The Amish Way

Patient Faith in a Perilous World

Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, David L. Weaver-Zercher

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470890882
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

A sensitive and realistic look at the spiritual life and practices of the Amish

This second book by the authors of the award-winning Amish Grace sheds further light on the Amish, this time on their faith, spirituality, and spiritual practices. They interpret the distinctive practices of the Amish way of life and spirituality in their cultural context and explore their applicability for the wider world. Using a holistic perspective, the book tells the story of Amish religious experience in the words of the Amish themselves. Due to their long-standing friendships and relationships with Amish people, this author team may be the only set of interpreters able to provide an outsider-insider perspective.

• Provides a behind-the-scenes examination of Amish spiritual life
• Shows how the Amish practices can be applied to the wider world
• Written by authors with unprecedented access to the Amish community

Written in a lively and engaging style, The Amish Way holds appeal for anyone who has wanted to know more about the inner workings of the Amish way of life.

Part I

Searching for Amish Spirituality

CHAPTER ONE

A Peculiar Way

...in the Bible we find that God’s people are to be peculiar.

—AMISH LEADER¹

Here’s an idea for a slow Saturday night: ask your friends to call out the first words they think of when you say the word Amish. You might exhaust the usual suspects fairly quickly—horses and buggies, bonnets and beards, barn raisings, quilts, and plain clothes.Your group might settle on some adjectives: gentle, simple, peaceful , and forgiving. Then again, you might come up with words that lean in another direction: severe, harsh, judgmental, and unfriendly. The range of adjectives probably reflects the variety in Amish life—in any kind of life, for that matter. More likely, however, the differences reflect your point of view and the features of Amish life that capture your gaze.

Although the Amish are sometimes called a simple people, their religious practices are often mystifying, and their way of life—like all ways of life—is quite complex. It’s no wonder outsiders hold conflicting views of the Amish, for the Amish are at once submissive and defiant, yielding and yet unmoved. To use a common Amish phrase, one we will explore more fully in later chapters, they are ready to “give up,” but they do not readily give in.

These apparent paradoxes make the Amish hard to understand. They also make them enormously fascinating, the subjects of countless books, films,Web sites, and tourist venues.² In this chapter, we introduce some of the unique and distinctively religious elements of Amish society. We do this by offering nine vignettes illustrating aspects of Amish faith that rarely receive media attention but that nonetheless go to the heart of the Amish way. Together these stories demonstrate how the spirituality of Amish people leads them to do very intriguing—and what some would call very peculiar—things.

A Homespun Scholar

A few years ago we visited one of our Amish friends in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, an older man who has since passed away. Abner was a bookbinder by trade, repairing the old or tattered books that people brought to him. He was also an amateur historian who founded a local Amish library. A warm and engaging person, Abner had many “English” (non-Amish) friends stopping by to visit.

One summer evening, sitting on lawn chairs, we talked about our families. “So where do your brothers and sisters live?” he asked, and we ran down the list: one lives near San Francisco, another in New Hampshire, and still another in northern Indiana. “Come with me,” Abner said, and he led us around his house and into his backyard. His simple house backed up to the edge of a ridge, giving him an expansive view of farmland to the north. “Let me show you where my family lives,” he said, pointing across the landscape. “My one sister lives there, and another right over there. And you see that road? I have five more relatives living along there.” And with a sweep of his hand Abner showed us the homes of his fellow church members as well. “This is one of the things I like about being Amish,” he said, and we stood quietly for a moment as we surveyed the fields and homes of his kin.

Abner didn’t have to say more to make his message clear: the choices we had made as scholars, and the choices our siblings had made as professionals, had pulled our families apart, geographically and in other ways as well. Abner was a scholar too, of course, and we often asked him questions about Amish history. But his way of being a scholar didn’t require moving across the country to pursue a Ph.D. In fact, pursuing that sort of life is forbidden for the Amish, who end their formal education at eighth grade.* Thus, for Abner, becoming a historian meant reading books in his spare time and asking lots of questions.

