Shops are also handicapped in some ways. For instance, they will almost never sue for damages, even when they have been shamelessly scammed, because of the church’s insistence on defenselessness. As well, the church’s general resistance to conspicuous size and scale means that larger businesses may have to strategically downsize if their growth offends people in the church. Although there is no formal protocol for such downsizing, Amish firms are sometimes scaled down or sold to non-Amish parties for reasons that make little sense from a business standpoint, but demonstrate the founder’s submission to Amish values. Education and technology limits also bridle some firms. In most Amish groups, direct use of the Internet for advertising or merchandizing is not possible, and within a shop itself, the inability to tap public utility electricity indirectly caps growth.
At the same time, these sorts of technological limitations become, in their own way, an asset, helping to create a distinct Amish “brand.” Low-tech production helps develop an Amish product mystique. The sense of value and distinctiveness that accompanies the Amish label is closely tied to the fact that the Amish have chosen to engage technology in highly distinctive ways.
Amish Tech
Popular images of the Amish paint them as Luddites or technophobes who shun any labor-saving device or advanced technology. Such an image is grounded in the fact that Amish people do often make strikingly different choices than do other Americans when it comes to technology. The Amish do not assume that faster is necessarily better, nor do they automatically equate the adjectives new and improved. They view all of life as falling under the sacred canopy of church Ordnung, and they assume that the faithful church will be, in many ways, distinguishable from “the world.” These principles do not mean that the Amish employ a thoughtless reaction against innovation. Rather, they evaluate new technologies with an eye to how they will change their community or destabilize tradition, whereas most other Americans size up technology simply from the standpoint of efficiency and cost and assume that faster speeds and more options are always a good thing.
In fact, there are few pieces of technology that the Amish consider categorically out of bounds. Instead, they regard most technology as morally neutral and focus on how it might be used. A dishwasher, for example, is not “evil.” But Amish families reject dishwashers because they eliminate household chores that parents believe are helpful exercises in training responsible, diligent children. In the same way, public utility electricity is problematic not because electricity in itself is wrong, but because wiring one’s home with multiple outlets in every room announces that the home owner is ready and waiting—even eager—to plug in any new device on the market. It suggests that the decision to embrace whatever comes along is a foregone conclusion. Instead, as a consumer community the Amish believe that moral discernment must come first and that power arrangements—batteries for clocks, naphtha gas for lamps, propane for refrigerators, and so on—can follow later for those things deemed worthwhile.
This Amish woodworking shop uses equipment powered with hydraulic (oil) and pneumatic (air) pressure. Credit: Daniel Rodriguez
A similar focus on the impact of technology rather than technology per se animates the common Amish distinction between use and ownership. From the Amish perspective, one of the common threats posed by technology is its ability to make individuals self-reliant and independent, thereby mocking the spirit of humility and making community optional. When a member rents something she or he might not be allowed to own, they give up a measure of control. A shop owner might lease a building with electric lights from a non-Amish property owner but not install such lighting in her own home, or a man might use a riding lawnmower as a groundskeeper for a non-Amish business but not buy and use such a mower himself. This distinction between use and ownership is, in many cases, vital to the dynamic nature of Amish entrepreneurship. But it also illustrates the deep assumptions the community holds about the perils of technology.
Given these deep assumptions, Amish approaches to technology span a gamut from rejection through adaptation to simple acceptance. A few entertainment technologies are banned outright, such as television. Meanwhile, a good number of basic household appliances and shop tools have been adopted and then adapted to operate without electricity. Households might use a diesel or solar powered air pump to raise water from a well or to run a sewing machine. Shop owners operate a host of manufacturing equipment, such as lathes and belt sanders, with hydraulic power. Batteries connected to alternating current inverters can power cash registers or photocopiers. Different affiliations draw the line at different places, with more conservative groups rejecting more and adapting less than progressive affiliations are inclined to do.
In more progressive settlements, the use of computers for managing company bookwork or running computer-aided design (C.A.D.) programs has been the focus of recent debate and discussion. While some firms have outsourced their computer work to an English associate, more common has been the adoption of computers that have a DSL line for email but no Internet, audio, or video capability. At least one Amish-owned business actually builds such machines for other Amish firms, who run them with batteries charged via solar or diesel generation, or with public utility electricity if the business is operating in a non-Amish industrial park. In some progressive pockets of the Amish world, businesses have signed up for Internet service along with a third-party accountability system and filtering software that sharply limits the Internet to uses such as scheduling shipping or checking a supplier’s webpage.
But even within a particular affiliation—including relatively progressive ones—Ordnung regarding technology shifts and changes depending on the social space in which the technology operates, again illustrating that, for the Amish, technology itself is not a problem, but its deployment is carefully monitored. In general the arena with the least technology is the Amish school. A clock, heating stove, and hand pump for water are all the technology most schools have. There are no calculators, computers, or in most cases indoor plumbing. Schools isolate children from technology and convey the message that technological competency is not that important.
