Why I Left the Amish

by Saloma Miller Furlong

  I WAS GETTING READY to be baptized when we heard the news about Mem's father (Dodde). He used to drive his horse and buggy to Uncle Joe's carpenter shop every day to help with the carpentry work. One morning the horse came galloping in, as though he were running away from something. Uncle Joe rushed out, caught him, and found Dodde slumped over on the seat. The moment he touched him, he realized Dodde was dead. Dodde had had a heart attack on the way over. He had lived alone for five years since Momme's death.

  Dodde's funeral was probably the biggest one I have ever attended. He had known many people inside and outside the community and was well respected. When it came time for the relatives to file past the coffin, the aunts and cousins stood in a tight cluster and cried, long and loudly. I found myself in the middle of this cluster of perhaps fifty women. I cried quietly into my handkerchief. I wondered whether Dodde was in the good place, and if so, was he there because he had lived a good Amish life? What if he had been the same good person and not been Amish? Would he still be in Heaven?

  At the graveyard, when the men were singing the sad tune about meeting in a better land someday, I lifted my eyes to the cottony clouds above us. I felt as if there was a presence in the blue between the clouds. I took a deep breath and let the tears flow. I wanted to know I was doing the right thing by being baptized. I wished I could be a better Amish person. Through my tears, I saw one of the ministers looking at me. I hoped he would think I was crying for Dodde. Then I felt like a liar for thinking that. What would he think if he knew about my inner conflict, when my baptism was only days away?

  The night before baptismal services, all five of us who were to be baptized the next day were supposed to meet at the deacon's house. Joe arrived at our house while I was getting ready. Brother Simon had just gone out to fetch water from the pump so I could wash my hair, and he didn't come in for what seemed like a long time.

  “Hurry up, Simon!” I shouted out the window. “I'm going to be late!”

  Joe said to Mem so that I would hear: “The night before Lomie is baptized, she is like this? Maybe she isn't ready.”

  I wanted to say, You are right, Joe, I'm not, so why don't you go explain that to the preachers for me tonight? But I knew if I showed my anger, he would say something to make things worse.

  Later, as I was bending over the hole in the outhouse, throwing up, the way I usually did after I had stuffed myself, I remembered what Joe had said. Maybe he was right. Maybe I wasn't fit to be a member of the church. I wondered if I could back out. If I did, would I be protecting the church from myself, or the other way around?

  I continued to prepare to go to the deacon's house because I didn't know what else to do. The purpose of getting together at his house was to read and discuss the German “articles of faith.” These articles had been handed down through the generations and pertained to the Ordnung, or set of church rules. They also included interpretations of biblical passages that supported the rules of the Ordnung. We each chose one of the articles that we would read at the gathering at the deacon's house. I chose the fourth, about how Jesus had been born on earth to atone for the sins of all mankind, from the time of Adam until the end of the world. It seemed to me that this was a universal message of salvation, not just for Amish people being baptized into the church. I had studied my article well. I read the passages from the Bible that were referenced in the article—about Jesus' birth when Mary swaddled him and laid him in a manger, about his crucifixion and how he rose after the third day. My favorite passage was the one about hearing the sound of the wind, but not knowing from where it comes, and so it is with everyone born in the Spirit. I liked the mystery and the universal message of the passage.

  We each read our article, then Bishop Dan explained what it meant. By the time I read my article in the presence of the four other young people and the five ministers, I was able to read it with some understanding. When he began to explain the article I had read, he shuffled his feet nervously and said, “Well it means—ah—just the way you read it.”

  I didn't know whether it was a compliment or not. I thought I detected a begrudging tone in his voice. I was disappointed. I wanted to find out whether I understood it properly. It felt as though I was about to make promises I didn't understand, so I had tried to at least understand the article I was presenting. Wilma Jean, the youngest of us, was reading her article when I realized that I was not expected to understand what I promised. Being willing to make whatever promises the church asked was much more important than understanding. It seemed to me that our Anabaptist ancestors who were persecuted or died for their faith, were struggling against a church establishment. At the time it was the Catholic Church and the Reformed Church, with much of the struggle over adult baptism, so that people could actively choose salvation. Now adult baptism had become the expectation, a way of certifying the Amish belief system. To follow this unquestioningly, or because one was afraid to do otherwise, seemed to me no different than it would have been for a member of the Catholic Church in Europe going along with the established church out of fear of reprisal. At least that has changed—our ancestors were persecuted for leaving the established church. The Amish form of banning former members is not an unbearable physical persecution or execution. It is a belief system that a child inherits, in which one believes one is damned if one leaves the Amish. In a society that practices forgiveness in almost every facet of life, the belief is that God is the one and only Judge, and that we as mortal men are in no position to judge another's life. The one exception to this belief is when one leaves the fold—then all hope is lost for that person's salvation. Parents whose small children die are often told, as a “comforting” thought, that at least the child is in heaven. The Amish belief is that it is better to lose a child through death than for that child to grow up and leave the Amish, because then the child is lost “to the world.” In such a belief system, no one in the community is harder on a person thinking of leaving the fold than the person herself. This is where I found myself, as I pondered the question of my spiritual path. I surely did not want to lose my soul, never mind the guilt of putting my parents through the agony of losing their daughter “to the world.”

