The Amish Explained

the old order Amish are known for their simple life they say no to cars yes to the horse and buggy no to Social Security yes to Mutual Aid within their communities they live in highly localized communities striving to be separate from broader society as much as possible given the renunciation of many modern Technologies and the fact that they live in rural settlements you'd assume the Amish would sort of go under the radar right as in you'd think they would be easy to miss it's not like they're sharing their exploits on Tik Tok all the time but ironically the Amish are often the star of the very mainstream culture that they're trying to avoid from Amish Country tourism in Lancaster County Pennsylvania to weird 's Amish Paradise to Bonnet Ripper romance novels yes those are a thing there has long been Intrigue with all things Amish but along with Intrigue comes a lot of misinformation and mythologizing so who are the Amish really what do they believe how do they live and how are they interpreted by Outsiders despite being known colloquially as the Amish there is no singular Amish identity think of Amish as an umbrella term that encompasses an array of independent Christian groups that form a traditionalist branch of anabaptism a branch of Christianity that emerged during the Protestant Reformation which we'll cover shortly Amish in the US have at least 40 different affiliations or subgroups with different names different types of dress rules about technology and restrictions on participating in public life some of these affiliations have specific names like the schwartzen ruber Amish the New Order Amish and the berer Amish others don't technically have a name but form an identifiable cohesive Community Living in a particular town or area old order Amish itself is a confusing term it originally referred to a branch of Amish that emerged following a Schism in the 1860s and70s one group the Amish menites were more assimilationist while the old order Amish retained the older Traditions but over the past 150 years or so even the old order Amish label encompasses a range of different groups some more assimilationist than others while there is a lot of diversity among different Amish affiliations they do share a lot in common Scholars have identified 10 practices shared across all Amish groups including rural Living Church regulated dress and selective use of Technology old order Amish also speak a german-based dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch or Pennsylvania German which is actually a dialect of German deriving from the upper Ry Valley they call themselves Amish while other Americans are called English they refer to their way of life as plain versus the mainstreams fancy they also share beliefs outlined in the 1632 door Dre confession of faith in general it outlines historically Orthodox Christian beliefs about God and Jesus sin and salvation as well as beliefs and practices specific to this branch of anabaptism such as separation from the world a commitment to nonviolence and shunning excommunicated members in many respects the Amish don't really fit the traditional understanding of a Christian denomination they don't have a governing body like how the United methodists have the general conference an institution that officially speaks for the denomination outlines Doctrine and ordains clergy they have no official seminaries and all churches are led by lay ministers without formal theological iCal training instead Scholars note that the different Amish groups are linked together by informal bonds of family ethnicity and fellowship this along with how rare it is for Outsiders to join the group leads some Scholars to say it's more of an ethn religious group than a denomination the origins of the Amish date back to the Protestant Reformation in early modern Europe primarily from germane speaking communities in Switzerland and the elas region of Eastern France in 1525 a group of Christians in zoric Switzerland started to perform so-called second baptisms on adults second because Christians were almost always baptized as babies in medieval and early modern Europe church and state were completely intertwined so as soon as a baby was baptized into the church they were simultaneously being baptized into the state as well a group of radical Protestants in the Netherlands and german-speaking regions of Europe wanted to circumvent this process by ensuring that adults were the ones who made the choice to be baptized they believed that the church should be an alternative Community separate from society and Christians should not allow any anything to come between themselves and God whether it's a secular government the Catholic church or any other hierarchical institution these radicals were called anabaptists or re-baptized which was a slur on their seemingly strange practices in 1527 a group of these so-called anabaptist in Switzerland called The Swiss Brethren established new rules for their group in the slight Heim confession which emphasized adult baptism as its first and primary rule calling the baptism of infants the highest and chief abomination of the PO hope the confession also set down the biblical basis for the Brethren to separate from mainstream society as well as to ban or excommunicate those who were non-c compliant the anabaptist radical ideas Drew intense hostility between 1527 and 