Fig. 7.1. Power Sources Provided by a Diesel Engine
Homes are also devoid of most of the consumer gadgets and communication technologies most Americans take for granted. As the center of family life and the key environment in which children are being raised, homes bear the burden of relatively restrictive Ordnung when it comes to technology. The fact that homes are also the sites of Sunday worship, weddings, and funerals makes them inappropriate places for the intrusive buzzing and beeping that emanates from radios, computers, dishwashers, air conditioners, and other things that produce what most Americans have come to regard as normal background noise. The further one moves away from the home—out into the barn, the shop, or the distant construction site, the looser the restrictions on technology become. For example, many groups that strictly prohibit telephones in the home will allow phones to be installed in shops or in small booths near a shop or barn. The physical location allows the phone to be a work tool and not a device that interrupts meals or encourages long, private conversations.
One of the upshots of the limits that the Amish place on technology is that they have become, in many case, technologically creative and masters of innovation. Because they seek to control technology and not be controlled by it, they are constantly tinkering with things—“Amish-izing” them, as one man put it—to corral technology within the bounds of the Ordnung. The ground-driven power-take-off described at the beginning of this chapter is one of countless inventions and adaptations that have come from self-taught Amish engineers. Some communities have adapted cutting-edge solar power sources. Heavy machinery destined for Amish manufacturing shops is refitted in still other Amish shops by removing the electric motors and other components and replacing them with pneumatic (pressurized air) and hydraulic (pressurized oil) power sources. Over time, the Amish firms specializing in hydraulic work sometimes attract non-Am
ish clients looking for hydraulic expertise, and then an Amish mechanic finds himself repairing hydraulic components on a dump truck owned by a large non-Amish company down the road. Creativity, invention, and growth are very often the fruits of restraint.
And although choices about technology reinforce Amish separation from the world, they can also, as the example of the hydraulic shop illustrates, bring the Amish and their neighbors together. Work and technology are but two of the bridges that link the Amish and their neighbors, as we shall see.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Amish and Their Neighbors
Stop in Chicago’s Union Station on just about any weekday and you’ll find Amish families and individuals waiting to switch trains. Although almost all Amish groups permit members to hire drivers to take them on trips that are longer than horse-and-buggy distance, traveling by rail remains a popular option. For members of the most conservative groups, such as the Swartzentruber affiliation that frowns on hiring private drivers, trains and commercial buses are long-distance mainstays.
In 2014 when reporters from Chicago radio station WBEZ decided to do a story on Amish Amtrak riders, they feared the plain-dressed patrons of Union Station would be standoffish. They were delighted instead to discover warm conversationalists, people who enjoyed talking about their trips and even cracked jokes.
Certainly Amish personalities vary, as does the mix of introverts and extroverts in any particular Amish group. But Amish folks generally are happy to strike up conversations, compare travel notes, or talk about how many grandchildren they have and where those grandchildren live. Swartzentruber families returning to upstate New York from a wedding in Minnesota, for example, arrive home full of stories of the people they met on their cross-country train connections.
For the reporters in Chicago, the Amish in Union Station also provided a snapshot of the many ways Amish people interact with wider society. Some were traveling for business purposes, while a “woman from Ohio was traveling with several of her grandchildren to visit her cousin and see the Grand Canyon.” A man from the Midwest was heading to Pennsylvania for a kidney transplant, and another from Kentucky had been in Tijuana, Mexico, where he had gone for surgery because “medical expenses in the States anymore are so phenomenal that an ordinary person cannot afford it.”1
Commercial connections—which we’ve seen in the previous chapter—have opened Amish society in many ways. In addition to business, Amish families and individuals find themselves regularly interacting with non-Amish neighbors as members of local civic communities, as they access medical care, and as the subject of a multimillion-dollar Amish-themed tourist industry (chapter 9). Sometimes such interaction centers on legal conflicts or misunderstanding, but for the most part these relationships are marked by generous doses of good will.
Civic Contributions
Most Amish engage their neighbors informally in a wide variety of ways. Contractors may routinely stop at a restaurant for coffee on the way to work and chat with other early morning patrons. Some families develop close friendships with English neighbors and invite them to weddings, funerals, or summer cookouts. In small towns, Amish folks are likely to be on a first-name basis with many business owners, not to mention the drivers they might hire to shuttle them to a distant hospital.
Community engagement through more formal channels varies from location to location. In general, residents of older Amish settlements, where an Amish presence goes back a century or more and relationships have long been woven into the fabric of life, are more apt to engage in civic life than are those living in newer settlements or places where the Amish presence is very small. Amish people do not join service clubs, such as Rotary or Kiwanis, because of their conviction that the church is the only organization in which one should hold any formal membership, but they often support local causes with time and money. In Geauga County, Ohio, for example, Amish people are regular blood donors. In other places Amish households contribute to Habitat for Humanity benefit auctions and make contributions to not-for-profit hospice centers.
