An Amish Paradox

by Charles E. Hurst

  Further complicating matters, over the next two years several sympathetic Old Order ministers began giving help to the new group. With the assistance of a visiting bishop, the new group held Communion in the spring and the fall of 1954 and eventually ordained a full slate of leaders. Such dramatic steps toward formalizing a church division led to an allcongregational ministers’ gathering on September 27, 1955, in Holmes County that produced the following report: “Much was brought up about the trouble in the Orrville church, which was pitiful. Seemingly several of these members didn’t want to go along with the others right anymore, but didn’t have any ministers on their side. Much was said of these how they didn’t mind the advices of other bishops and finally started gathering together themselves, reading and singing and so forth til finally other ministers came in and held church for them in their dissatisfied position.”25 The report also noted that disagreement over the issue of shunning had spread to other church districts in the area, forcing one bishop to move to another district because he “had much trouble and couldn’t keep house like he should while so much disunity and ill feeling were coming.”26

  For nearly thirty years after the split, the Andy Weaver and Old Order churches differed little in the adoption of technology, with a few exceptions, such as restrictions on gas lighting in the homes and storm fronts on the buggies. In the past twenty years, however, the technological gap between the Old Order and the Andy Weavers has widened, as the former adopted milking machines, tractors in the field, portable generators, hydraulic power, and balers. Moreover, the Andy Weavers have resisted the adoption of everyday household conveniences such as bicycles, power lawnmowers, garden tillers, and rental freezers. One other major restriction was imposed in the 1960s when members in one church district were allowing their sons to have cars at age sixteen and members in another district refused to sign for drivers’ licenses. The church leadership closed ranks and declared that parents who supported the purchase of cars by their children would be “set back” and refused Communion.27 Today, all Andy Weaver young people know that the high price they must pay if they buy a car includes leaving home.

  Because they share a strict interpretation of shunning, the Andy Weaver churches in Holmes County are in fellowship with the much more technologically progressive Old Order Amish in Lancaster County. This situation has been somewhat uncomfortable from the standpoint of the exchange of ministers at church services. It has also led the younger generation of Andy Weaver Amish in Holmes County to ask why they are in fellowship with the Old Order of Lancaster County if they cannot use similar technologies.28 However, the arrangement does illustrate that in this case rituals surrounding shunning rank higher on a hierarchy of values than choices about technology.

  The “Liberal” Amish: The New Order Schisms

  Church divisions in the Holmes County Settlement have not only given rise to the more conservative Andy Weaver and Swartzentruber branches but also to more progressive groups. Chief among these is the New Order affiliation, which split from the Old Order Amish in the 1960s. By 2009 there were eighteen New Order church districts in the Holmes County Settlement, primarily centered in Walnut Creek, Berlin, and Sugarcreek. The New Order Amish share many cultural practices with their Old Order counterparts, but they also differ in some important ways. The dress of both men and women is more colorful; the men have more neatly groomed hair and beards; their buggies have rubber tires, sliding doors, and other accessories; their homes have telephones; and they consider “balloon” (air-filled) tires on farm equipment acceptable. Unlike the “electric” New Order in other states and settlements, Ohio’s New Order Amish have retained the ban on electricity from the grid, though most church districts are comfortable with inverters and generators.29 Many New Order districts permit travel by plane, though none allow ownership of cars.

  An analysis of the New Order schism in Ohio reveals that material concerns were somewhat secondary to theological concerns in the eyes of those who led the revitalization movement. From the standpoint of the “lower” churches as well, the most radical innovations of the New Order had less to do with technology than with such practices as Sunday school and Bible study, both of which came to be seen as forms of “resistance” to the Old Order worldview. How and why did this happen?

  The sources of the New Order division can be traced back to the 1940s and 1950s, when growing numbers of ministers called for renewal of the spiritual pulse of the Old Order. These calls focused on two main areas. The first was the elimination of “questionable” practices such as tobacco use and bundling,30 for which most believed there was no scriptural basis. The early leaders of the movement felt strongly that young people should be within the standards of the church at all times and that it should not be permissible to break church rules during the rumspringa period. They argued that parents should closely monitor teenagers’ activities.