1614 both Protestant and Catholic authorities tortured and killed thousands of anabaptists in the Netherlands in 1660 a man named tan Von Brock wrote down their stories in his book martyr's mirror today Amish amanite Christians still read martyr's mirror as part of their religious history Scholars say the prominence of these martyrdom stories within Amish communities reflect their emphasis on obedience to God's Will self-surrender and Reliance on God even in the face of stiff opposition this is known as gassen heite selfless submission to God's will something Scholars identify as the core value of Amish Society this focus on martyrdom and persecution also reinforces an overarching perspective within Amish communities that the world cannot be fully trusted so the early Amish community was shaped by this history of pers ution and a sense of sharp alienation from the surrounding World while the Swiss authorities on paper put an end to executing anabaptists in 1614 they continued to harass them with fines prison or Exile this forced many Swiss anabaptists to seek refuge in more tolerant regions especially the alsas region in what's now Eastern France and the palatinate region in Western Germany one of them was the Amish namesake himself yakob Aman who converted to anabaptism and became a leader in Swiss anabaptist circles in the late 1600s he moved from Switzerland to the elas region where he grew disillusioned with the other anabaptists there for blending too much in with the surrounding culture and the state church he believed that membership in the church required extremely strict rules of conduct to really separate itself from the corrupt state church he insisted that anabaptists should not only refuse to attend State churches but they should also physically and visibly separate themselves from the surrounding world like refusing to trim their beards and wearing fashionable clothes interesting side note these clothing rules actually mirror secular laws governments in Western Europe at the time issued so-called sary laws which regulated clothing for each social class so yakob Aman's concern about clothing was not just an Amish thing but reflected a social Norm at the time although he was viewed as a reformer he based a lot of his ideas on the door Dre confession which I mentioned earlier a Dutch anabaptist statement created 60 years before his time which also stipulated the practices he advocated for his group such as feet washing and shunning so in many respects he was building on tradition that had already been established decades before after a few years of intense disagreements with other anabaptists a distinct faction emerged those who followed Aman's leadership became known as the Amish and by the late 1600s dozens of Amish families moved from German speaking regions of Switzerland to the alsas so how did they end up in the US well the peace in the alsas didn't last in 1712 the French King Louis the 14th expelled the anabaptist from the region around the same time words started to spread about a new colony in North America called Pennsylvania where you did not need to join the militia and religious tolerance was the law of the land well at least compared to the other colonies so faced with continued persecution the idea of owning Farmland far from European Lords sounded pretty great so in the 1700s around 500 Amish colonists settled in Pennsylvania by the mid 1800s some settled in Ohio and Indiana those who stayed in Europe slowly integrated the final European Amish congregation closed its doors in 1937 merging with a local medanite congregation in Germany but back in the US the Amish community thrived and evolved there was a big Schism in the 1800s when they split into Old order who maintain strict separation from the larger world and Amish menites who were more open to assimilation which eventually led to connecting their homes to the electrical grid using telephones in their homes and being allowed to ride in cars despite the name Scholars don't consider Amish menite to be Amish but Amish and menites are close religious relatives and there are plain dressing menites that are easily confused if you were to visit Lancaster County today today there are about 400,000 old order Amish in the world with a vast majority living in the US and the drop off is steep when we look at other countries there are roughly 6,000 Amish in Canada and there's one small settlement of 90 people in Bolivia but their population is growing fast it doubles every 20 years Amish belief practice and identity revolves around the ORD meaning order in German on a macro scale it can refer to divine order as in life as it should be lived but it also encompasses the mutually determined rules of each particular settlement since the Amish don't form an overarching denomination with an Institutional hierarchy a particular community's UNG might look very different than anothers a Lancaster County Pennsylvania settlement may have a completely different set of operating rules than a settlement in Ohio despite these differences living in an old order Amish District means complying with the UNG which dictates Customs about how to live what technology you can use employment options and mutual Aid some UNG are stricter While others are less so and the stricter the UNG the more likely the community is considered old order the Amish are perhaps best known for rejecting