progressives, depending on the issues and personalities involved. There were Old Order Amish districts in Wayne County, Ohio, as early as 1865, yet the separation of Old Order and progress-minded Amish in eastern Pennsylvania did not occur until 1877. And the sorting out in Ontario continued into the 1890s.
As late as 1912, some lines of fellowship were still fluid, as emerging technological issues were beginning to mark Old Order identity. That year, members of a Johnson County, Iowa, church voted on whether to accept telephones. Back in 1890 the district had constructed a meetinghouse, signaling its openness to pursuing a progressive path. Yet some members still held Old Order sympathies. When the district considered accepting the telephone, all the women voted against it, while the men were divided on the matter. At that point Bishop Jacob F. Swartzentruber (1851–1924), who opposed telephones, declared that the majority had spoken and that phones would be prohibited. That decision produced anything but peace, and a number of change-minded households—in which husbands apparently overruled their wives’ convictions—left to form a progressive Amish-Mennonite congregation. Those who remained with Swartzentruber then abandoned their meetinghouse and moved decisively into the Old Order camp.21
Old Order Growth and Diversity
During the national ministers’ meetings of the 1860s and 1870s, Old Order advocates were in the minority, but that did not mean that the Old Order Amish were in decline. Old Order church districts persisted in many historic Amish communities, and between 1860 and 1920 sixty-two new Old Order settlements emerged in twenty-four states across the country.22 Many of these new communities, established on marginal farmland with limited access to markets, did not survive the depression of the 1890s or the dust bowl of the 1930s. Others, however, blossomed into thriving Old Order settlements such as those in Arthur, Illinois (begun in 1864), and Geauga County, Ohio (founded in 1886). (See fig. 3.1.)
The growth and spread of the Old Order movement also bred a certain amount of diversity despite—or perhaps because of—the Old Orders’ commitment to the Ordnung, which was rooted in local tradition. Unlike the change-minded Amish leaders who had come to dominate the ministers’ meetings and who used parliamentary procedure and published minutes to render their rulings, Old Order authority rested on informal oral tradition in each local community. In this way, a commitment to tradition actually worked against uniformity because no structures or authorities outside the local area could dictate practice.
For example, the Amish in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, had worshiped in meetinghouses prior to the split between conservatives and progressives, so the Old Order Amish there continued to do so. Meetinghouses were part of the Somerset Ordnung even though Old Orders everywhere else demonstrated fidelity to tradition by rejecting church buildings and worshiping in private homes.23 In each case, the authority of the local Ordnung dictated practice.
Some aspects of a settlement’s Ordnung could change, however. For example, in the 1860s, the roofs and sides of Amish buggies in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, were covered with yellow oilcloth, but by the early twentieth century, buggy tops there had uniformly switched to gray as one type of waterproof material had replaced another. Meanwhile, midwestern communities adopted black-covered carriages.24 Indeed, apart from horse-drawn transportation itself, few aspects of Amish life have ever been permanently fixed, even though individuals are not free to flout local custom.
Although each church district had ecclesial autonomy, leaders often collaborated and deferred to one another in order to restrain change and avoid offending the sensibilities of fellow conservatives. Nonetheless, local choices sometimes proved contentious, and differences emerged within—and not just between—settlements, especially when bishops or ministers disagreed over how to interpret the Ordnung. By the end of the nineteenth century, such differences had occasionally produced new Old Order affiliations, which we explore in chapter 8.