  A second concern was the promotion of spiritual awareness in the sense of a more evangelical understanding of salvation and outreach. The Old Order church teaches “the new birth,” but the way it understands religious commitment is quite different from teachings of religious groups that stress “individual liberation from sin more than submission to the corporate community of believers.”31 The early leaders of the New Order movement were critical of what they perceived as the unquestioning adherence to tradition among many Old Order Amish. One leader of the New Order split told us, “I’m ashamed for some of our community. Just because a person dresses Amish, that doesn’t mean he’s Christian.” The leaders of the New Order movement interpreted the New Testament as offering assurance of (not hope of) salvation, and they saw spiritual awareness as involving a subjective and vocal experience that found expression in mission work.32

  At the same time, the early leaders of this movement were skeptical of the “emotionalism” in Protestant evangelism and desired to balance the subjective experience with knowledge and with participation in the “brotherhood” of believers (i.e., the church). The hope was to find a “middle way” in which the Amish lifestyle was retained but with some important modifications.33 “There was a lot of emphasis when our group broke away,” noted one New Order businessman, “to try to maintain the technology and the lifestyle as close to the Old Order people as possible.” The new group wanted to retain a discipleship that could be seen and evaluated by the community while also emphasizing individual salvation and Christian outreach. As in other schisms, the leaders of the movement saw themselves as regaining an “old” position (held by Jakob Ammann and others) that had been lost over the years; consequently, they were not happy with the name New Order, though they have accepted it.34

  Precursors of the New Order split can be seen as early as 1944–45, when one young man, upon his ordination in the lower Walnut Creek district, threw his pipe into the stove and said, “That’s it for that!” Like some other members, he could not read or understand high German very well, and he and another minister “were burdened that the people should understand what was preached and taught.”35 They began meeting on “off” Sundays to read the Bible and sing. Later, in the 1950s, influential preachers such as George Brunk and David Miller began promoting missions and stressing the new birth and assurance of salvation. A New Order deacon reflected on the influence of the latter minister, known as “Oklahoma Dave”: “Oh, he was such a good speaker, he just drew everybody’s attention. See, he knew the plan of salvation. One evening they decided they’ll have a meeting for the young people, and I think there was over 1000 people there. Lots of young people came to him and said, ‘What can we do? We are convinced to do something and our church doesn’t support it.’ So that’s where someone got the idea.” The “idea” to which this deacon referred was the convening of meetings for the explicit purpose of Bible study. A potential challenge to the church hierarchy, “fellowship meetings” were nevertheless held occasionally in Amish homes in the ensuing years. Ervin Gingerich organized the meetings, where the Holy Kiss was used, for the first
time ever, as a greeting regardless of age.36

  By the late 1950s, Bible studies for the young people, or “youth meetings,” had become fairly regular, and by the mid-1960s, they were “the primary point of contention,” causing conflict in every congregation that had supporters.37 Youth meetings had become symbolic of broader doctrinal disagreements, but even those who were sympathetic to the youth meetings often differed on the emphasis. One group in the 1960s, for example, accepted youth meetings and stressed strict courtship and nonuse of tobacco and alcohol but was uncomfortable with mission activism and emotional preaching. During this time, it was not uncommon for ordained leaders who supported these activities to be barred from preaching in some districts; and young people who attended the youth meetings were denied baptisms or weddings in some churches.

  The first New Order congregation split in 1966–67 when minister Levi Troyer and his brother Noah, a deacon, supported the practice of greeting with the Holy Kiss among younger members during an official church service. Many in their congregation, including the bishop, balked at this practice. A mediating committee was summoned, but they “did not call Levi and Noah Troyer’s position and activities wrong.”38 Still, the local bishops requested that the Troyers not take Communion, whereupon they solicited the help of a sympathetic bishop, Wallace Byler, in Hartville, Ohio. What finally precipitated the split was a letter Byler received from nine of the oldest Old Order bishops asking him not to support the Troyers. After the first official rupture occurred, several other congregations split in the ensuing years. As New Order church districts became more established, they institutionalized Sunday school, a testimony to the New Order desire to be “much more intentional in discussing and disseminating their religious convictions, both to members and to outsiders.”39

  A related debate over the emphasis on “church teaching to eliminate undesirable behavior” versus “church sanctions to eliminate undesirable behavior” was at the core of another schism two decades later that produced a small group of five church districts known as the New Order Christian Fellowship, or more commonly the New New Order. The historical context of this split traces to a growing realization in the late 1970s among the New Order Amish that approximately half of their young people were leaving the Amish. Even though most of the defectors were joining Plain churches, some New Order leaders decided they had “gone too far” toward emotionalism and needed to “back up” a little bit to find the proper balance between faith and works. But other individuals interpreted this reconsidered emphasis on the value of the brotherhood of the church as a return to the “Old Order mentality.”40

  The catalyst for the split came when deacon Aden Yoder and minister Alvin Beachy began focusing on each other’s doctrinal differences. If salvation rested on one’s individual relationship with God, Yoder argued, the church had no right to compel its members to follow rules. According to one former member, Yoder’s belief was that “the church should not excommunicate, period!” Yoder’s home bishop and others disagreed, likening Yoder’s approach to a parent who threatens to spank and threatens to spank, but never spanks. Apart from the bully pulpit, ordained leaders would have little control over the behavior of members of their congregations. In the end, Yoder and his followers walked out of church while the rest of the congregation pleaded for him to reconsider. The birth of the New Order Christian Fellowship, then, occurred when a deacon who thought of himself a visionary espoused ideas that were doctrinally unacceptable to others in his church. Personality conflicts then brought both sides to a crossroads, at which point they chose to part. One member who spent time in both affiliations reflected, “The main reason for the split was differing views of the role of the church in the believer’s religious experience.” He paused and then added, “But personal differences between the two men also played a dramatic role.”