There are long-standing connections between the Amish and some volunteer fire companies in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Many Amish men participate as firefighters. Although they do not drive the trucks they take part in every other way and receive training in using state-of-the-art firefighting equipment, administering first aid, and conducting search and rescue operations. Crews have sometimes elected an Amish member as the company fire chief. Often self-employed or working in rurally based small shops, Amish men are able to drop everything and respond to a fire call more easily than non-Amish professionals, and some carry small battery-operated beepers.
Amish families have also been central to the funding of Pennsylvania firefighting operations through their donations of time and money to annual fundraising auctions. Popularly known as “mud sales” because they are held in early spring when the ground is thawing, these benefit auctions feature donated goods of all kinds—from housewares and shop tools to books and farm animals—sold by Amish and English auctioneers to crowds of bidders that include every slice of the local community. “It takes everyone working together to make this work,” one organizer noted at the 2014 Penryn sale, near the town of Manheim, which attracted more than three thousand people and raised about $20,000 for the North Penryn Fire Company.2
Contributions to charity also go global. Amish families back the international aid programs of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and Christian Aid Ministries (CAM). Amish volunteers prepare blankets, roll bandages, and can meat for distribution overseas. In a nine-day period in January 2015, for example, Amish men in Goshen, Indiana, processed 78,000 pounds of turkey for shipment via MCC to refugee camps and schools in Africa and Asia. In Kalona, Iowa, Amish volunteers, including young children, gather on weeknights in a CAM warehouse to pack used clothing and sort shoes for worldwide distribution, and three women’s sewing circles produce “quilts, comforters, and various other items [that] are sent to the needy” through CAM channels.3
Amish and non-Amish bidders mingle at an auction held to raise money for the Strasburg Fire Company in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Amish men also serve as volunteer firefighters here. Credit: Sunday News, Lancaster, Pa.
Very few Amish people serve internationally with CAM or MCC, but scores of Amish volunteers travel within the United States to assist non-Amish communities each year. Mennonite Disaster Service, an organization somewhat like the Red Cross and headquartered in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and Disaster Response Services, a similar agency based in Berlin, Ohio, regularly send busloads of Amish volunteers (and others) to clean up and rebuild homes in the wake of floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes. These groups clocked thousands of hours of Amish labor after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, for example.
Relations with neighbors are not always smooth. In some communities citizens have complained about horse manure in commercial parking lots or the wear and tear on rural roads from steel-wheeled buggies and metal horseshoes. In 2014 officials in Allen County, Indiana, cited the fact that “about 14 miles of county roads … need repair because of damage by horse-drawn vehicles” as reason to increase the county’s annual buggy license fee from $30 to $55.4 In other places a handful of Amish-owned dog breeding businesses have drawn protestors who charge the Amish with operating “puppy mills.” Some non-Amish contractors grumble that Amish builders have an unfair advantage because they do not participate in Social Security or, in some states, workers’ compensation programs. The fact that the Amish are simply different—that they speak a German dialect, generally do not participate in the public school system or the U.S. military, and seem, in the words of one observer, to be “clannish”—has also soured some people on their Amish neighbors.
Encounters with Government, Politics, and Law
By and large the Amish have not tried to boost their profile politically nor have they sought public influence. Typically they relate to government as subjects rather than as c
itizens. In other words, their preferred mode of operation is to quietly petition or negotiate for exemptions and special privileges rather than to litigate, lobby, or invoke their constitutional rights. This stance is shaped by Amish values, such as humility, and also by their “two-kingdom” theology that posits a clear distinction between the church and the world. “Graft, corruption, and greed are nearly inseparable from politics,” one Amish publication explains, and although the same writer urged readers “to be respectful to the government at all times … and pray for our rulers,” he is categorical: “Christians have no business in politics.”5
Nationally, only a small percent of Amish vote on a regular basis, although the rate varies from settlement to settlement, and where the Amish vote they generally cast ballots in local elections rather than state or national contests. In 2004 the Amish in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, received a great deal of media attention when Republican leaders there sought to enlist them—with limited success, it turned out—in President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign. “Most of us are armchair Republicans,” one man explained, noting that limited government and fiscally and morally conservative rhetoric resonate with his people. However, they do not feel compelled to try and make public policy for everyone. Their sense of faithful “separation from the world” means that they are not driven by a vision of a “Christian America.” They seek to respect government but are more inclined to see the state as a necessary evil in a corrupt world rather than something in which they should invest much effort.
Local government, which seems more like a community activity among neighbors, is more apt to draw modest Amish participation. Occasionally they turn out at township meetings at which rural zoning is being debated or they may speak against granting liquor licenses in local villages so as to maintain “dry” communities. Sometimes state or federal legislators will meet with Amish constituents to get their input on legislation that might impinge on Amish practices. This was true in 2009–2010 when the congressman representing eastern Lancaster County worked to ensure that Amish church members would be exempt from portions of the Affordable Care Act.
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