many modern Technologies on the whole and yes there are exceptions Amish avoid inhome telephones televisions movies the internet personal computers and being hooked up to the electrical grid they also don't own or drive cars instead living extremely localized lives that are limited to the distances they can travel in a horse and buggy as a result their communities are small tightly knit and self-governed by necessity but they don't reject all technology we should instead describe the Amish relationship with technology as the selective use of Technology the tech is not necessarily the problem it's the potential negative effect it can have on the community and tradition for example mass media technology like the internet is seen as a corrupting influence that could undermine Amish values and the ability to drive hundreds of miles away in your car could scatter a community and so during the 20th century as technological discoveries were rolling out every single decade Amish communities needed to decide what was acceptable and what wasn't what might distract members or lure them away from the community versus what was deemed safe enough to keep the community together and some technologies were readily accepted on their Farms you'll find insecticides sometimes you'll find high Precision machinery and farm equipment you might find batteries powering lights on their buggies or even sometimes solar panels they don't object to medical equipment or surgery if one of their community members ended up at a hospital and they follow food safety regulations and the Necessary Technology to abide by them for example back in the 1960s the government regulated that milk must be stored in refrigerated tanks and Amish Dairy Farmers installed them but rather than hooking up the tanks to the electrical grid they used diesel fueled Motors to power them Scholars call episodes like this cultural bargaining selectively choosing what to adopt and what to reject over the years changes to a group's UNG determined whether or not they remained old order in 1927 the progressive beachy Amish split off based on accepting inhome telephones owning cars and looser rules around shunning though because of these changes and despite their name Scholars don't really count the beachy Amish as old order Amish but this Schism shows how technological progress drives diversity within Amish communities related to this discussion about technology Amish communities are also characterized by their separation from The Wider World old order Amish communities live in rural settlements broken into districts with 20 to 35 families forming a local Church community called a gai short for ginda or community these groups are independent and not integrated with American towns and cities though they're not entirely remote I grew up one County over from Lancaster County Pennsylvania and we had a favorite Amish grocery store we'd visit from time to time so it's not like they live in total isolation but like their selective use of Technology they again selectively choose how to integrate into public life given their anabaptist Roots as pacifists they oppose military service however during World War One many Amish men were drafted against their will and sometimes put on the front lines after the war Amish leadership LOB against this and by the time World War II rolled around a lot of Amish men successfully claimed conscientious objector status and served in non-combat roles the Amish pay all their taxes local federal state property everything but they're Exempted from participating in Social Security and they reject insurance plans in general instead they practice Mutual Aid within their communities through programs to share healthc care costs sometimes going door to-do in the community to collect funds to reimburse members for Approved medical expenses since cost sharing programs are not Insurance there's no guarantee of reimbursement participation is seen as a Godly obligation to help others in need it's also an act of faith that you will receive help during your own time of need there's a strong focus on caring for the community and your fellow church members old order Amish believe that internal piety or internal Devotion to God is Not Enough this piety and devotion must be all-encompassing action-based and communal Community Support is basically a religious practice ranging from helping your neighbor raise a barn to cleaning up debris after a storm to helping with medical expenses perhaps the most historically contentious part of Amish American citizenship has been education throughout most of the 20th century Amish parents fought to retain control over their kids education until the matter was settled in 1972 and the unanimous Supreme Court decision Yoda versus Wisconsin before this Amish parents tried all sorts of tactics to exempt their kids from mandatory public school over the age of 12 like trying to obtain work permits for their kids or leading School boycotts the Yoder decision allowed Amish kids education to be determined by their parents recognizing it as a right to their religious expression clothing is another very visible signal of the Amish separation from the world Amish women wear simple long cotton dresses with solid colors aprons and head coverings men wear black pants dark colored button-down shirts and wide brimmed hats married men should grow a beard but not a