An Amish Paradox

by Charles E. Hurst

  11. Weaver, “Glimpses of the Amish Church,” 10.

  12. Ammann, who was known for his strong opinions and quick temper, supported more frequent communions (twice a year) and social avoidance. He shocked many by unilaterally placing a number of ministers under the ban and then dramatically walking out on a meeting that had been called to make peace. See Nolt, A History of the Amish, 31–40.

  13. Kline and Beachy, “History and Dynamics,” 1.

  14. Luthy finds that Yoder’s death certificate listed “apoplexy” (stroke) as the principal cause, that his obituary in the Sugarcreek (Ohio) Budget referred to “stroke of paralysis,” and that a letter was written by Old Order deacon John Y. Schlabach and signed by John E. Yoder as a rebuttal to the persistent suicide rumors (“The Swartzentruber Amish,” 20).

  15. Luthy notes that over the years other families joined the Swartzentrubers, leading to a combined total of twenty Swartzentruber surnames in 1998: Byler, Gingerich, Glick, Hershberger, Hostetler, Keim, Lehman, Mast, Miller, Petersheim, Schrock, Shetler, Slabaugh, Stutzman, Swartzentruber, Troyer, Weaver, Wengerd, Yoder, and Zook (ibid.).

  16. According to one New Order bishop familiar with the dispute, the decisive issue in this case had to do with courtship practices and the difficulty of pleasing a particular bishop when young people wanted to get baptized. Today most of the Troyer Amish have moved out of the Holmes County Settlement, though there is still one church district remaining. The outward differences between the Troyers and the Swartzentrubers are visible only to the trained eye. For instance, the Troyer buggies are allowed to have a water-repellant cloth, a kind of rubberized sheet, that snaps to the posts on the side of the buggy’s windshield to protect the occupants from rain. One Old Order Amish woman reports that she often sees this sheet snapped up on one side of the Troyer buggies even on sunny days, as a signal to other Amish that they are not Swartzentrubers. The Troyer Amish also now use the slow-moving-vehicle triangle on their buggies.

  17. According to knowledgeable insiders, the source of the split revolved around Tobe Hochstetler himself, who had been accused of dishonesty in a business dealing. The matter came to a vote in the church to relieve him of his ministerial duties for a while, but because the case was not clear-cut, the vote was not unanimous. Nevertheless, the Troyer church took the very unusual step of proceeding on the issue without a unanimous church vote. In the wake of this action, Hochstetler, with support mostly from his extended family, decided to withdraw. Beyond using distinctive royal blue curtains in their windows, the Tobe have exhibited an interesting blend of conservative and progressive practices that defy easy categorization on the Anabaptist escalator. They tolerated tobacco, for example, but adopted some technological innovations. The Tobe church, however, encountered difficulties because it had so few congregations that the young people were having trouble finding marriage partners who were not closely related. A common joke among other Amish was that all Tobe Amish looked alike, as there were only five or six extended families represented in their affiliation. Ultimately, the Tobe group decided to return to fellowship with the Old Order, though they have retained distinctive patterns of dress and buggy design.

  18. The relative isolation of both splinter groups probably drew these unusual bedfellows together.

  19. In reference to “acting out” by some Swartzentruber youth in the Holmes County Settlement, for example, one bishop famously stated, “Things like that don’t happen in Lodi!”

  20. Part of this story is recounted in Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 100. The rest of the account has been pieced together through interviews with Old Order Amish who work with Swartzentrubers, ex-Swartzentrubers who left before baptism, and ex-Swartzentrubers who were members of the church during the incident but later left.

  21. In addition, Andy Weaver was able to recruit members of the Dan Wengerd faction, which initially joined the Swartzentrubers but later split with Sam Yoder and rejoined the Old Order.

  22. Quoted in “Events That Took Place in the Old Order Amish Churches of Holmes and Wayne County, Ohio, from 1938 to 1958,” translated by Peter Yoder in January 1973 and available at the Amish Historical Library in Aylmer, Ontario.

