11. On gender and Plain dress, see Graybill, “‘To Remind Us Who We Are,’” and Schmidt, “Schism.”
12. R. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 82–83.
13. Mackall, Plain Secrets, 77; J. Hostetler, Amish Society, 160. Many Swartzentruber Amish believe that if a woman cans vegetables when she is menstruating, the jars will not seal. Similarly, they say, cakes are more likely to fall if the baker is menstruating.
14. “Ten Rules for a Successful Marriage” appeared in the Geauga County, Ohio, Gemeinde Brief and was reprinted in the Lancaster County Gemeinde Brief, Dec. 30, 2010.
15. “Ten Rules for a Successful Marriage.”
16. Esh, Collection of Treasured Recipes and Poems, 20.
17. 1001 Questions, 97.
18. Huntington, “Occupational Opportunities,” 115–16. See also Huntington, “Amish Family”; Johnson-Weiner, “Role of Women.”
19. Huntington, “Occupational Opportunities,” 116.
20. For more on gender roles, see Huntington, “Occupational Opportunities”; M. Lehman, “Writing the Everyday Self”; Olshan and Schmidt, “Amish Women and the Feminist Conundrum”; and Reschly and Jellison, “Production Patterns.”
21. J. Stoll, “Fireside Chats,” 9.
22. L. Stoltzfus, Amish Women, 64–65.
23. See Furlong, Why I Left the Amish.
24. M. Lehman, “Women and Their Work,” 11.
25. L. Stoltzfus, personal communication to Karen Johnson-Weiner.
26. Letter to Donald Kraybill, March 7, 2012; emphasis in the original.
27. “Single’s Plight,” 33. For related anonymous essays in the same periodical, see “Plea for Understanding,” and “Tribute to our Single Sisters.”
28. Kraybill, “2010 Lancaster Demographic Study.” (N=858 adults.)
29. See Cates, “Identity in Crisis.”
30. “Silent Struggle.”
31. For a story of one woman’s Amish uncle and “aunt,” who was intersex and transgender but remained Amish all her life, see Carolyn Schrock-Shenk’s brief tale in her foreword to Stumbling Toward a Genuine Conversation on Homosexuality.
32. Letter to Donald Kraybill, Sept. 21, 2011.
33. Some of these facilities are affiliated with professional health care providers, while others are more homespun and lack professionally trained therapists.
34. Mayes, Strong Families, Safe Children.
35. Healing from Sexual Sin; Walk in the Light; Stoltzfus and Ingham, God Moves Mountains.
36. Five articles focusing on sexual abuse appeared in December 1999, February 2000, May 2002, November 2002, and March 2003. A series of letters regarding sexual abuse also appeared in “Can You Help Me?”
37. This essay appeared in the February 1994 issue.
38. Sewing Circle, Doorway to Hope, 2.
39. Miller et al., “Health Status.” Amish women in the study broke taboos by admitting to using artificial birth control, so the low reported rate of domestic violence cannot automatically be considered a product of survey self-censorship.
40. Ericksen and Klein, “Women’s Roles and Family Production,” 284.
41. Huntington, “Occupational Opportunities,” 119.
42. Ibid. See also Nolt and Meyers, Plain Diversity, 89–90.
43. Johnson-Weiner, “Role of Women.”
44. Kraybill, Riddle of Amish Culture, 261.
CHAPTER 12. FROM RUMSPRINGA TO MARRIAGE
Epigraph: See D. Umble, “Wicked Truth,” and Remnick, “Bad Seeds.” One of the young men eventually left the Amish and joined a non-Amish church.
1. Mazie, “Consenting Adults?”
2. Devil’s Playground, which premiered on Cinemax on May 30, 2002, was later released on DVD. Some 5.4 million viewers of the premier episode of Amish in the City made it the evening’s second highest rated show nationally on July 28, 2004. See Eitzen, “Hollywood Rumspringa.”
3. http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/tv/breaking-amish/about-breaking-amish.htm. For a thoughtful critique of the series, see Greenwood, “Shame on ‘Breaking Amish.’”
4. R. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, provides a comprehensive guide to Rumspringa.
5. While this is literally true, parents are aware of the need to keep their children in line. In short, the church will not treat rowdy unbaptized youth as it would baptized church members, but parents and the broader church community may use other ways to control their children during this period.
