Meanwhile, a renaissance in folk art, as well as the U.S. bicentennial celebration of traditional arts and crafts, suddenly catapulted Amish quilting to prominence. In 1971 the Whitney Museum in New York City included Amish quilts in an exhibit and traveling show of “Abstract Design.” Collectors joined tourists flocking to Amish country in search of vibrant tradition. Soon, Doug Tompkins, founder of the Esprit clothing line, was hanging Amish quilts throughout his San Francisco office building, moving functional fabric from the bed to the wall and treating it as modern art that was both Americana and avant-garde.
Many Americans nostalgically associate the Amish with an “old-fashioned” way of life. Credit: Daniel Rodriguez
The 1985 Hollywood film Witness, starring Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis, illustrated the new, more celebratory-but-still-uncertain American view of the Amish. They were, on the one hand, commendably different. Just as Americans were beginning to snap up new personal computers, director Peter Weir presented Amish life on the big screen as unplugged, uncluttered, and standing in contrast to the complicated and crime-filled life of a big city detective who ended up hiding out on an Amish farm. Yet, in the end, it was the film’s straight-shooting law officer who saved the day. The Amish might be oddly admirable, but they needed to be rescued by Hollywood’s redemptive violence as the movie’s plot—like Americans in general—did not quite know what to make of them.
An Explosion of Media Images
In the years that followed Witness, the Amish image emerged in more and more places, very often as a symbol of wholesome goodness (think “Amish potato salad” at a local deli) but also as a stand-in for naiveté and ignorance. Comedian David Letterman played an outsized role in this development with his inclusion of the Amish among his “Top Ten List” routines, such as “Top Ten Amish Pick-up Lines” (1989) and “Top Ten Amish Spring Break Activities” (1991). Letterman’s use of the Amish illustrated the reflexive relationship of mass media stories and popular images, since Letterman’s lists often built on current events or nightly news items. For example, his “Top Ten Signs Your Amish Teen Is in Trouble” followed the 1998 story about the arrest of two Amish-reared young men in Pennsylvania as part of a cocaine distribution ring. Earlier, Letterman had helped familiarize audiences with an image of the Amish as too good to be true, an image that made an Amish drug bust story more newsworthy—news that, in turn, provided more comedic material as the Amish seemed to be not very good at all.
In fact, religion and media scholar David Weaver-Zercher has suggested that the Amish image in recent years has actually toggled between two images, that of a “saving remnant”—a simple, pious community living life as it once was and still could be—and that of a “fallen people”—the subject of exposés and the butt of jokes purporting to reveal the real and repressed nature of their life.5
The relationship between these two images is complex since they rely on one another. For example, The Devil’s Playground, a 2002 documentary on teenage Amish drug use in northern Indiana, worked only because its racy scenes were coupled with images of quiet pastoralism, naiveté, and utter innocence. Similarly, the chaste theme, on which Amish romance novels capitalize, is easily inverted into an oversexed Amish caricature seen, for example, in the 2008 Hollywood comedy Sex Drive. Even when the purpose is purely satire, as in a 2009 story in the online publication The Onion—“Amish Woman Knew She Had Quilt Sale the Moment She Laid Eyes on Chicago Couple”—the humor relies on a preexisting image of the Amish as incredibly honest and upstanding.6 A spate of Amish-themed reality TV shows, from “Amish in the City” (2004) to “Breaking Amish” (2012) to “Amish Mafia” (2012), all worked a similar angle. It mattered little to viewers that the presentation of Rumspringa in the first two series was deeply flawed and that the notion of mafia-style enforcement rings within Amish society was utterly fabricated from start to finish.
Instead, it seems that the conflicting presentations of the Amish as unbelievably good and exceptionally flawed are an expression of a wider phenomenon of contemporary American thinking about difference and diversity. Although multiculturalism has replaced, in many quarters, the language of the melting pot in American cultural discourse, understandings of cultural difference still only go so far. Mainstream faith in assimilation continues to run deep. Differences, many of us seem to believe, exist only on the surface and, in the end, everyone in the United States shares the same hopes, dreams, flaws, and foibles. The message that Amish reality TV shows—and a great many other Amish images in contemporary society—convey is this: even members of a group as striking as the Amish are, deep down, fundamentally no different from the rest of us. We can tolerate them, and other minority groups and interests, not because we are comfortable with difference, but because we are convinced that cultural differences are really just superficial window dressing. In this sense, the Amish image suggests how shallow understandings of multiculturalism and pluralism actually are in the United States today.
Amish Images and Amish Identity
Amish people are not directly responsible for most of the popular images that have flourished around them in the early twenty-first century, but they have not been immune from their impact. As we have seen, Amish identity—like group identity generally—is a negotiated result of characteristics, ascribed and adopted, by outsiders and insiders alike. What others think about the Amish and how they are perceived can open up legal loopholes, create product perception, or curtail economic opportunities. For example, as we’ve seen, horse-and-buggy transportation becomes a more settled element of Amish identity as non-Amish people come to accept and facilitate it. Store owners put up hitching posts, safety experts design improved lighting and reflectors for buggies, English marketers use carriage logos to label Amish-made products, and non-Amish drivers provide taxi service that allow buggy owners to travel beyond buggy-driving distance.