  23. In any church dispute, a key distinction for the Amish is whether an ordained leader joins the dissatisfied group. If one does, then a formal church schism becomes a real possibility. If no ordained leader is part of the group, then the matter involves the excommunication of individual church members.

  24. “Events That Took Place,” 7.

  25. Ibid.,11.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Kraybill, “Plotting Social Change,” 56.

  28. The discrepancy is especially great with respect to the church districts in the northern part of the Lancaster County Settlement, which are more progressive than those in the southern half, even though all are in fellowship under the Old Order label.

  29. For a detailed discussion of the differences between the “electric” New Order of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and the “nonelectric” New Order of Holmes County, Ohio, see Waldrep, “The New Order Amish.”

  30. Bundling, or bed courtship, is the English rendition of a Pennsylvania Dutch term that literally means “unmarried sleeping together” (Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 188).

  31. Hostetler, Amish Society, 306.

  32. Waldrep, “The New Order Amish,” 407. In 1978 the New Order founded Iron Curtain Ministries to pursue mission work in Eastern Europe.

  33. Ibid., 402.

  34. Kline and Beachy, “History and Dynamics,” 8. Waldrep (“The New Order Amish”) notes that at first the terms “Youth Group Amish” and “Levi R. Troyer people” were informally used in the Holmes County Settlement. He also states that according to Amish historian David Luthy, the term “New Order Amish” entered Holmes County through Stephen Scott, a young seeker present in the mid-1960s, who adapted John Hostetler’s use of the term to describe the “car” Amish.

  35. Kline and Beachy, “History and Dynamics,” 9.

  36. Ibid. Extending the Holy Kiss to younger members marked a significant departure from the custom that only ordained leaders and elders greeted each other in this way.

  37. Ibid., 12.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 33. But one indication of just how deep the controversy goes is that there remains one New Order district in the Holmes County Settlement that does not have Sunday school. The bishop of the district explained to us that he believes there is no place in the Bible where Jesus separated people for religious teaching, though some in his congregation disagree.

  40. This interpretation was related to us by several New Order individuals who were intimately involved in both the New Order and the New New Order splits.

  41. Waldrep, “The New Order Amish,” 423.

  42. Waldrep argues that the New Order movement is best characterized as an unsteady compromise between Amish traditionalism and mainstream evangelicalism rather than as a genuine spiritual renewal that recaptures what was lost by the wayside (ibid., 422).

  43. Even the labels progressive and conservative can be interpreted in different ways, however. Some would argue that allowing smoking (a practice common among the more “conservative” Swartzentruber and Andy Weaver groups) is actually more “progressive” because it is less churchly and is an expression of greater individual freedom.

  44. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 37.

  45. Byler, “The Geography of Difference,” 1.

  46. In addition to using the English abbreviation “Swartzie,” Old Order Amish sometimes refer to the Swartzentruber Amish with a disparaging Pennsylvania Dutch term: gnuddel vullahs, or wooly lumps, because of the lumps of manure, dirt, and grime that adhere to their untrimmed beards when they milk cows by hand.

  47. Kidder and Hostetler (“Managing Ideologies,” 895) used the term “legal informalism” to describe Amish responses to conflict that are not rule-bound or defined in terms of rights, although they focused mainly on Amish respons
es to conflict with the non-Amish.

  48. Hostetler, Amish Society, 48.

  Chapter 3. Coping with Church Schism

  1. Benedict, book review of On the Backroad to Heaven, 104.

  2. Nolt, “The Amish ‘Mission Movement,’” 17. Maniaci himself was a convert to Mennonitism who took a keen interest in encouraging Amish evangelism.

  3. Ibid., 21.

  4. The editor of the newsletter, Harvey Graber, was an Old Order church member who challenged Amish custom by attending Eastern Mennonite College (ibid., 23).