6. Here we disagree with Denise Reiling, who in an otherwise cogent analysis (“‘Simmie’ Side of Life”), describes Rumspringa as “culturally prescribed deviance … constructed by adult Amish culture.” Deviance during Rumspringa may be somewhat ignored by adults; however, that is quite different from a program that is intentionally designed to expose Amish youth to the outside world.
7. Letter to Donald Kraybill, Jan. 9, 2012; emphasis in original.
8. Singings from the early 1900s are described in J. Yoder, Rosanna of the Amish, 125–36.
9. This description of a singing is based on participant observation by the authors and R. Stevick in Growing Up Amish, chap. 7.
10. Diary, Dec. 2008, 35.
11. R. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 11–13. Stevick notes that the term gangs is a distinctly Lancaster Amish term, whereas crowds is the term used in other Amish communities.
12. For mid-twentieth-century descriptions of parties, see J. Yoder, Rosanna of the Amish, and Rice and Steinmetz, Amish Year, 179–88. Goldstein, “Party On, Amos,” describes one in 1997.
13. These are not options for youth in more isolated or conservative communities. Young Swartzentruber men may have to run away from home to taste such forbidden pleasures—an option far less available to young women. The overwhelming majority of runaways return to the community.
14. Reiling, “‘Simmie’ Side of Life,” 164. See also her dissertation, “Relationship between Amish Identity and Depression.”
15. Gibson, “‘Gang’ Prevalence.”
16. “Younge Fersamlunge Liste.”
17. These are fictitious names of actual gangs described in Gibson’s unpublished report, “‘Gang’ Prevalence.”
18. R. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 17.
19. “Procedural Guide.”
20. R. Stevick, in Growing Up Amish, 173–97, describes courtship. See also S. Scott, Amish Wedding, and Goldstein, “Party On, Amos.”
21. In support of this practice, church leaders cite the Apostle Paul’s words: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6:14).
22. John A. Hostetler’s first-person account of bed courtship appears in “Amish Beginning,” 18–20. Ein Risz in der Mauer, a 40-page treatise against bed courtship written by New Order minister Rob Schlabach, was widely circulated among Amish groups. D. Fischer, Albion’s Seed, includes a section on Puritan New Englanders’ common practice of bundling and statistical evidence that premarital pregnancy was less common among them than among backcountry residents who did not practice bundling.
23. R. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 18.
24. This quote and the one in the following paragraph are from Johnson-Weiner, New York Amish, 66, 113. One mother in a progressive western New York church-community noted that bed courtship was still practiced in her community, even though “it’s a ‘guideline rule’ not to do it.”
25. R. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 41–58.
26. An example of the disorientation and vulnerability of runaway Amish teens was featured in the ABC News Primetime documentary “The Outsiders,” June 23, 2008.
27. Weber, Cates, and Carey, “Drug and Alcohol Intervention.” See also Cates and Weber, “Substance Use Survey” and “Alcohol and Drug Intervention.”
28. R. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 50–53.
29. Personal correspondence to Donald Kraybill, Nov. 22, 2010.
30. Ira Wagler, “Running Around,” Ira’s Writings (blog), Feb. 20, 2009, www.irawagler.com/?m=200902. Wagler’s book, Growing Up Amish, offers a glimpse into his heart-wrenching str
uggle about leaving Amish society.
31. Reiling, “‘Simmie’ Side of Life,” 156.
32. Ibid., 159.
33. See I. Wagler, Growing Up Amish.
34. If a Swartzentruber youth joins any Amish church other than that of his or her parents before age twenty-one, it is considered running away, dishonoring parents, and breaking the commandments (“Honor thy father and thy mother,” Exod. 20:12). “If someone wants to join a different church than his parents, he has to wait until he is twenty-one,” said one father.
35. In Meiner Jugend, 25, 27.
36. In Meiner Jugend, 189, and “Questions Asked at Baptism Service.” The wording of the vows varies slightly by settlement. This is the wording used by the Amish in Ohio and Indiana.
37. In Meiner Jugend, 115–17.
38. M. Miller, Our Heritage, Hope, and Faith, 223.
39. Furlong, “Research Papers.”
CHAPTER 13. SOCIAL TIES AND COMMUNITY RHYTHMS
Epigraph: For the father’s story of this tragic event, see [A. Beiler], Light in the Shadow of Death.