mustache if this sounds like a uniform that's kind of the point clothing is just one way that Amish people strive to conform to those around them to be one within their communities like their emphasis on Mutual Aid individualism doesn't really make sense in Amish culture and it's linked with ungodly traits like selfishness Pride greed or attention seeking instead gassen height is the primary virtue the self- surrender and submission to God's Will and by extension the self-surrender and submission to the church Community raising large self-sustaining families also plays a crucial role in Amish culture as does maintaining traditional gender roles from childhood to adulthood between the ages of 16 and 22 many Amish young people embark on Rumspringa Pennsylvania Dutch for running around a time of Greater Freedom as they discern who to marry and for some whether they want to be baptized into the church when they reach adulthood if you've heard about rum springing before there's a good chance you've heard a mythologized version of Amish young people living in Amish gone wild lifestyle of drugs drinking and parties and some do experiment in so-called English Life wearing mainstream clothes driving cars and even drinking or going to parties the YouTuber and former Amish CJ Miller has shared some firsthand experiences of wild Amish parties during his Rumspringa and there have been high-profile cases like when two Amish men were busted running cocaine for a biker gang in Pennsylvania but for the majority of Amish communities that practice it because not all do Rumspringa might mean you simply have a bit more Independence to socialize with other Amish young people without the supervision of your parents basically everyone still lives at home with their parents so it's not like the Amish parents are suddenly going to let their kids flock to the cities to live it up for many Amish young people Rumspringa might simply mean you have the freedom to ride your buggy by yourself to play volleyball with friends go to a German him sing or join the local baseball team and while it's often framed as a time to decide whether or not to join the church for most Amish young people this really is not in question they are going to be baptized instead it's more of a time to find someone to marry which marks the transition to adulthood though for a minority Rumspringa is an existential decision Point Scholars describe rpra as an ambiguous Lial period between the supervision of their parents and the authority of the church since they haven't yet been baptized they technically have not submitted to church regulations now that doesn't mean everything goes but it does mean they haven't yet taken that momentous step remember adult baptism was the core belief and practical requirement of the early anabaptists and remain so for old order Amish to this day the other crucial ritual is communion unlike most Christian churches Amish communion services are held only twice a year in the Autumn and spring and it's a marathon service 8 hours with preaching hym singing food and of course consuming some bread and wine which is understood to be a symbolic commemoration of the death and resurrection of Jesus as was historically taught by anabaptists regular worship Services happen every other Sunday usually in private homes rotating from house to house these services are led by lay clergy called ministers who are always married men chosen from the gai the services involve sermons scripture readings kneeling prayers and hymns sung a capella from the aond a German hym book with lyrics from the 1500s and 16 unds all of these characteristics make old order Amish what sociologists call High commitment communities most Christian churches have relatively low barriers to membership and participation that's a low Commitment Community by contrast the old order Amish require extremely high commitment from individuals to be in the group and stay in the group for an outsider to join they would need to give up all aspects of their previous life and identity making it very rare for that ever to happen in her classic work commitment and Community the sociologist Ros Beth mosaner studied American utopian communes of the 18th and 19th centuries trying to understand why some succeeded and others fell apart she found that successful insular groups create a reciprocal relationship where members show high levels of loyalty and commitment to the community and receive an equally strong feeling of loyalty and commitment in return the mutually reinforcing Dynamic is key though caner wasn't writing about the Amish in particular their communities are prime examples of mutually reinforcing High commitment societies as one Amish Minister puts it our Brotherhood is based on self-denial submission and obedience for a small religious group that values privacy and separation the Amish attract a lot of attention in mainstream pop culture for many Americans the Amish simple life evokes Nostalgia for bygone days without much technology and the stresses of Modern Life they're often depicted romantically as morally upright physically strong and wholesomely sweet this dates back to the 1950s when the Amish first began to attract mainstream attention in 1955 the Broadway musical plain and fancy featured a romance between an Amish and an outsider and helped to spark a surge of tourists to Amish Country the hills of