The Amish suggest that firm limits and clear boundaries may best preserve human dignity over the generations. It is possible, or at last worth trying, the Amish argue, to tame technology, to control the size of things, to bridle bureaucracy, and to hold things to a humane scale. In short, they contend that living with modest humility in a well-ordered and bounded community offers one road to happiness and well-being.
APPENDIX A
Related Groups
Mennonites, Brethren, Hutterites
The Amish share historical roots and theological traits with other Christian groups that descend from the Anabaptist movement of sixteenth-century Europe. The largest related family of churches is the Mennonites, whose name comes from an influential Anabaptist leader, Menno Simons (c. 1496–1561). By the late 1600s, Mennonite communities existed in Switzerland and South Germany and also across northern Europe from the Netherlands to what is today Poland. In 1693, the Amish emerged as a distinct group within the Swiss–South German wing of the Mennonite world. In the 1700s, Swiss–South German Mennonites and Amish began immigrating to North America, where they often settled in adjacent but separate communities.
In the twenty-first century, the North American Mennonite world includes dozens of subgroups that roughly divide into two types: traditional and assimilated. Members of assimilated churches participate in many aspects of mainstream culture. They pursue higher education, live in urban areas, engage in professions, use up-to-date technology, and wear contemporary clothing.
There are two types of plain-dressing traditional Mennonites of Swiss–South German background: those who use horse-and-buggy transportation, and those who drive cars. The horse-and-buggy-driving Old Order Mennonites, including the Groffdale Conference, or “Wenger” Mennonites, and the Stauffer Mennonites, speak Pennsylvania Dutch and are sometimes confused with the Amish. Several physical markers distinguish the two groups. For example, unlike the Amish, the Old Order Mennonite men do not wear beards, and the fabrics worn by Old Order Mennonite women typically have patterns and designs in contrast to the solid fabrics of Amish women. Old Order Mennonites worship in simple church meetinghouses, unlike the Amish, who meet for worship in private homes.
Numerous groups of traditional Mennonites, including the Wisler Mennonites and the Weaverland Conference, or “Horning” Mennonites, drive cars. They live mostly in rural areas, generally do not speak Pennsylvania Dutch, wear somewhat plain dress, and rarely attend college. They use electricity but typically place some restrictions on television and online access.
The Old Colony Mennonites are a conservative Mennonite group descended from the Dutch–North German wing of the Mennonite movement. Old Colony Mennonites live in Canada and in half a dozen Latin American nations, from Mexico to Argentina. Many Old Colony Mennonites drive cars or trucks, but some 60,000 Old Colony Mennonites in Bolivia continue to drive horse and buggy. The Old Colony Mennonites dress in distinctive, plain garb and speak a Low German dialect that is different from Pennsylvania Dutch.
The Beachy Amish and the so-called Amish Mennonites are groups that emerged in the twentieth century from Amish roots. Despite their names and history, these churches lie outside the contemporary Amish orbit because their members drive cars and use a wide range of consumer technology, and few speak Pennsylvania Dutch. These groups typically engage in vigorous evangelism and mission work and have gained many converts of non-Amish background. Male members wear closely trimmed beards, and women wear small head coverings. Members of some of these groups pursue higher education.
Two other groups are easily confused with the Amish: the Old German Baptist Brethren and the Old Order River Brethren. Members of these two groups are often misidentified as Amish because their distinctive clothing closely resembles Amish dress and because Brethren men also grow full beards. Both groups drive cars, use electricity, and permit higher education and use of the Internet. They do not speak a German dialect. These Brethren churches trace their history both to the Anabaptist movement of the 1500s and to the Protestant Pietist renewal movement of the 1600s.
The Hutterites, who practice economic communalism, branched from the Anabaptist movement in 1528 in Europe. They reject private property and base their communalism on practices of the early Christian church. Some 50,000 Hutterites live in 500 rural communes in the northern plains states and the Canadian Prairie Provinces. They follow traditional religious practices, wear distinctive garb, and speak an Austrian-German dialect. Unlike the Amish, however, they use the most advanced farm technology and motor vehicles, all of which are communally owned.
Four other groups are sometimes mistakenly associated with the Amish: the Quakers, the Amana Colonies, the Moravians, and the Shakers. None of these four groups have any direct historical or religious connections to the Amish. Several of these groups, at least in their past, have had some beliefs and practices—pacifism, plain dress, simplicity of lifestyle, separation from the larger society—that resemble Amish ways and have led to understandable confusion.
FOR FURTHER READING
Rod Janzen and Max Stanton. The Hutterites in North America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
Donald B. Kraybill. Concise Encyclopedia of Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
Donald B. Kraybill and Carl F. Bowman. On the Backroad to Heaven. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Donald B. Kraybill and James P. Hurd. Horse-and-Buggy Mennonites: Hoofbeats of Humility in a Postmodern World. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.
Royden Loewen and Steven M. Nolt. Seeking Places of Peace. A Global Mennonite History: North America. Intercourse, PA: Good Books; Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2012.