Abner clearly enjoyed talking with non-Amish people. Could it be that he lived vicariously through his educated non-Amish friends? Perhaps his backyard commentary that evening was a way of reminding himself, as well as us, that Amish life had its advantages. Still, if there was a message from that evening, it was this: our way of living, just like Abner’s, comes at a cost.

Unwilling Warriors

In late 1953, two Amish men entered a federal courtroom in Des Moines, Iowa. Both in their early twenties, Melvin Chupp and Emanuel Miller showed up “wearing the beards and unbarbered hair traditional in their sect,” according to the local newspaper.³ A few hours later, they left with three-year prison terms for refusing to serve in the U.S. military.

*The Amish believe that eight grades of formal education, supplemented by vocational training, are sufficient to live a productive life. In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court in Wisconsin v. Yoder permitted Amish people to end formal schooling at fourteen years of age. Appendix I provides more detail on Amish life and practice.

Melvin and Emanuel, like all members of their faith, viewed war as wrong and participation in it sinful. Although the federal government allowed war objectors to do alternate service outside the military, knowledge of this alternative apparently had not trickled down to the draft board in Buchanan County, Iowa. Rather than granting the two Amish men conscientious objector status, the draft board required them to do noncombatant service in the military. When Melvin and Emanuel refused that, the board ordered them into combat units. Once again they refused, which quickly led to their arrest.

At the trial, Melvin acted as his own attorney. His only statement came during closing arguments. He might have appealed to principles in the U.S. Constitution, but instead he focused on his Christian convictions. “Jesus never killed His enemies. He let his enemies kill Him,” Melvin said. “Therefore, I’m here to give myself up to the jury.” The judge who sentenced them to prison was not sympathetic. His only regret, he said, was that the two Amish men “found it impossible to accept noncombatant service.” Melvin and Emanuel’s decision to place faith above patriotism cost them three years of their lives.

A Church-First Businesswoman

Sadie is an enterprising businesswoman. In the early 1980s she started a dry goods store. Under her management, the business grew rapidly, adding new divisions and product lines and eventually selling everything from bulk foods to hardware. Sadie opened stores in several other locations, and altogether spawned eight retail businesses, including a shoe store and two grocery stores. Aware of her success, Sadie is nonetheless quick to deflect credit. “I think some people are just born with it,” she told us. “I have this love of selling.”

At first glance, her business model seems to track a Fortune 500 company: start a small business, expand into larger markets, reinvest the profits, and expand some more. But Sadie’s story didn’t follow that model. As an Amish businessperson, she faced restrictions. Her church frowns on members accumulating wealth or making “a big name for themselves.” As one Amish person explained, “Bigness ruins everything.”

So as Sadie’s business grew, she sold off some of her product lines and stores to her employees, keeping her own holdings small. Sadie’s plan spread the wealth and multiplied the number of owners within the Amish community.

Her decision to shrink her business did not come easily. She knew that she would earn less this way, and money was a concern for her family. In fact, she had first gone into business because she had special-needs children with significant medical costs. In the end, however, she concluded that the perils of growing her business and risking church censure were greater than the risks of downsizing.

A Reluctant Minister

Reuben is a thirty-two-year-old stonemason and father of three. He is also one of two ministers in his local congregation of about thirty families, but he never applied for the job or went to seminary. During a recent visit he explained how he had been selected by God to serve as a minister for the rest of his life.

As they hitched up their buggies and drove their families to church on the day of the ordination, Reuben and the other men in his congregation keenly felt the burden of knowing that they might be selected. Reuben explained that a man would never seek such a position and women are not eligible. Instead, by drawing lots, a method used by Jesus’ disciples to fill a vacancy in their ranks (Acts 1:12-26), the Amish believe that God miraculously selects ministers for them.^a

We’ll look more closely at this process in Chapter Four, but one of the most peculiar aspects to outsiders is that neither the nominees for the position nor the chosen one have the option to decline. When it suddenly became clear that he was selected, Reuben remembers having “a feeling of being between complete surrender and stepping out on the ice and not being sure how thick it was.” The bishop immediately ordained Reuben for his new, lifelong position, and the entire process was over in less than ninety minutes.

