Why I Left the Amish

by Saloma Miller Furlong

  What, I wondered, did I have to look forward to now? I would have to put up with the drudgery of work, work, and more work. It would have been a relief to cry as I stared at the rug, but the feelings seemed stuck in my chest. No one would understand, even if I could express my feelings. Mem was glad I wasn't going back to school; she needed my help. Lizzie was glad she didn't have to go back to school; she would scoff at me. My friends didn't long to go back to school, because they accepted the Amish ways better than I did. Mem's voice cut into my thoughts. “Lomie, wo bischt du?” (Lomie, where are you?)

  Where do you think I am? I wanted to say. But I didn't say anything. I got up and made my bed. I went downstairs and faced the pile of breakfast dishes. Lizzie, who had a whole year of practice of working at home, was washing the dishes. I picked up a dish towel and began the hideous task of drying.

  When I was fourteen and still dependent on my parents, I had to live with the Amish rule that all young people are finished with school when they graduate from eighth grade. The tradition had been in force too long to allow for exceptions, and I was too young to leave the community and make it on my own. Besides, my job at that time was to conform to the Amish ways and get ready to be a member of the church.

  The most common German hymn sung in my home community is about two paths, one being narrow and the other wide. The Amish interpret this as meaning that there are only a few who take the narrow path, leading to Heaven, while the wide path leads to Hell. I do not know whether the path I took was wide or narrow, but I know that my path diverged from the one my parents chose for themselves and for me. Datt's path was often dark with sorrow and self-loathing, which spilled over into our lives, and Mem's path had left her frustrated with an unfulfilled life. Perhaps sometime in the future, now that Datt is no longer with us, Mem will share more of her inner life with me, especially that mysterious time in her young life I know so little about.

  Back on that day when I was shedding my Amish clothing and having my hair cut and buying my first “English” clothing, it was as if I was transforming from a chrysalis to a butterfly. I felt like a caterpillar in my dark cocoon when I was in the community, and my subsequent freedom gave me wings—flying, as in my dream, from one adventure to another, like a butterfly floats and darts from one flower to another. Perhaps I have always believed that I would transform into exactly who and what I was meant to become.

  I find that sometimes the surprises in my life are just as significant as the accomplishments I have long planned and sacrificed for. I could never have dreamed of the reconciliation I felt with my original community through Datt's funeral. Through the grace with which David, Tim, and I were received, I felt as if these people in my original community were acknowledging me for who I am for the first time in my life. I no longer felt pressure to conform to their ways. Likewise, the respect that David, Tim, and I were able to show in return hopefully conveyed to them that I wish to honor their long-held traditions.

  I hear my housemates stirring, preparing themselves for a new day. I stretch and get out of bed to do the same. This morning I will attend my Scandinavian Mythology class, and this afternoon I will start catching up on my reading and homework. I look forward to dinner in the shared kitchen tonight, when I will relate my weekend adventures to my housemates.

  APPENDIX 1

  Naming Practices among the Amish

  Because the Amish don't have much variety in names, either first or last, some people have the same first and last names. Last names are not used very often (partly because it isn't that useful, with half the population being Millers, and partly because it is more formal than first names), so it becomes necessary to differentiate between one Joe Miller and another. They use the father's name first, and thus my grandfather became Mosa Joe (Mose's Joe) and my brother became Sim's (Amish for Simon's) Joe. Sometimes using the name of the father doesn't go back far enough, because there could be several Joe's Johns, for instance. So then they go back another generation to include the grandfather. That is how Milo's Mel's Dan came about (Milo's son Mel's [short for Melvin's] son, Dan).

  Young women are named by their father's name until they get married, and then they get their husband's name. So when I was growing up, I was “Sim's Lomie,” and if I were married to David within the community, I would be named “David Lomie.” For some reason the apostrophe and “s” come off the husband's name, as if David becomes a prefix to my own name, rather than me “belonging” to him.

  Once in a while it just becomes too unwieldy to use the generations, when the names become something like “Joe's John's Joe.” So then the Amish will use a shortcut when that person gets married, and use his wife's name for identification. So he becomes “Ada Joe.” And she becomes “Joe Ada.”

  When someone outside the Amish is referring to coming to visit David and me, they might say they are going to visit the Furlongs. In the Amish community, they would say they are going to visit “Davids.” They pluralize the first name of the father of the family to include the whole family.