  Yet the unease of going through the process without my heart being in it did not leave me for a minute. The persecution that our ancestors endured for leaving the established church was physically brutal and absolute. Instilling the belief system in young children is a different kind of reprisal altogether. In this system, the young adult who leaves is robbed of hope in her own salvation. The idea of hell fire is as real to a young adult, who as a child has listened to many fire-and-brimstone sermons, as it must have been for an Anabaptist to hear his or her death sentence being read. I was suddenly aware, as the bishop mumbled on about the article Wilma Jean had read that whether I understood the articles was of little importance. What was required of me to become a respectable member of the church was to lay down my questions and follow obediently, with a willing heart. I brought my attention back to what Bishop Dan was saying about the fifth article: that Jesus had died for all our sins, but it was only those who feel unworthy of his love and forgiveness who can hope to achieve salvation. I decided to humble myself and submit to the expectations of the church.

  CHURCH WAS AT THE BISHOP'S daughter and her husband's place the day of baptismal services. The service was held in the shed, where the cement floor was cracked, rough, and dirty. During the service, I kept thinking about the five of us who were going to be baptized, kneeling on that floor in our best Sunday clothes. Why hadn't they spread straw on the floor, as people usually did in sheds or barns where they hosted church services? Then I closed my eyes and tried to put such improper thoughts out of my mind.

  Bishop Dan preached the second sermon, and then he had everyone stand up. He asked those of us who wished to be baptized in the name of the Lord to come forward and kneel before him. Even after the decision I had made the night before, I wondered if I still had a choice. What would happen if I
didn't follow the others? Guilt burned in my mind as I fell into place in the middle of the line.

  In a moment, I was kneeling on that rough, dirty, and cracked cement floor in my black dress, and it was my turn to repeat the vows that I would stay in the Amish church for the rest of my life. People stood around us, wearing black clothes and solemn faces.

  As I repeated the words Bishop Dan spoke, I tried to blink back the tears. Then Bishop Dan cupped his hands over my head and the deacon poured water into them. Bishop Dan said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen,” and poured the water from his hands onto my head. My tears were one with the holy water that dripped down over my face.

  Bishop Dan gave the “holy kiss” to his son and had a woman come forward to give it to the girls, as was customary. Henry Kate, who had been holding my head covering for me, replaced it on my head; then she helped me off my knees and kissed me on the cheek, my formal acceptance into the church. It felt so out of place. Except for shmunzling by the young men I had dated, I had never been hugged or kissed by anyone in the community.

  When all five of us had been baptized and welcomed into the church with a holy kiss, Bishop Dan asked us to take our seats. The dark and solemn occasion made me feel more trapped than ever, not the new person I had hoped I'd become. I could not stop the tears from streaming down my face.

  When we got home, Sarah said to me, “Lomie, why were you crying at your baptism?”

  It was just like Sarah to have noticed. Sometimes it felt as though she could see inside me and know what I was thinking or feeling.

  “A lot of people cry at their baptisms,” I said.

  “Were they happy tears?”

  “Of course.”

  “They didn't look happy.”

  I got up and left the room.

  TWO WEEKS AFTER MY baptism, I had to sit through my first Council meeting, the extra long church service that takes place twice a year, in which the bishop reviews the Ordnung. The regular church services were three hours long. Council meeting was even longer and lasted until after the midday meal. A small group of women left to go eat at a table set up in a different part of the house, and a group of men ate at the men's table. When all the church members had eaten in shifts and were sitting in their seats on the backless benches, the bishop began talking about the Ordnung. First he went through what was not allowed for farm machinery and other modern conveniences. Then he started talking about the way men should dress: wear suspenders, no zippers or snaps on their pants; black shoes, unless they were for work, and then wear shoes as plain as possible; wear their hair so it would cover half their ears; and wear their beards untrimmed.

  Bishop Dan shuffled his feet and said in a bored voice, “Aah-and, the women should wear their dresses in the right pattern and the proper length, and when they leave home wear the appropriate cape and apron, as well as bonnets in the summer and shawls in winter. They need to wear black shoes and socks, and cutting their hair isn't allowed. They need to wear their hair according to the Ordnung, and their koppa should cover most of their hair. They should wear pins in their dresses instead of buttons, and they are responsible for dressing their children according to the Ordnung as well.”

  Bishop Dan shuffled his feet again and he said, “Now, if there is anything that I missed, it doesn't mean it is allowed. Just because I haven't mentioned it doesn't excuse people from not obeying the Ordnung.”

  I went home from church feeling completely emptied out. I was more fatigued than I would have been if I had been cleaning house all day. I wasn't used to sitting for a whole day, being told what I was not permitted to do. I wasn't looking forward to another long service, which would be our communion service, just two weeks away. I would have to sit for another whole day on the uncomfortable backless benches.

  TWO WEEKS LATER, at the communion service—several hours after the children and young people who had not yet joined church had been dismissed, and just when I thought I could not sit a moment longer—the deacon brought in a jug and round loaves of bread. He placed them on a table.