An Amish woman near Engadine, Michigan, markets quilts to tourists visiting the state’s Upper Peninsula to camp and ski. Connections to tourism economies have emerged even in new and more remote settlements. Credit: Steven Nolt
Amish involvement with Amish-themed tourism is another example of the church’s interaction with popular images. Amish people have often been ambivalent about these encounters, some avoiding them, some complaining about rural roads choked with buses and out-of-state cars, and others actively participating to one degree or another in the tourist trade. Young women work as wait staff in non-Amish-owned restaurants and families sell produce and quilts directly to visitors from home-based shops and roadside stands.
In an essay “Being a Witness to Tourists,” an Amish minister, Benuel Blank (1932–2009), reflected on the ways “we plain people can learn a good bit from the very people who would come to see firsthand our way of life and living.” For Blank, the attention that his church attracted raised the bar for his people’s behavior. Others expect to see Amish simplicity, and Blank believed his people were more than obligated to deliver. “Since our way of living is being so closely watched and studied,” he told his Amish readers, “we are more responsible than ever for the way we live.” After all, “our lives are the only Bible that many [tourists] may ever ‘read.’ ” As he reflected on his interactions over the years with tourists sporting ever-changing fashion, Blank found himself “thankful for our church ordnung in clothing” since “with our ordnung we do not have to get a complete new set of clothes every time the styles and fashions of the world change.” Thus, scrutiny from outside prompted him to “try to help keep our way of life from becoming even more materialistic than it is now.”7
Benuel Blank’s ruminations point to the dynamic character of Amish culture. No culture is static, nor is change a one-way street. Some Amish groups have become more technologically conservative over time, for example, and parents in some settlements have trumped tradition by restricting or redirecting Rumspringa activities. The Amish have never been isolated from the currents of modernity. Amish business owners, for example,
understand the commercial logic of economies of scale and some hear the authoritative voice of efficiency. In an essay on “wasted motion,” for example, one shop owner offered a remarkably rational analysis of production. Assuming a woodworking shop had eight employees and each took several more seconds than absolutely necessary to move from one step of a task to another, he calculated that production would decline and income would plunge $5,760 a year. “If you avoid needless moves,” he concluded, “your profits will increase.”8 The shifting edges of acceptable behavior and the presence of certain modern modes of thought and action—prizing efficiency, appreciating growth, thinking strategically—are part of what it means to negotiate the Amish way in the contemporary world.
A Model Minority?
What does all the attention the Amish garner, as well as their dynamic group identity, say about the contours of contemporary multicultural America? In some ways the Amish are a unique minority, but in other ways their experience is akin to that of other distinctive subcultures that thrive—despite being misunderstood—in pluralistic America.
The Amish might be considered a model minority. They have successfully negotiated a comfortable place in the United States, enjoying the benefits of religious liberty and the affection of many outsiders who buy their goods, crave their quilts, and see in them the sturdy values of honesty and good hard work. Stubborn resistance and patient negotiation—sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical—has resulted in a range of legal exemptions from high school attendance and Social Security payroll taxes to provisions of the Affordable Care Act and more. Meanwhile, Amish goods generally benefit from positive brand association and a public perception that “Amish-made” equals quality and value. Amish folks recognize the generally positive public perception they enjoy, and they worry about it. After all, they remind one another, Jesus said, “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you” (Luke 6:26).
Certainly the Amish have benefitted from the principle of freedom of religion enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and the civil rights revolution that has slowly extended legal protection to a wider array of people and groups. Undoubtedly the Amish have also benefitted from America’s generally positive view of “colorful” white minorities, as opposed to its minorities of color. The fact that the Amish embrace private property, ask relatively little of larger society, do not proselytize, and reside in rural areas that are often ignored by public policy makers also contributes to their benign image.
To be sure, Amish people have not always been the subjects of adulation. Especially in wartime, and as German-speakers, their peace convictions were unpopular. Some sat in jail as religious liberty cases brought on their behalf wound their way through the courts. And an undercurrent of anti-Amish bias is part of the public discourse in many places, whether because neighbors believe the Amish are not shouldering their fair share of civic responsibility or because the plain people simply seem standoffish and different.
Yet, on the whole, the Amish have been remarkably successful dissenters. As the preceding chapters have argued, the Amish are not simply people who dress oddly but are otherwise “just like the rest of us.” Rather, they resist, actively, the forces of assimilation that come from public education, retain a German dialect as their mother tongue, dissent from displays of patriotism, and they refuse, on the whole, to accept that the individual is the unit of analysis and measure of success when it comes to gauging human fulfillment. They believe that limits are essential to happiness rather than barriers to achieving fulfillment. The animating values of Amish life and culture stand in sharp contrast to key American myths and cultural assumptions.