FIGURE 3.1. Expansion of Extant Amish Settlements in the United States by County and Time Period. Settlements had also been established in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming by 2011. Map prepared by St. Lawrence University Libraries GIS Program
Horse-and-buggy transportation became the distinguishing mark of Amish society in the twentieth century. This northern Indiana–style buggy is equipped with battery-operated lights, turn signals, a slow-moving-vehicle emblem, and a license plate. The buggies of the most traditional groups do not have electric lights, enclosed fronts, or SMV emblems. In Indiana, some county governments license buggies. Dennis Hughes
Diversity had its limits, however. During the early 1900s, automobile ownership became the fault line that no Old Orders would cross. In 1927, when some Amish in Somerset and Lancaster Counties bought cars, observers on all sides considered it a step outside the Old Order orbit. The network of churches growing from this schism became known as Beachy Amish, nicknamed for their first bishop, Moses M. Beachy (1874–1946). Although Beachy Amish members have continued to dress somewhat plainly and even retained the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect for a generation or so, their embrace of the car, along with other technological and doctrinal innovations, put them outside the Old Order fence.25
&n
bsp; Scattered Old Order communities, often linked as much by kinship as by church connections, maintained ties and shared news through two privately issued but widely read publications, Raber’s New American Almanac and the Sugarcreek Budget. Starting in 1930, Deacon John A. Raber (1885–1967), a bookstore owner in Baltic, Ohio, began issuing an annual almanac in German, Der Neue Amerikanische Calendar (The New American Almanac). Raber’s Almanac listed Old Order church districts, including all conservative affiliations but not the car-driving Beachy Amish.26
Meanwhile, the Sugarcreek Budget, which circulated well beyond its Ohio hometown, printed news-filled letters from readers across the country. Readership was never confined to Old Orders, but reading the Budget was one way that Old Order readers maintained an Amish consciousness across a scattered faith community. In fact, Old Order letters, printed next to missives from more progressive readers, helped establish and normalize Old Order boundaries. Letters from Old Order “scribes” (as the letter writers became known) reported news of community members and events, including which households had hosted church services. The letters might even discuss commodity prices—but never the cost of a new car.27
Postwar America and the
Amish “Mission Movement”
The mid-twentieth century proved to be an especially tumultuous period in Amish history. World War II had dramatically increased Amish exposure to the wider society and prompted new questions about Amish relations with the world. At the same time, perennial Amish concerns about their mischievous young people took on added urgency in an American society agitated by its own sense of a crisis among its youth.
The Second World War thrust more than seven hundred Amish young men into a whole set of dramatically new experiences. Amish men had long been conscientious objectors (COs) to war. But prior to 1940, COs had been fined or jailed—situations that had increased their sense of sectarian aloofness from a hostile state. During World War II, COs—including Amish men—were assigned to alternative labor in civilian service projects ranging from national parks to public psychiatric hospitals.28 Letters and reports from that time and later reveal how these experiences challenged the church’s rising generation. For some, the needs of the world and the possibility of serving others became compelling new opportunities. For others, such experiences energized a commitment to separatism but on new terms. And for many Amish in Pennsylvania, whose generous draft boards had given them farm furloughs in lieu of civilian work assignments, the war years created something of a gulf between their experience and that of their fellow Amish in the Midwest.
The wartime experiences set the stage for a wide-ranging and controversial Amish “mission movement” that swept through many settlements during the late 1940s and 1950s.29 For a decade or more, a significant number of young Amish men and women quietly but persistently promoted a kind of activism that sought to reform aspects of Amish religious life and encourage Christian service outside the church. Mission movement proponents challenged long-standing practices such as the free-wheeling ways of unbaptized teens and promoted a more introspective devotional life. They also held mission conferences, participated in Mennonite Voluntary Service, distributed evangelical literature to thousands of Amish homes, and funded full-time Amish mission workers in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Ontario. Several dozen attended college to obtain credentials they saw as important for their success in such work. And they did all of these things within the Amish fold despite the growing tension sparked by their actions.
This internal tension was augmented by new external pressures on Amish society. Postwar America was consumed with concerns about child rearing and education, from behavioral psychology to public school reform.30 States began pressing rural school districts to upgrade and consolidate school facilities and to enforce high school attendance. Meanwhile, Cold War conscription kept a spotlight on Amish young men who claimed conscientious objector status while some of their unbaptized younger brothers ran wild on Saturday nights. Of course, the Amish churches had no authority over those unbaptized teens, but that logic was often lost on English neighbors and state officials. When Amish parents refused to send their children to consolidated public schools or to any school beyond eighth grade—a stubbornness publicized by a series of high-profile confrontations in the 1950s—some outside observers saw parental irresponsibility and a hopelessly backward church out of step with progressive American values.31
Crisscrossing pressures complicated the issues as participants on all sides thought the others were jeopardizing the futures of vulnerable youth. Amish parents went to jail rather than send their children to high school, and local officials refused to grant CO status to an Amish man whose younger brother had been arrested for underage drinking.