Lancaster County Pennsylvania there you can check out the south central Pennsylvania landscape buy some handmade furniture and eat a ton of food at the Shady Maple smorgus board seriously check it out you get free food on your birthday not a sponsor I just love Shady Maple Scholars have argued that Americans romanticize the buggies the quilts and the bonnets as symbols of wholesomeness and Purity that no mainstream American could ever dream of reaching a fascinating example of this in Amish based pop culture is the boom and Amish themed romance novels colloquially known as Bonnet rippers the Amish romance industry has experienced exponential growth in recent decades there are over 80 new novels published per year they feature chased romantic plots like a traditional Amish young woman discovering a long lost secret about her Heritage that she must uncover to know who she truly is or maybe she tragically becomes a widow or maybe she feels the urge to leave her community for a bigger life in the fancy world the story is always resolved because of the sudden appearance of a Godly devoted husband worthy man who would be a perfect father for her kids now the name Bonnet Ripper is obviously ironic Amish romance novels don't feature much ripping unless you count the over representation of fatal buggy accidents instead there's nothing steamier than a chased kiss on the cheek and the Allure of falling into a mutually devoted love that is pure and godly given the impress sales of Amish romance novels and the very small population of Amish people Scholars and cultural critics have looked into three big questions who's writing these novels who's buying and reading them and why are they so appealing the answer to the first two questions is the same Evangelical Christian women Amish women also read these books but they certainly don't account for the high numbers overwhelmingly the top authors of Amish fiction and romance are Evangelical Christians who are Amish adjacent see south central Pennsylvania is basically a Northerly extension of the Bible Belt so there are a lot of Evangelical Christians living side by side with the Amish and plain dressing menites in Lancaster County so these are Christians who have Amish and menonite friends and a small window into a very different way of life than their own so why are these books so appealing to Evangelical women whose lives are more worldly than those of the old order Amish in her book The Thrill of the chaste great title the researcher Valerie Weaver zerker argues that setting a Christian romance in Amish communities creates religious novelty it imagines a setting that doesn't just promote Chastity and Purity but it represents as well see as the scholar of American religion Lauren Kirby has argued evangelicals understand themselves as embattled by Modern Life they live in a world that has fallen into moral and spiritual corruption where they must fight to maintain their values in other words American evangelicals see themselves as quintessential Americans on one side but at the same time Outsiders in their own culture so these evangelicals tend to romanticize Amish communities imagining them as already chased places in contrast to the supposed corruption and filth of mainstream American culture as Weaver zerker writes Amish romance novels offer readers three dimensions of Chastity chased narratives about chased protagonists living in a subculture that is itself impeccably chased the Amish romance novel is thus escapism into a higher Commitment Community where readers can fantasize literally fantasize about a different lifestyle for a few hours without actually needing to join and Evangelical authors have left their mark on Amish fiction Weaver zerker has found that these romance novels reflect a uniquely Evangelical type of spirituality even angelical spirituality is characterized by a high level of emotional engagement and internalized Devotion to Jesus that is not very Amish at all Evangelical spirituality is very individualized while by contrast collectivism Reigns Supreme for the Amish so the Amish find themselves in a fascinating Paradox while they have maintained relative separation from mainstream American culture they also uphold values of Independence and the right to preserve their way of life which are stereotypically and some might even say quintessentially American values in this way the Amish are constantly engaging in that aforementioned cultural bargaining balancing their relationship with the surrounding culture while maintaining a distinct identity unless you're willing to join a high commitment Society like the Amish and renounce the internet entirely we're all at risk of our personal data getting breached online and scooped up by data Brokers these are companies who buy and sell your data without you even knowing including your names social security number login credentials location history and more you actually have the right to request these Brokers to delete your data but that would literally take hundreds of hours to research and contact all of them that's where today's sponsor incog comes in incog reaches out to data Brokers on your behalf requests your personal data to be removed and then deals with any objections from their side 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Length: 24min 47sec (1487 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2024