  APPENDIX 2

  Differences between Amish and Mennonites

  The Amish and Mennonites share common European Anabaptist roots. The Anabaptists (including the Swiss Brethren) were often persecuted for their religious beliefs, which differed from the state-sponsored Catholic, and later Lutheran and Reformed churches. The difference most espoused by the Anabaptists was their belief that infant baptism was not biblical and therefore not valid—that one needed to understand that Jesus Christ is one's savior for baptism to have meaning. To make such a choice, they claimed, one needed to be an adult. This is how they got their name—Anabaptist means “Rebaptizer.” At the time, this was a derogatory name, which the Anabaptists claimed was inaccurate because they weren't rebaptizing at all, since infant baptism was invalid in the first place. However, this is the name they ended up with, and is the one still used today when referring to this religious group.

  In the 1690s, a passionate new convert, Jakob Amman, began admonishing his fellow brethren for what he saw as lack of overall discipline. He wanted stricter adherence to the Anabaptist tenets, such as footwashing, shunning, dress, and the attitude towards people who sympathized with the Anabaptists. The followers of the more established group, led by a well-respected leader named Hans Reist, believed these people, too, could achieve salvation, even though they were not actually Anabaptists. They also believed that refusing to include former church members from communion practices was adhering to the practice of shunning. Not Amman—he claimed that nothing short of refusing to eat or drink with them in all social situations would suffice. He took the hard-line approach and began banning church members who did not agree with him. Needless to say, the two groups split. Amman and his followers became the Amish, and the people who stayed with the Hans Reist group became the Mennonites (named after one of the founders of the movement, Menno Simons). The Mennonites were considered to have the more established viewpoint, while Amman was the fervent new convert, wanting to make changes to the status quo.

  The Amish and the Mennonites have altered their positions over the last four hundred years. Their worldviews are quite different from one another today. Most Amish want to be left to their lifestyle without intrusion or challenge, and they require their members to follow the church rules and customs without question. Therefore they do not find a need to convert new members into their group, because their retention rate is high. Conversely, the Mennonites place a high value on becoming “born again.” The Mennonites send missionaries all over the world to “spread the word of God.” The Amish find this off-putting and deem them “mission-minded,” especially when the Mennonites are successful in converting members of the Amish church.

  The most common outward difference between the Amish and the Mennonites is that most Amish don't own cars, but most Mennonites do—this is complicated by the fact that a few Amish communities allow cars, and a few Mennonite communities (known as horse-and-buggy Mennonites) do not own cars. And th
en there are the Old Order Amish versus the New Order Amish, and a whole spectrum of Mennonites, from conservative to liberal—the most conservative can hardly be distinguished from the Amish, and the most liberal cannot be distinguished from mainstream Americans by their mode of dress. Also, not all Mennonite groups maintain the dialect, but nearly all the Amish do.

  There is another group often mistaken for Amish or Mennonites. The Amish, the Mennonites, and many other Germans settled in various parts of Pennsylvania in the late 1700s and early 1800s. All spoke the same dialect, which is often referred to as Pennsylvania Dutch, though they weren't all Amish or Mennonite. These people collectively are referred to as “Pennsylvania Germans.” Few of the present generation of Pennsylvania Germans who are not Amish or Mennonite speak the dialect, which makes it more likely that those who speak the dialect are either Amish or Conservative Mennonite.

  APPENDIX 3

  Terms for “Outsiders”

  The most common term the Amish use for referring to people who are not part of their community is “English.” I can easily imagine where this term came from, at least once they moved to the United States: the outside world spoke English, whereas the Amish spoke a dialect of German. Another term the Amish often use is hoch, which literally means “high.” It is puzzling to try to figure out where this term came from. I have only theories, since no one is old enough to remember. The Amish use a term within the community to describe someone who is proud and does not adhere to the Amish ways, often demonstrated by fancier dress or a desire for forbidden things. The word for this prideful attitude is hochmute. Hoch could be a short form of hochmute. A great deal of emphasis is placed on being humble, and perhaps by deeming others as “high,” the Amish feel lowlier or more humble.

  Another possible source for this term is in the history of our ancestors. They established themselves as expert farmers in Europe, so that dukes and earls often employed them on their estates. In this way, “high” could literally mean “high society.”

  The third term is “Yankee.” I have heard from a researcher of Amish culture that my home community is the only one that uses this term, and the reason this is so is because many of the first settlers in that area were from New England—hence the term Yankee, and the reason for the regional term.

  When someone leaves the Amish community, they hardly ever refer to that person as “gone English.” Instead they will say that person is hoch gange (gone high); or in my home community, they will say someone has “gone Yankee” or she “yanked over.” It is as if they believe one cannot become English, but one can become high or Yankee.