Ordnung—A Moral Road Map
Although the tradition-minded Amish of the 1800s rejected the path of eager adaptation and assimilation to mainstream American ways, they did not try to freeze their customs or stop all change. If they had, there would not today be thousands of Amish buggies made of fiberglass or hundreds of old order households experimenting with solar power. What the Amish have done is regulate the pace and direction of change by deferring to the wisdom of the group and of tradition rather than to the impulse of individual preference or the direction of marketing mavens.
The Amish navigate the future using a moral road map they call Ordnung. A German term that literally means “order,” Ordnung sets the boundaries of what they see as a divinely ordered life. It is the collected wisdom of past generations addressed to a host of everyday situations. As a Christian church, the Amish regard the Bible as their ultimate authority in moral matters, but Ordnung offers guidance for the many topics on which Scripture is silent by applying biblical principles to contemporary life. Ordnung prescribes and proscribes, both directing and limiting what a person does. Ordnung dictates a particular style of clothing and how one should travel to work. It mandates certain activities on Sunday and labels others taboo. In general, Ordnung governing religious rituals—such as the order of worship on a Sunday morning—is more resistant to change than Ordnung surrounding what technology is permissible in an Amish-owned retail store. But all aspects of life, to some degree, fall under this sacred canopy.
TABLE 3.1: CHURCH ORDNUNG VERSUS HOUSEHOLD DISCRETION
“A respected Ordnung,” one minister has written, “generates peace, love, contentment, equality, and unity.” From the outside, deference to tradition might seem “impractical” or “an outdated thing,” he acknowledged. Other Christians may even denounce it as cold legalism. But, this minister contended, individualism can also be a cruel master, and as Madison Avenue dictates fads and fashions, individual choice turns out to be an illusion. Everyone submits to some authority, he argued, and the person who lives by “a time-proven” Ordnung “actually has more freedom … than those who are bound to the outside [world].”8
Unlike Jewish Mishnah or Islamic Hadith, Amish Ordnung is not written down or studied by Amish scholars. Ordnung is a dynamic oral tradition and it is absorbed more than dictated.9 Rather than a rule book to be memorized, it is understood to be a way of going about life. Amish people are hard-pressed to enumerate the implicit and explicit elements of Ordnung—“It’s just how we do things. It’s understood,” is their common response when asked to explain the Ordnung—but they know that it is a real presence in everyday life. Ordnung is passed on by parents through the way they raise their children, and fidelity to the Ordnung is formally reaffirmed (or modified) in every local church district twice a year, as we will see in chapter 4.
Ordnung regulates Amish life, but Ordnung flexes or tightens in response to real world developments and the changing social and political contexts in which the Amish find themselves. Church leaders—the bishops, ministers, and deacons—do not create the Ordnung. They see themselves as stewards of a tradition who have a responsibility to make sure that the burden of proof is on any argument for change. Indeed, ordained men and their families must model faithful adherence to the Ordnung and they must uphold somewhat higher standards than others in the church. Bishops have less leeway in pushing the boundaries of acceptable recreation, for example, and their clothing styles are often slightly more severe.
Amish playing shuffleboard in Pinecraft, Florida, a winter haven for Amish retirees. A more relaxed Ordnung prevails here. Credit: Kimberly Button
In contrast, ordinary lay members may have a bit more flexibility. Young married couples without children have the greatest flexibility because they are not yet responsible for training the next generation. In some settlements, for example, they might enjoy a Saturday water skiing excursion that would be off-limits for parents with children and unthinkable for a bishop and his family. As one advances in age and status, the Ordnung becomes more restrictive. At the same time, the Ordnung may be interpreted more loosely to accommodate the special needs of the elderly or those with disabilities. A motorized wheelchair might be acceptable for a man with muscular dystrophy, but his brother who does not have that condition would be prohibited from purchasing a riding lawn mower. Older adults who spend winter months in Pinecraft, Florida, a village on the outskirts of Sarasota that has become a haven for Amish “snow birds,” also enjoy a much more flexible Ordnung. In that setting, the use of some electric appliances or air conditioning does not directly challenge the authority of the Ordnung back home, and when retirees return north in March they immediately revert to living within the bounds of the prevailing Ordnung there.
Diversity and Affiliation
In fact, it is precisely because old order values prize local tradition and resist homogenizing pressures from afar that the details of Amish life have never been uniform across the continent. In that sense, Ordnung expresses and validates the particular. For example, Ordnung in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, dictates that buggy tops are gray in color, while the long-standing custom in Ohio is black. The particular patterns of a man’s hat or a woman’s bonnet also vary from region to region, reflecting different Ordnung traditions in each place. The history of the particular community and the temperament of local church leaders determine a great deal how the Ordnung is understood, interpreted, and enforced. Some churches might resist approving certain changes because they wish to differentiate themselves from a neighboring Amish church that they perceive to be too liberal—or vice versa. In some Amish settlements all the congregations seek to maintain a common Ordnung, while in other places the Ordnung can vary significantly from one church district to the next just a few miles down the road.