Stephen E. Scott. An Introduction to Old Order and Conservative Mennonite Groups. Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 1996.
Global Anabaptist-Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. www.gameo.org/.
APPENDIX B
Key Events in Amish History
1517
Protestant Reformation initiated by Martin Luther in Wittenberg, Germany.
1525
Anabaptist movement begins in Zurich, Switzerland.
1632
A meeting of Mennonite ministers endorses the Dordrecht Confession of Faith in Dordrecht, Holland.
1693
The Amish movement coalesces in Switzerland and in Alsace, France.
1730s–1770s
The first wave of Amish immigrate to North America.
1815–1860s
The second wave of Amish immigrate to North America.
1862–1878
Continent-wide Amish ministers meetings (Dienerversammlungen) are held to confirm Amish unity, but the meetings result in division. A distinct Old Order movement emerges after 1865.
1890
The Budget, a correspondence newspaper, begins publication, linking Amish communities over a wide region.
1900–1920s
Social and technological changes—especially the telephone and automobile—challenge Amish church-communities.
1913
Swartzentruber Amish emerge in Ohio as a distinctive conservative group, one of many affiliations that form over the course of the twentieth century.
1925
The first Amish private school, Apple Grove, is founded in Dover, Delaware.
1927
A division in Pennsylvania’s Somerset County settlement leads eventually to the formation of the Beachy Amish Church, which adopts both the telephone and the automobile.
1937
Amish in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, protest an extended school year, an increase of the age when children may leave school, and school consolidation, which draws national media attention.
1937
Last Amish church in Europe closes.
1940s
World War II and the years following bring many social and economic changes that would challenge Amish communities in the second half
of the twentieth century.
1948
Old Order Book Society forms to provide textbooks for Amish private schools.
1940s–1950s
So-called Amish mission movement energizes many Amish young people to engage in outward-looking religious activism, but they soon exit the church.
1955
Popular Broadway musical Plain and Fancy helps generate Amish tourism.
1950s–1960s
The number of Amish schools increases, as do conflicts between Amish parents and public school officials in some states.
1957
The Blackboard Bulletin magazine for teachers is established to promote the development of Amish private schools.
1964
Pathway Publishing Company is incorporated by Amish people as a nonprofit organization.
1965
Self-employed Amish receive exemption from Social Security (Amish employees of Amish employers gain exemption in 1988).
1966
New Order Amish group emerges in Ohio.
1967
National Amish Steering Committee forms as liaison to federal government, initially to address military conscription, but soon deals with other issues.
1967
Lutheran pastor Reverend William Lindholm organizes the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom to provide legal assistance to Amish people challenging school attendance laws.
1972
U.S. Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder et al. legitimates Amish exemption from high school education.
1975
Die Botschaft begins publication, featuring letters from Old Order correspondents only.
1970s–1980s
Many Amish people seek nonfarm employment and develop Amish-owned business.
1985
Paramount Pictures’ film Witness boosts popular interest in Amish.
2006
A shooting at the Nickel Mines Amish School attracts worldwide media attention.
NOTES
PREFACE
1. Gertrude Enders Huntington’s lecture at the Pennsylvania State University, Nov. 5, 2009. Unpublished manuscript in Donald Kraybill’s files.
2. See Kraybill, Amish and the State; Kraybill and Nolt, Amish Enterprise; Kraybill, Nolt, and Weaver-Zercher, Amish Way; Scott and Pellman, Living without Electricity; Umble, Holding the Line; Umble and Weaver-Zercher, Amish and the Media; Wesner, Success Made Simple.
3. See Dawley, Amish in Wisconsin; O. Gingerich, Amish of Canada; Huntington, Amish in Michigan; Hurst and McConnell, Amish Paradox (Holmes County, Ohio); Johnson-Weiner, New York Amish; Nolt and Meyers, Plain Diversity (Indiana); Schwieder and Schwieder, Peculiar People (Iowa).
4. Letter to Donald Kraybill, Jan. 9, 2012.
5. For a discussion of tribes in twenty-first-century America, see Watters, Urban Tribes.
CHAPTER 1. WHO ARE THE AMISH?
Epigraph: C. Lapp, Pennsylvania School History, 410–90.
1. See Seiler, Republic of Drivers, for a deft discussion of the links between car driving and other American cultural values.
2. “Amish Population by State (2012).” Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, Elizabethtown College. http://www2.etown.edu/amishstudies/Population_by_State_2012.asp.
3. The date of Ammann’s death is unknown, as noted in chapter 2.
4. For more details on the Amish sojourn in Europe, see Nolt, History of the Amish. The Canadian Amish have always lived in Ontario, except for a few families in British Columbia from 1969–1972. Small Amish settlements existed briefly in Mexico (1923–1929), Paraguay (1967–1978), and Honduras (1968–1979).
5. Most New Order congregations meet for Sunday school on the Sunday when they do not hold worship services, as do a small number of other Amish congregations.