Such conflicts fed the controversy that soon erupted when the Amish mission movement encouraged youth Bible studies and Sunday schools—stiffening both support and criticism within church circles. Some Amish leaders declared the mission movement’s medicine to be worse than the malady. Others saw a greater threat coming from public school superintendents and draft boards in the larger world.
By the early 1960s, many of these tensions had spun themselves out, with profound implications for Amish identity. Almost all mission movement advocates left the Amish fold for Mennonite or Beachy Amish churches. Some of the movement’s activities—from founding a nursing home for non-Amish residents in Arkansas to opening schools for aboriginal peoples in Ontario, all of which were more accountable to government than to the church—pressed the limits of Amish patience. Mission movement activists were committed to an assertive, rational, organizational view of the world that was impossible to reconcile with the informal, local, face-to-face character of Amish life. The exit of the activists had profound implications for those who remained in Amish churches. The mission movement’s rapid rise and fall sharpened the traditional Amish resolve against evangelistic work and attending college. Indeed, in the decades that followed, most Amish settlements become more religiously sectarian. Subscribing to magazines from other denominations or attending religious services elsewhere became quite rare.32
Sectarian sensibilities were bolstered by the fact that conflicts with public school officials, though not settled everywhere, were moving toward resolution: by the mid-1960s, most states permitted the Amish to open their own schools and end formal education with eighth grade. The rise of Amish schools, the appearance of a decidedly Amish school curriculum, and the publication of Amish devotional materials by the new Amish-affiliated Pathway Publishing Corporation (now Pathway Publishers) further insulated Amish religious life and teaching.33 By 1970 these changes and Amish reactions to them both diversified and consolidated Amish identity in new ways.
The legacy of these mid-twentieth-century events played out in various ways. In most Amish communities the growing religious and educational separatism emerged alongside a cautious openness to technological change as household economies began tilting away from farming and toward small businesses such as cabinetry or construction. In many places, occupational and technological boundaries were becoming more fluid as religious life and primary schooling became more fixed in tradition.
In other cases, Amish efforts to resolve the tensions of the times produced new groups. Some leaders had privately sympathized with the mission movement’s attempts to curb the excesses of rowdy youth. But rather than rallying interest in outward activism, these ministers harnessed the power of the Ordnung itself and incorporated into church discipline things that had previously been considered the prerogative of parents. For example, some districts began enforcing prohibitions on smoking and unsupervised courtship. Between 1953 and 1961, families from various midwestern communities migrated to form new settlements that self-consciously combined such reformist convictions with a conservative commitment to stave off technological change. A different agenda animated the so-called New Order Amish, an affiliation that emerged in the 1960s. Like the mission movement advocates of the previous decade, the nascent
New Order affiliation promoted youth Bible study meetings, forbade tobacco, insisted on “clean” living, and described its personal faith with more emotional and individualistic language.
The proliferation of Amish groups, coupled with the continued growth of Amish populations and the multiplication of new settlements, meant that by the late twentieth century the Amish world had become quite complex. Furthermore, the internal complexity had evolved in the midst of shifting popular perceptions of America’s Amish.
The Amish in the Public Eye
In 1900 America’s Amish population was small—perhaps no more than six thousand—and attracted scant public attention. Observers at the time would have been hard-pressed to imagine the Amish developing a national reputation, let alone becoming national icons.34 Yet during the course of the twentieth century, this remarkable cultural transformation took place. Without an organized public relations campaign, promotional budget, or celebrity spokesperson, a tiny and publicly self-effacing religious group became widely known. By the 1990s, comedians, cartoonists, and television scriptwriters could include offhand Amish references with the assurance that audiences—even if misinformed about the details of Amish culture—recognized “the Amish.”