1. Sections of this chapter are adapted from Kraybill, Riddle of Amish Culture, chaps. 4 and 6.
2. We view values and knowledge as cultural capital and social networks, rituals, and structures as social capital. In 1998, Tay Keong Tan, in “Silence, Sacrifice and Shoo-fly Pies,” first applied social capital theory to Amish life. For recent theory and research, consult Field, Social Capital, and Lin and Erickson, Social Capital.
3. Coleman, in Foundations of Social Theory, 653, notes that this “primordial” social capital, rooted in an extended family system, has largely vanished in modern life.
4. For a good overview of Amish weddings, see R. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 199–228, and P. Stevick, Beyond the Plain and Simple, 48–58. S. Scott, in Amish Wedding, 4–35, describes weddings in various settlements.
5. P. Stevick, Beyond the Plain and Simple, 50.
6. Weddings were sampled from Amish directories for Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Ontario. (This is not a representative national sample.) All couples under thirty-three years of age at the time of marriage were included. The mean scores for age of marriage have a standard deviation of 2.01 for women and 2.41 for men.
7. Diary, Dec. 2008, 85.
8. Ibid., 37.
9. In some New Order churches the couple may meet with the officiating bishop prior to the wedding to clarify the expectations.
10. Swartzentruber brides wear the crossed cape of adolescent girls.
11. In Meiner Jugend, 211; “Questions Asked at a Marriage Ceremony.”
12. M. Miller lists the songs, prayers, and Scripture readings for weddings in Our Heritage, Hope, and Faith, 315–73.
13. R. Stevick describes pranks at Lancaster County weddings in Growing Up Amish, 223–24; Johnson-Weiner describes a Swartzentruber wedding and associated pranks in New York Amish, 67–69.
14. See S. Scott, Amish Wedding, 35, for a comparison of menus.
15. Diary, Dec. 2008, 85.
16. Ibid., 72–73.
17. S. Stoltzfus, “Ascension Day.”
18. Reported by scribes in the December 2008 issue of the Diary.
19. Die Botschaft, March 23, 2009, 47.
20. Some midwestern Amish spend winter weeks in Arizona.
21. N. Gingerich, History of Pinecraft, 30; 147–50.
22. In addition to our own observations, we lean heavily and gratefully on R. Stevick, “Pine-craft Florida Notes.”
23. Some of the Amish-owned bungalows have public electric service because they are temporary housing away from their home church district and because of the practical difficulty of accessing supplies for alternate forms of lighting.
24. R. Stevick, “Pinecraft Florida Notes.”
25. Schwartz and Schwartz, Schwartzs’ Song-Book, 180–91; Thompson, “Yodeling.”
26. E. Lapp, Heartland Hymns.
27. Binford, “Values and Culture Transmitted Through Music,” 1. For a detailed study of music in Holmes County, Ohio, see Elder, “‘Es Sind Zween Weg’” and “Why the Amish Sing.”
28. 1001 Questions, 165–66.
29. S. Stoltzfus, “Lancaster Counties [sic] Barn Raising.”
30. Die Botschaft, Feb. 9, 2009, 68; Budget, March 3, 2004, 19.
31. Die Botschaft, Feb. 16, 2009, 64. Sunshine boxes consist of small gifts to brighten someone’s day.
32. For two accounts by Amish women on death, see E. King, Joys, Sorrows, and Shadows, and E. Smucker, Good Night, My Son. Bryer, “Attitudes toward Death” and “Amish Way of Death,” provides a psychological study of death among the Amish. [A. Beiler’s] Light in the Shadow of Death is a father’s lament for the death of his son. See Kraybill, Nolt, and Weaver-Zercher, Amish Grace, for a description of Amish grief in the aftermath of the 2006 Nickel Mines schoolhouse shooting.
33. S. Scott, Amish Wedding, 94–107, describes funeral customs in various affiliations.
34. Some communities designate a “funeral director” to assist the non-Amish licensed mortician with funeral logistics.
35. Communities vary in how they deal with mourners who are in the Bann. Illustrating the strict Swartzentruber Bann, a granddaughter of the deceased, her husband (also a former church member), and their children were not invited into the home where the mourners had gathered, and they were clearly not welcome to participate in the funeral.