6. The literature on modernization is voluminous. For an overview, consult these essays in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences: “Modernity: Anthropological Aspects” (9944–49); “Modernity: History of the Concept” (9949–54); “Modernization and Modernity in History” (9954–61). Although various dimensions and analytical frames are used to interpret modernity, we are most interested in its consequences for small tradition-oriented groups such as the Amish. On the various interpretations of modernity pertinent to the Amish story, see Wagner, Modernity as Experience and Interpretation; Giddens, Consequences of Modernity; and Berger, Berger, and Kellner, Homeless Mind. Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, investigates how modernization shapes plural conceptions of moral order. Lears’s Rebirth of a Nation and C. Fischer’s Made in America offer cogent analyses of modernization in America.
7. See Berger, Facing Up to Modernity, and C. Fischer, Made in America.
8. Olshan, “Modernity,” argues persuasively that the Amish were not passive bystanders to modernization.
9. See Epps, “Amish and the American Oyster.”
10. See Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart; Berger, Facing Up to Modernity; and Giddens, Consequences of Modernity.
11. Kraybill first employs the notion of the Amish negotiating with modernity in Riddle of Amish Culture, 23–24. For a collection of essays on the topic, see Kraybill and Olshan, Amish Struggle with Modernity.
12. Bauman, Liquid Modernity, 8. Some analysts tag the late twentieth-century shift as “postmodern,” “late modern,” “supermodern,” or “hypermodern.” For example, see Harvey, Condition of Postmodernity. We find Bauman’s account of liquid modernity not only descriptive but persuasive and incisive.
13. Lipovetsky, Hypermodern Times, 29–52. We thank Valerie Weaver-Zercher, who uses Lipovetsky’s concept of hypermodernity in Thrill of the Chaste, for pointing us to his work.
14. One Amish woman in Indiana lists her occupation in the settlement directory as “Mary Kay Consultant” (Indiana Amish Directory, 722). On the emergence of Amish-owned businesses, see Kraybill and Nolt, Amish Enterprise.
15. Johnson-Weiner, Train Up a Child, 70–71.
16. Ibid., on various approaches to private schooling. On public, private, and home schooling, see McConnell and Hurst, “No ‘Rip Van Winkles’ Here.”
17. The one exception is Pinecraft, a village in the suburbs of Sarasota, Florida. This favorite wintertime vacation spot does not accommodate horses. (See chapter 13.)
18. A handful of districts (mostly New Order) have simple, plain church buildings.
19. Berger and Luckmann, Social Construction of Reality, esp. 129–83. Overviews of social science constructs of identity are offered in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences: “Identity in Anthropology” (7154–59); “Identity: Social” (7166–70).
20. C. Smith, Moral, Believing Animals, 64, 67.
21. These are hypothetical narratives based on the many narrative examples in C. Smith, Moral, Believing Animals, 67–76.
22. In this regard, the Amish story stands in sharp contrast to that of culturally conservative Old Colony Mennonites, whose story has been one of migration away from modernizing North American society and a search for homes in remote locations within Latin America. See Loewen, “To the Ends of the Earth.”
CHAPTER 2. EUROPEAN ORIGINS
Epigraph: Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 741–42. For a collection of various reproductions and uses of the Martyrs Mirror etching of Willems, see Luthy, Dirk Willems.
1. Yoder and Yoder, Echoes of the Past, and A. King, Hidden Treasures.
2. Surveys of the Anabaptist movement include Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology and Following in the Footsteps of Christ; and J. Weaver, Becoming Anabaptist.
3. From stanzas 13 and 14 of song 126 in the Ausbund. This English translation is from Songs of the Ausbund, 1:322. See G. Peters, Earliest Hymns of the Ausbund, for other translations. See also Blank, Amazing Story of the Ausbund. The vast majority of Amish continue to sing from the Ausbund on Sunday mornings. A few settlements use one of two songbooks compiled in America, either Eine Unparteiische Lieder-Sammlung zum Gebrauch beim
Oeffentlichen Gottesdienst und der Häuslichen Erbauung or Unparteiische Liedersammlung zum Gebrauch beim Oeffentlichen Gottesdienst und zur Häuslichen Erbauung, both of which include Ausbund hymns. For a full description of these and three other German hymnals, see G. Schlabach, Now Thank We.
4. Martyrs Mirror was first published in the Netherlands in the Dutch language in 1660. For an English translation, see Braght, The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians. An Amish publisher has issued a study guide for Martyrs Mirror: Lowry, Martyrs’ Mirror Made Plain.
5. Séguy, “French Anabaptists,” and Müller, History of the Bernese Anabaptists, 215–37.
6. Much of the discussion that follows draws on Furner, “Repression and Survival of Anabaptism.” See also Müller, History of the Bernese Anabaptists, for an Amish-published history of these events.
7. Müller, History of the Bernese Anabaptists, 140. So loyal were these Reformed Church members to their Anabaptist neighbors that in some cases Bern officials resorted to holding leading citizens of rural villages hostage in order to force locals to divulge information about Anabaptists’ whereabouts.
8. Quoted in Roth, Letters of the Amish Division, 8.
9. Hüppi, “Identifying Jacob Ammann.”
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