During those minutes, the lives of Reuben and his family were changed forever. Reuben felt a heavy burden to help lead the congregation, and his family felt a new expectation to live exemplary Amish lives. Without the benefit of pay or formal training, and without the option to say no, Reuben soon began preaching sermons, counseling members, and helping resolve disputes—all in addition to his regular work as a mason. Rather than a time of celebration, an ordination is a somber, weighty occasion. “It’s no ‘Hurray!’ type of thing,” said a friend of Reuben’s, a man who has been in the lot three times but never selected. “You would serve to the best of your ability if called, but you are also very grateful to take your usual seat again if another person is chosen.”

A Self-Taught Artist

Susie Riehl, a Pennsylvania artist whose work can sell for more than $3,000, has never taken an art class. This Amish mother of five who paints watercolors featuring quilts, gardens, buggies, and barns is finding ways to live within the constraints of her church while pursuing her artistic passions.

Although various types of folk art have long been accepted, the Amish church frowns on members showcasing their paintings at art shows, fearing it will lead to pride on the part of the artist. The church considers photographs and drawings of human faces taboo, a violation of the Second Commandment’s prohibition of idols known as graven images (Exodus 20:4).

Susie honors the church’s wishes by not appearing at public exhibitions of her artwork and by not drawing human faces. When children or even dolls appear in her work, they are faceless. “I don’t want people to think I’ve lost my humility,” she told a USA Today reporter. “I’m just working with a God-given talent and enjoying myself.” ⁴

A Would-Be Violinist

One of our friends, Nancy Fisher Outley, describes her Amish childhood as a happy time, especially the trips to town with her mother as she sold vegetables door-to-door. “I remember thoroughly enjoying those excursions, listening to my mother discuss an array of issues with her customers and friends,” she says. Nancy felt “an overwhelming heaviness,” however, when she entered the eighth grade, the end of formal schooling for Amish children.

Intentionally or not, Nancy’s family had given her a “thirst for knowledge,” fostered by books, magazines, and her mother’s “keen curiosity and interest in world affairs.” As a girl, she had fantasies about becoming a teacher or even a concert violinist. “I practiced a lot on my imaginary violin out behind the chicken house,” she told us. Eventually she set her fantasies aside, and after finishing the eighth grade, started doing household work for her aunt. She was baptized into the Amish church, with what she calls “a very serious commitment,” at the age of sixteen.

But her yearning for more education did not go away, and she soon did what very few Amish people do: she took eligibility exams and was admitted to college without a high school diploma. “I told my Amish bishop about my desire to go to college so that I could become a good teacher, and he reluctantly gave his approval.” Eventually, however, her professional pursuits became public, and the bishop rescinded his permission. Because her pursuits violated church standards, she was excommunicated just before her senior year of college.

“This was a very painful experience,” Nancy recalls, and describes meeting with her bishop a few days before her exit. “He was a deeply caring person,” she says. “I asked questions about education and sin. . . . I wanted to continue both my education and membership in the Amish community. He would not say that further education was sin, and he agonized to explain why excommunication was necessary if I did not repent. Both of us were sensitive and hurt deeply. We cried unashamedly.”

Nancy eventually received a master’s degree and became a social worker. Unlike many ex-Amish people who feel deeply wounded, even embittered, by their community’s decision to expel them, Nancy continues to have warm feelings toward the church of her youth. In fact, she credits some of her success as a social worker—her ability “to feel compassion and caring,” as well as her commitment to straightforward communication—to her Amish roots. “Like my Amish bi...

Table of contents

• Praise
• OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHORS
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• PREFACE
• Part I - Searching for Amish Spirituality
• Part II - The Amish Way of Community
• Part III - The Amish Way in Everyday Life
• Part IV - Amish Faith and the Rest of Us
• Acknowledgments
• APPENDIX I: THE AMISH OF NORTH AMERICA
• APPENDIX II: AMISH LECTIONARY
• APPENDIX III: RULES OF A GODLY LIFE
• NOTES
• REFERENCES
• THE AUTHORS
• INDEX
• Also by the Authors