Amish and English families play together at a public park. Many Amish enjoy neighborly friendships while still standing apart from the North American mainstream. Credit: Dottie Kauffmann / Mennonite Historical Library
And yet the Amish have a way of unsettling us. They thrive in the midst of modern society. They are not going away and, in fact, are growing and establishing new communities each year. But it is more than just their growth that disquiets the rest of us. The Amish are committed to values that run counter to deeply held American commitments. They limit education, revere tradition, and stifle individual accomplishment. Commentators from wider society are often at pains to show that the Amish are hypocritical or inconsistent, as if establishing that fact could dismiss the alternative example the Amish way poses.
Yet if popular images of the Amish are really more about us than them—more about modern hopes and fears than about actual Amish concerns—then the question of why the Amish hold our gaze is actually a question of whether the myths and values that animate modern life are the only keys to human flourishing. The Amish embrace limits and they have decided that exchanging much individual choice for a sense of collective purpose and security is a healthy bargain. Few of us in the wider world would consider making that exchange on the terms the Amish have set. But in a postmodern society marked by anomie, avatars, and artificial reality, the Amish raise the question of where in our world authentic and meaningful choices lie. Asking such questions does not mean that the rest of us will or want to become Amish. But by noticing their choices, the rest of us may recognize more clearly our own deepest assumptions. Doing so may lead us to question or temper those assumptions. Or it may allow us to embrace our own values more consciously and willingly rather than thoughtlessly or haphazardly.
If so, the Amish will have served the rest of us well, even as they pursue their own ends for their own reasons.
APPENDIX A: Amish Spirituality
Excerpts from Rules of a Godly Life
The following excerpts from “Rules of a Godly Life” (“Regeln eines Gottseligen Lebens”) provide something of the flavor of Amish spirituality. “Rules” has long been a popular devotional source among the Amish, although it was not penned by an Amish writer. Its origin is obscure, but the earliest known edition appeared in 1736 and since then has often been included in prayer books compiled by the Amish. The translation here was done by an Ontario Amish minister and appears in its entirety in In Meiner Jugend: A Devotional Reader in German and English (Aylmer, Ont.: Pathway Publishers, 2000), 65–103.
Rules of a Godly Life
In the morning, awake with God and consider that this might be your final day. When you go to bed at night, you do not know if you will ever rise again, except to appear before the Judgment. For this reason, it is all the more expedient for you to pray every day, falling upon your knees both mornings and evenings, confessing your sins to God and asking His forgiveness, and thanking Him for blessings received.…
If anyone wrongs you, bear it patiently. For if you take the wrong to heart or become angry, you hurt no one but yourself and are only doing what your enemy would like for you to do, giving him the satisfaction of seeing how annoyed you are. But if you can be patient, God will in His good time judge rightly and bring your innocence to light.…
If other people praise you for some virtue, humble yourself. But do not praise yourself, for that is the way of fools who seek vain glory. In all your dealings be honest—that will be reward enough and others will praise you.…
In suffering be patient, and silence your heart under the mighty hand of God with these meditations: first, that it is God’s hand that chastens you; second, that it is for your benefit; third, that He will ease the burden; fourth, He will give you strength to endure; and fifth, He will deliver you from affliction in due time.…
Think that for every idle word you speak you must give account thereof in the day of judgment (Matthew 12:36). “In the multitude of words, there wanteth not sin” (Proverbs 10:19). So try to avoid idle talk and let your speech be deliberate, of few words, and truthful. Consider beforehand if what you are about to say is worth saying. Practice saying much in few words. Never state anything as true and authentic if you do not know for certain that it is so, and rather remain silent than to say something which may be false or otherwise of no value.…
Do not make
fun of another’s weaknesses, but think of your own shortcomings (Galatians 6). We all have our faults and there is no one of whom it is not said, “Oh, if only this were not!” Either we are, or have been, or can become what another is. For this reason, have patience and sympathy with your neighbor’s weakness and frailty.…
Everyone most certainly needs correction at times. For as the eye sees all and seeks the improvement of all yet cannot see itself or better itself, so by our very natures we are partial to ourselves and cannot see our own shortcomings and defects as easily as we can see those of other people. For this reason it is very needful that our faults be pointed out to us—which others can see so much more clearly than we ourselves can see them.…
Resist with all strength of soul your bosom sin, or that sin to which your nature is inclined more than to all other sins. For one person this may be to seek the honor of men, for another a greed for money, a third may tend to drunkenness, a fourth to impurity, a fifth to pride. Against these evil sins you must above all arm yourself and resist them, for once these are overcome you can also easily master others. As a fowler can hold a bird by one leg, in the same way wily Satan can possess your soul and keep it in his control by means of a single sin just as well as by many.…
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