  Today the New Order Christian Fellowship accepts a wider range of technology and an even more subjective religious experience than the New Order. Church Ordnung typically allows cell phones, computers, and electricity. Dress patterns are closer to those of the non-Amish. Owning cars, however, is still off limits, a key prohibition that distinguishes this group from the Beachy Amish. In spite of their liberalism (or more likely, because of it), the New New Order has struggled to retain its young people. As of 2005, the retention rate was only 46 percent.41 Concern about the lack of church discipline and the fate of the young people has led some families to return to the New Order, and some New New Order leaders now admit that more church discipline is needed than Yoder originally advocated.

  Nevertheless, the continued viability of the New Order Amish and, to a lesser degree, the New New Order illustrates that calls for renewal can be incorporated, at least to an extent, into the Amish framework.42 That the New Order Amish are more restrictive than the Old Order Amish on courtship, smoking, and alcohol also stands as an important reminder that placing Amish affiliations on a single conservative-liberal axis is overly simplistic.43 In this respect, the influence of the New Order Amish on Old Order thinking has been considerable, far greater than would be expected from the relatively small size of this affiliation.

  The View from the Center: The Old Order Amish

  Through all of these challenges to the viability of the main trunk of the church, the Old Order Amish have not only persisted but prospered. While other groups usually carry the names of their bishops, the main body has been known as the Old Order ever since the historic split in the 1850s to 1860s. The name implies that they are guardians of the “old ways,” but the Old Order in the Holmes County Settlement have made numerous compromises with technology. They adopted daylight savings time in the 1960s to accommodate the needs of factories, and their acceptance of new shop and household technologies has proceeded at a steady pace. With the exception of more conservative dress, fewer buggy accessories, and no phones in the house, the differences in technology use between the Old Order and the New Order are relatively minor. In fact, Amish of the Old Order are more likely to use cell phones and to let their young people own automobiles before baptism than are the New Order Amish. “I have 15 Old Order customers,” noted one New Order lumber company owner, “and I can call every one of them by cell phone.”

  Head coverings vary considerably by gender, age, and affiliation. Shown here are hats worn by Swartzentruber (the middle three), Andy Weaver (the one on the right), and Old Order (the two on the left) Amish. Photograph by Doyle Yoder.

  Even though groups on both the conservative and the progressive ends of the Amish spectrum have broken away, the practices sanctioned by the Old Order Ordnung vary in important ways across the Holmes County Settlement. Examining Old Order responses to the schisms described above reveals this diversity as well as the ways in which status rivalries continue to mark relations between the main body and the various branches.

  Looking “up” the Anabaptist escalator, the Old Order Amish have generally viewed the New Order with a mixture of consternation and admiration. On the one hand, Old Order Amish are generally not comfortable with the self-conscious theology of the New Order group. An Old Order businessman explained: “You couldn’t get the average Old Order man out on the street to give you a strong faith story. They live it easier than they tell it.” Many Old Order Amish also see New Order assurance of salvation as a “misguided human attempt to speak for God.” Furthermore, most Old Order Amish resent New Order criticism of the Old Order approach to life. An Old Order factory worker remarked: “You know, there’s this thing where some Amish will say they’ve found Christ—and then all of a sudden they condemn the group that they’ve been with. To us it seems like they’re just trying to justify themselves.” They believe that such a “holier-than-thou” attitude flies in the face of the biblical injunction that “he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved” (Mark 13:13), which many Old Order members still view as a guiding framework for their lives.

  The most common Old Order criticism is that New Order church districts as a
whole are unstable because their young people are more likely to be lost to other Anabaptist churches. In this respect, Old Order members often wonder if the New Order “talk of spirituality” is simply a cover for their desire to acquire the “material trappings permitted in the more liberal groups.”44

  Importantly, however, a sizable number of Old Order individuals, including church leaders, are quite attracted to the New Order positions on both spirituality and control of the youth. It is no longer uncommon to find Old Order ministers who focus on the New Testament and “the new birth” in their sermons or Old Order parents who take a proactive stance in restricting the activities of their teenagers. One of the founders of the New Order church commented, “When we started the New Order, everybody was against us, you know, they didn’t appreciate that at all. After about 30 years, they are changing their minds, little by little.” A New Order businessman concurred: “Young Old Order ministers today agree with the New Order on 95 percent of issues, but that was not true in the 1970s and 1980s.”