Differences in Ordnung have given rise to distinct Amish subgroups, sometimes known as affiliations. Affiliations are loose associations of Amish church districts that share a similar Ordnung. There are some forty different identifiable affiliations. Members of an affiliation may encourage or expect their children to find spouses from within the affiliation, and bishops and ministers may be asked to preach or otherwise participate in the worship service of districts beyond their home but within their affiliation. Lines of affiliation are not rigid and evolve as districts make—or refuse to make—changes in their Ordnung. Affiliations may include more than a hundred church districts or may be comprised of a mere handful. They are not bureaucratic organizations with formal meetings, membership, or affiliationwide leaders. Instead, they are informal networks of Amish churches that recognize one another’s Ordnung as similar—or similar enough—to merit closer cooperation than they might afford some other Amish churches. By dint of tradition, an affiliation might be known by a label, such as the Andy Weaver Amish or the Byler Amish, while others have geographically linked monikers, such as the Lancaster Amish, a group that includes districts in the large Lancaster, Pennsylvania, settlement as well as churches with roots in Lancaster but now scattered across seven other states.
Ordnung governing technology is more permissive in New Order Amish circles. Farmers might use tractors to bring crops in from the field or even drive to town with a tractor instead of with a horse and buggy. Credit: Don Burke
Two affiliations on either end of a spectrum suggest the diversity within today’s Amish world. The so-called Swartzentruber Amish represent perhaps the most conservative slice of the Amish pie. Tracing their identity to a debate over church discipline in 1917 in Wayne County, Ohio, the Swartzentrubers now have settlements in more than a dozen states. They uphold the most traditional ways of life and their Ordnung is perhaps the most resistant to change. In contrast, the so-called New Order Amish coalesced as an affiliation in 1966, first in Holmes County, Ohio, with a nod to some progressive impulses. The New Order group retains horse and buggy transportation, but lifted some restrictions on household technology, such as in-home landline telephones, and they flavor their religious lif
e with some of the language of evangelical Protestantism. From the New Order perspective, what sets their group apart are things like strict prohibition against smoking or making sure that parents closely monitor weekend youth activities. But to some other Amish, a relaxed attitude on technology and dress distinguishes the New Order.10
Across the spectrum of affiliations, the values of Gelassenheit and the discipline of living within the Ordnung send messages to insider and outsider alike. For those outside the Amish orbit, plainness indicates Amish-ness; for those inside, the degree of plainness signals affiliation. But regardless of affiliation, the very presence of a collective Ordnung to which individuals submit distinguishes the Amish in fundamental ways from their American neighbors. Plainness is not just an ethnic aesthetic but an expression of a deeply seated orientation to the world that runs counter to the values and national myths that animate most American lives. Although being old order is not always the same thing as being old fashioned, the Amish have great respect for tradition and for the wisdom of the past, and in the United States that sets them at odds with a dominant culture in which individual choice, technological know-how, and popular opinion are the reigning and often unquestioned authorities.
Distinctive Amish values also shape formal structures of church and community, as we will see in the next chapter.
CHAPTER FOUR
Community and Church
Sixty years later, the memory of his Amish baptism remained crystal clear for Harvey Yoder. “I’ll never forget kneeling at the front of the congregation and having our good Bishop Simon Yoder cup water in his hands from a bowl and gently pour this sacramental sign of cleansing and commissioning on my head—im Namen des Vaters und des Sohnes und des heiligen Geistes [In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit]—and then taking me by the hand and having me stand as a new born and newly welcomed adult member of God’s family.” Adolescent life could be complicated, but Yoder’s experience of church had left him confident “that God did indeed love and forgive me.”
Yoder’s family later left the Amish church. His parents wanted a religious community that valued verbal evangelism and missionary work. Leaving also meant that the Yoder family could drive a car and “we could have telephones instead of going to our [non-Amish] neighbors when we had to make a call,” he remembered. Eventually, Yoder ended up in a Mennonite Church, pursued higher education, and became a licensed counselor and family therapist. Still, six decades later he recognized that “a part of me will always be Amish, the part aiming to live a frugal and unpretentious lifestyle, maintaining strong family commitments, valuing close ties with others in caring communities, as well as about keeping church simple and more about relationships than about expensive real estate and salaried staff.”1
Not everyone who leaves the Amish community has such warm memories of their upbringing, and the vast majority of those who are baptized never leave. Still, Yoder’s memories and reflections illustrate how church and community form individuals through particular practices and institutions. The values of Gelassenheit and the guidance of Ordnung take practical form in the small-scale structures of community and the rituals of the church.
