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THE AMISH THE AMISH Donald B. Kraybill Karen M. Johnson-Weiner Steven M. Nolt © 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2013 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kraybill, Donald B. The Amish / Donald B. Kraybill, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner, and Steven M. Nolt. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-42140914-6 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4214-0915-3 (electronic) — ISBN 1-4214-0914-3 (hardcover) — ISBN 1-4214-0915-1 (electronic) 1. Amish—Social life and customs. 2. Amish — History. I. Johnson-Weiner, Karen. II. Nolt, Steven M., 1968– III. Title. E184.M45K725 2013 289.7′3—dc23 2012035333 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. All Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, King James version. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible. For Stephen E. Scott (1948–2011), friend and colleague whose humility, wit, and patience reflected the virtues of Old Order life CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments I. ROOTS CHAPTER 1 Who Are the Amish? CHAPTER 2 European Origins CHAPTER 3 The Story in America II. CULTURAL CONTEXT CHAPTER 4 Religious Roots CHAPTER 5 Sacred Rituals CHAPTER 6 The Amish Way CHAPTER 7 Symbols and Identity III. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION CHAPTER 8 Diverse Affiliations CHAPTER 9 Population Patterns CHAPTER 10 Community Organization CHAPTER 11 Gender and Family CHAPTER 12 From Rumspringa to Marriage CHAPTER 13 Social Ties and Community Rhythms CHAPTER 14 Education IV. EXTERNAL TIES CHAPTER 15 Agriculture CHAPTER 16 Business CHAPTER 17 Technology CHAPTER 18 Health and Healing CHAPTER 19 Government and Civic Relations CHAPTER 20 The Amish in Print CHAPTER 21 Tourism and Media V. THE FUTURE CHAPTER 22 Pursuits of Happiness APPENDIX A Related Groups: Mennonites, Brethren, Hutterites APPENDIX B Key Events in Amish History Notes Bibliography Index PREFACE Although the Amish are a tiny slice of contemporary American society, they are among its most recognized groups. Pundits and advertisers, cartoonists and Hollywood scriptwriters alike can invoke the Amish with confidence that Americans will recognize these plain-dressing, horse-and-buggy-driving people. Googling “Amish” retrieves millions of results touting Amish products and Amish tourist sites. Hundreds of Amish-themed romance novels penned by non- Amish writers have spilled into the national book market since 2005. But it was not always this way. Amish people were not always the darlings of the merchants of popular culture. The first group of Amish arrived on American shores aboard the ship Charming Nancy in 1737, and for two hundred years they lived quietly amid their rural, non-Amish neighbors. One of many immigrant groups, they stirred little interest among outsiders. That invisibility vanished two centuries later in 1937, when Amish people in eastern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, publicly protested the local township’s plans to demolish one- room schools and construct a consolidated public elementary school. The conflict was so intense that it caught the attention of the New York Times, which ran a series of stories on Amish life. Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, their conflicts with the state continued to generate national visibility, and the Amish soon became noted for their public dissent from the national narrative of technological progress and individual autonomy. Yet even as mainstream America began to notice the Amish and their rejection of telephones, automobiles, and public grid electricity, it also dismissed them. As the larger society had begun to experience massive change— urbanization, industrialization, consolidation of education, technological advancements, growth of the welfare state, changing gender and family roles, and globalization—it saw the Amish as residual holdovers from nineteenth- century America. To modern Americans, the Amish seemed outmoded and doomed. In the 1950s, Gertrude Enders Huntington, a young PhD student in anthropology at Yale University, decided to study an Ohio Amish community for her dissertation research. Sixty years later she recalled that at the time “the Amish … were considered stupid and were universally disliked. They were backward and they impeded progress for everyone.” Her professors “were enthusiastic” about her studying the Amish, she says, but only because they were certain the Amish were about to disappear. They urged Huntington to interview them “before they died out.” In fact, one of her professors “was convinced that such a rigid religious orientation was certain to create serious mental illness, which certainly would contribute to the death of their culture.”1 The Yale professors were wrong. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Amish were thriving in America. In 1900 they had numbered only 6,000, but by 2012 their ranks had swelled to nearly 275,000, and they had spread into thirty states and the province of Ontario. Indeed, the population of this distinctive ethnic group, which is still largely unplugged from the electrical grid, is doubling every twenty years. The Amish story is compelling because it raises intriguing questions about modern life, the meaning of progress, and the roots of social well-being. How can an Amish businessperson with an eighth-grade education develop and manage an innovative manufacturing firm that trades its goods internationally? How do Amish parents raise children to be productive in modern America while reinforcing the cultural framework that separates them from their mainstream peers? Our conceptual orientation employs cultural analysis to unpack the web of meanings that guide social interaction within Amish life—meanings that have shaped its evolving diversity and identity. We are interested in how humans construct meaning in their social worlds to explain their behavior and how they draw distinctions and create symbolic boundaries. The scholarly literature on the Amish has contributed much to our understanding of specific topics and particular geographical communities. What is missing—which this volume provides—is a study of national scope that explores the diverse Amish identities that have emerged since the late nineteenth century. Our work focuses on the geographic expansion of the Amish and their growing diversity, changing identities, and new patterns of interaction with the larger society. In this book we report the research that we have conducted over the past twenty-five years in a multitude of Amish communities in a dozen states— drinking coffee around kitchen tables, kneeling with families for evening prayers, listening to stories during the communal meal after church services, observing youth singings and weddings, and interviewing people in cow barns and carpentry shops and even as we drove them to appointments with their chiropractors. Our work has used the research methodologies of history, religious studies, sociology, and anthropology, including ethnographic description, participant
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