  Then Bishop Dan asked us all to rise. He talked about the bread in a solemn tone: “First, in the spring, the ground is prepared. Then the seed is sown. The weeds are plucked from the fields as the wheat grows. When the grain ripens, it is cut. When the right time comes, the wheat is harvested and the grain separated from the straw and ground into meal. Then it goes through the wives' hands and is kneaded into bread. As the grains joined to make this bread, they gave up their individuality. In the same way that each grain gave up its individuality to become part of the bread, so must we give up our individuality to become a part of the community.”

  After that, I couldn't concentrate on what Bishop Dan was saying. I was thinking about the concept of giving up one's individuality to be a part of the community. Was I willing, or even able to do that? I thought to myself, at least the grains had been fully developed “individuals” to start with. Didn't we need to be individuals first, before we could come together as a community?

  I imagined the grains being ground on a grindstone. I wanted to be one of the grains that would fall by the wayside, to escape being ground.

  I wondered if I was the only one in the whole congregation who had these feelings and thoughts. I chided myself for having wayward thoughts at my first communion, and forced myself to concentrate on the service.

  Bishop Dan continued: “Jesus said, ‘This is my body, when you eat of it, remember me.’” I watched the bishop, two ministers, and the deacon exchange communion bread. Then the deacon followed Bishop Dan with thick slices of bread as they walked up to the oldest man in the congregation, Al Miller. Dan broke off a small piece and handed it to him. Al ate the bread, bowed, and then sat down. The bishop moved down the line, giving the men communion bread. They all put the bread in their mouths, bowed, and sat down. Noah, the bishop's son, was the last man to receive communion bread. Then Dan and the deacon walked to Al Miller's wife, Ada, and served her bread. He started with the older women and worked his way down to us young women. I was the third to the last to eat my communion bread. I bowed and sat down.

  When they were done with the bread, they had us all rise again to receive the wine. Bishop Dan went on to describe the process grapes go through to become wine, focusing again on how the individual grapes give up their identity to make the wine.

  Then he and the deacon passed the cup around. As I saw Datt drink from the cup, I realized I had to drink from the same one. Purple drips trickled down the side of the white enamel. The bishop had told everyone how we should not shy away from drinking from the cup just because others had drunk from it. I wanted to say, That is easy for you to say; you got the first drink. I was never more aware of how the community sorted people first by gender, then by age. Even the youngest male got his drink of wine before the eldest woman in the church. My place in the church was always behind Sara Mae Gingerich, who was one day older than me.

  When it was my turn to drink from the cup, I remembered how Datt had already drunk from it. I turned it around and drank from just above the handle.

  After communion came the foot washing. The deacon carried in four buckets of warm water and towels. Chairs were set up in the front, and the older men started to wash one another's feet, using two sets of chairs, while two older women did the same. I was happy to see that the men and women had separate buckets of water. After each pair had washed one another's feet, they shook hands and gave one another the holy kiss. Bishop Dan said we shouldn't think about whose feet we washed, because we were all the same in the eyes of the Lord. When it was Elizabeth Gingerich's and my turn to wash one another's feet, we took off our shoes and socks. Then she splashed the warm water over my feet and dried them off with the damp towel that half the women before us had used. Then I washed her feet, and we exchanged the holy kiss. We put our shoes and socks back on. My feet were still damp, and my socks stuck to my skin in an uncomfortable way. I reminded myself that it di
dn't matter—it was the humility of the ritual that counted.

  As we passed through the doorway, the deacon sat there, holding a navy-blue cloth bag. We all put money in the bag, our contribution to the church fund that would help out families in need, especially those with big hospital bills. In the washhouse, we gathered our shawls and bonnets and prepared for the walk home. Communion service was considered a serious time and we were all expected to be more solemn than usual, so even afterwards we remained subdued.

  At home, I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. Now that I had had my first communion, I would never be able to leave the Amish. If there was one thing worse than leaving the Amish before baptism, it was leaving after baptism. Somewhere in the High German phrases I had repeated after the bishop, I had promised to stay with the Amish church my whole life long. This was the time I was supposed to be sure that joining church was the right thing for me, and I was more uncertain than I'd ever been.

  I was hungry. I went downstairs and ate popcorn, then two pieces of apple pie, followed by a piece of cake. I felt bloated. I walked out to the woods and threw up, then covered it with leaves.

  What Do You Mean by Love?

  Everyone hears only what he understands.

  GOETHE

  Sarah started going to singings soon after I did. She was shy, and hung back until I taught her how to dance. With her tall figure and bright blue eyes, she drew stares from the young men. The first few times she attended the singings, she rode home with me and whoever asked me for a date, or in the taxi we called if no one asked me for one. One night, Sarah and I were dancing together when a young man cut me out to dance with her. Later that night, he asked her for a date, and she said yes.

  His name was Sonny Miller, and he was romantic and talkative. To my amazement, I found myself riding home on a buggy with my younger sister and her date. At nineteen, I suddenly felt ancient.