Bigness Ruins Everything
Outsiders might not be surprised that Harvey Yoder’s parents left the church, since many onlookers wonder if the commitment necessary to be a member of the Amish community is worth the personal cost.
Yet, Amish people might similarly question the trade-offs that many mainstream folks make without a second thought. Modern-minded people generally believe that the efficiencies gained through economies of scale are more valuable than the close connections and relationships that melt away as institutions mushroom and bureaucracy grows. The Amish are much less ready to make that swap.
“Bigness ruins everything,” an Amish man stated categorically. His sentiment is borne out in all sorts of ways across Amish society. Church districts are comprised of no more people than can fit in a private home. Schools are one- or two-room buildings. Few Amish-owned businesses have more than a dozen employees, and those that get much larger often face church pressure to divide or downsize.
The bureaucracy that does exist in Amish society is remarkably limited in size and scope. The church’s approach to insurance provides a striking example. The Amish believe that church members bear a divine responsibility to care for one another in times of crisis, such as the aftermath of a house fire or the need to pay a major medical bill. As a result, they do not purchase commercial insurance nor do they participate in public plans such as Medicare. Instead, they rely on church-centered mutual aid programs to assist families with property losses, health care costs, or even small business product liability. The precise way these mutual aid plans work, and the ways they draw on the financial resources of a wide circle of districts, varies from one community or affiliation to another. But none of the systems involve paid staff, formal office space, or overhead expenses. Volunteer boards and treasurers, working from a kitchen desk, efficiently maintain records, collect money, mail payments, and keep members informed of financial needs.
Other modest institutions include Amish historical libraries and informal trade groups. Libraries typically begin with the hobby interest of a book collector or genealogist who shares a personal collection with those in the community. Other historically minded individuals may donate or combine their books and a dedicated but unprofessional group of library directors will begin meeting and arrange a schedule during which they take turns volunteering to help people who wish to use the materials. Publicity is minimal and budgets are low.
Amish shop owners—cabinet makers, for example, or leather workers—have formed trade groups, but their structure diverges sharply from that of their modern trade group counterparts. Annual gatherings of Amish artisans may attract attendees from settlements across the country. But the gatherings are held at a shop or farm, not in a hotel or downtown convention center. Amish and non-Amish sales people display their wares and network with one another, but the emphasis is not on competition—which, for the Amish, is a vice paired with pride—but on cooperation. Ideas, new products, and even potential markets are shared with a freedom that would astound many English business people. Usually known as “reunions,” these trade gatherings attract entire families and not simply Amish men. In fact, the idea of a gathering just for business does not make much sense in Amish circles, both because family businesses generally involve the whole household and also because the separation of work and leisure, so central to modern conceptions of time and life, is foreign to the Amish. The gatherings are recreational events for children and the meals and heavy accent on visiting do turn the events into reunions as much as business opportunities.
The small scale of Amish organizations, from the church district to the mutual aid society, creates a relatively flat and accessible set of relationships. Despite the real power and authority that church leaders hold, Amish society is arguably less hierarchical than modern bureaucracies whose organizational flow charts often illustrate the inaccessibility of top layers of control to those on the bottom rungs.
Relationships in Community
Unlike the efficient bureaucracy of modern life, which sharply separates functions and creates specialized roles, Amish society is a network of dense and overlapping relationships. Amish society is sometimes called a high-context culture: one in which people know and relate to one another in multiple ways. In low-context modernity, people interact with one another in narrowly defined ways. In this situation a patient is concerned with his dentist’s professional qualifications, for example, not the dentist’s status as a member of a church or her role in an extended family. For the high-context Amish, in contrast, the school teacher is likely also a relative, and fellow church members are coworkers, and all of those overlapping relationships matter in routine interaction. A person’s status is not easily defined as just a deacon or just a shop owner or just a father since a person is seen as functioning in all those
ways at once.
In practical terms, this means that Amish community interactions can leave much unsaid because people know a great deal about one another. At the same time, conversation in high-context cultures can easily offend modern sensibilities by crossing the sorts of boundaries that modernity erects to keep life segmented. Thus, what would be considered gossip in a modern, low-context culture is standard information in a high-context setting.
High-context information is central to two Amish correspondence newspapers, The Budget and Die Botschaft, which extend community beyond face-to-face interactions, but do so in a way that follows the contours of Amish culture.2 Amish correspondence papers are unique in today’s world of print journalism. For one thing, both have solid and stable subscription bases that are not being undercut by the Internet or other digital media. Neither paper has headlines, photos, sports pages, comics, or even feature articles. Instead, each week they offer up hundreds of letters, printed in identical columns, from readers across the country. Writers, known as scribes, describe the weather, report on who visited whom in their rural neighborhood, and announce births, injuries, and deaths. All of the letters are in English and most of the writers are women.
The Amish Page 4