36. M. Miller lists the songs, prayers, and Scripture readings for funerals in Our Heritage, Hope, and Faith, 407–37.
CHAPTER 14. EDUCATION
1. Although a handful of Amish communities operated private schools in the nineteenth century to provide German instruction for reading religious materials, such schools merely supplemented the education that pupils received in public schools. On German schools, see Troyer and Stoll, “Apple Grove Mennonite School.” Meyers, “Education and Schooling,” 294n1, identifies an Amish school built in Holmes County as early as 1815. Urie D. Byler, in a letter to Donald Kraybill dated July 8, 2006, describes several Pennsylvania schools in the nineteenth century. See also J. Stoll, “Who Shall Educate Our Children?”
2. Zimmerman, Small Wonder, 17. See also Fischel, Making the Grade.
3. For descriptions of the conflicts, see Dewalt, Amish Education; Huntington, “Persistence and Change in Amish Education”; Johnson-Weiner, Train Up a Child; A. Keim, Compulsory Education and the Amish; Kraybill, Riddle of Amish Culture, 161–87; C. Lapp, Pennsylvania School History; Meyers, “Education and Schooling”; and J. Stoll, Challenge of the Child.
4. Pratt, Shipshewana, 73–77, 81–85.
5. C. Lapp, Pennsylvania School History, 141–42.
6. D. Weaver-Zercher, Amish in the American Imagination, 61.
7. Huntington, “Persistence and Change in Amish Education,” 78.
8. Kraybill, Riddle of Amish Culture, 174.
9. J. Stoll, “Who Shall Educate Our Children?,” 31. See also J. Hostetler, Amish Society; Hostetler and Huntington, Amish Children; and Johnson-Weiner, Train Up a Child.
10. For Amish descriptions of their school history, see Hershberger, Struggle to Be Separate; Kinsinger, Little History of Our Parochial Schools; C. Lapp, Pennsylvania School History; J. Stoll, Challenge of the Child; and C. Stoltzfus, Amish Church, School and Historical Events.
11. Sources on this school include Troyer and Stoll, “Apple Grove Mennonite School,” and Clark, This Is Good Country, 117–28.
12. This does not include two short-lived ones in North Carolina and Mississippi as reported by Meyers in “Education and Schooling,” 89.
13. For a record of the early schools, see Huntington, “Persistence and Change in Amish Education,” 84–92; Meyers, “Education and Schooling,” 88–90; J. Stoll, Challenge of the Child, 116; and Blackboard Bulletin prior to 1970.
14. Editorial, Blackboard Bulletin, May 1963. J. Stoll’s Challenge of the Child contains reprints of essays related to schools and teacher training from Blackboard Bulletin, 19
57–1966.
15. Descriptions of the history and function of vocational schools appears in Standards of Parochial and Vocational Schools, 45–46, 52, and Kraybill, Riddle of Amish Culture, 171–72.
16. A. Keim, Compulsory Education and the Amish, 98.
17. These estimates are based on extrapolations from the 2007–2008 School Directory in Blackboard Bulletin, December 2007, 26. This is the last year the Bulletin published a school directory. Estimates for 2012 use the 2008 baseline of .85 schools per church district and 1.5 teachers per school. Estimates reflect the increase in church districts since 2008, but not any changes in the rate of private school attendance.
18. Descriptions of governance, curriculum, teacher education, and pedagogy appear in De-walt, Amish Education; Fisher and Stahl, Amish School; Hostetler and Huntington, Amish Children; and Johnson-Weiner, Train Up a Child.
19. For a listing of regional school meetings, see “School Meetings.”
20. Teachers and directors in more conservative communities rarely attend the regional meetings, which are dominated by progressive groups.
21. The private school expenses in eastern Pennsylvania were for the 2008–2009 school year. The per-pupil cost for the local public school was for 2005.
22. Johnson-Weiner, Train Up a Child, 206–28, provides an overview of school-related publishers and publishing.
23. Regarding special schools, see Beginning and Development of Parochial Special Schools; Dewalt, Amish Education, 135–46; Hurst and McConnell, Amish Paradox, 167–70; Johnson-Weiner, Train Up a Child, 120–21, 162–63; and Kinsinger, Little History of Our Parochial Schools, 111–20. A monthly newsletter, Life’s Special Sunbeams, provides resources for the parents of “special children.”
24. An Amish-authored textbook series used in some schools includes a few short stories from the Bible and Amish history.
25. Pennsylvania school leader Aaron E. Beiler, quoted in Kraybill, Riddle of Amish Culture, 357n25. Emphasis in the original.
26. Remarks by an Amish bishop at the fourth annual Indiana Amish parochial teachers’ meeting, July 13, 2000, in Heritage Historical Library, Aylmer, ON.
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