  5. Ibid., 30.

  6. Stephen Scott, personal communication. One of the most famous local converts to the Amish was a Swedish man who fell in love with an Amish girl when he came to the county fair as part of Budweiser’s Clydesdale horse tour. Another local convert, Donald G. Beam, is described by Reiheld in “Donald G. Beam,” 241–49. Although Beam married and had children, he eventually left because he wanted to take a more active role in promoting environmental issues to the world than the Amish were comfortable with.

  7. Nolt, A History of the Amish, 315.

  8. See Sarah Skylark Bruce, “Mission of Understanding: Amish Take Teaching Tools to Old Colony Mennonites in Mexico,” Wooster (Ohio) Daily Record, May 31, 2006, A1.

  9. The differences in standard of living are similar to those faced by sixteen Amish families who moved to Honduras in 1967 and confronted the fact that they were considered wealthy by their neighbors. See Nolt, A History of the Amish, 312–14.

  10. Christian Aid Ministries 2006 Annual Report, Christian Aid Ministries, Berlin, OH.

  11. Ibid., 29.

  12. Many Holmes County Amish are quick to differentiate themselves from the Indiana Amish. One local historian and Amish parent noted that because Amish youth in Indiana can get a job in the mobile home plants for twenty dollars per hour as eighteen-year-olds, the drug and alcohol problem is worse than in Holmes County. “So when we hear that the Old Order Indiana Amish are coming, we think, ‘Oh dear!’” The Holmes County Settlement also does not have “gangs” of young people with names and symbols handed down over time, as is common in Lancaster County.

  13. Stevick provides a balanced and nuanced treatment of this diversity in Growing Up Amish.

  14. Kraybill, The Riddle of Amish Culture, 186.

  15. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 11–13.

  16. Matt Tullis, “Amish Man Sentenced for Selling Marijuana,” Wooster (Ohio) Daily Record, February 24, 2006, A1.

  17. The questions submitted included these: What should we do if we know somebody we think is on drugs? Would you comment on parents’ liability on hosting a party on your property? What is our responsibility if we know there are drugs in the workplace? Why does the government put pressure on tobacco but not alcohol? What are the things that show up when kids use drugs in secret? What effect does Copenhagen have? Are the drugs available in Holmes County made here? In what form is meth purchased?

  18. Meyers and Nolt, An Amish Patchwork, 52.

  19. The most comprehensive overview of Pennsylvania singings is found in Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 129–50.

  20. The most comprehensive and balanced treatment of bed courtship to date is ibid.

  21. Ibid., 194.

  22. The stipulations relating to “pure courtship” are from a four-page brief written by one Holmes County New Order district and quoted ibid., 184.

  23. Cooksey and Donnermeyer, “Go Forth and Multiply.” The general results of these authors’ analysis showed that for Amish women born between 1940 and 1969, 76 percent of all first births were conceived within the first year of marriage, 11 percent occurred either before marriage or within the first seven months of marriage (and therefore in all likelihood conceived before marriage); and 13 percent occurred in either the eighth or ninth month of marriage (some of these babies could also have been premaritally conceived). Also noteworthy is that the Andy Weaver and Old Order Amish show an increase in the percentage of conceptions that are premarital among women who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s when compared with women of the earlier generation.

  24. Waldrep, “The New Order Amish,” 423.

  25. Kraybill, “Plotting Social Change,” 73.

  26. Waldrep, “The New Order Amish,” 423. The New Order average is 73 percent if one church district with a very low retention rate is excluded from the analysis.

  27. The committee has divided Old Order church districts in the Holmes County Settlement into four geographic areas and schedules singings and other youth events separately for each of these areas.

  28. Richard Stevick, personal communication, March 25, 2008.

  29. In reality, the situation among the Old Order Amish is even more complex than a simple division between the Midways and other Old Order groups would suggest. One Old Order father described the 52 young people in his neighborhood (three church districts) as follows: 14 were “over-conformed kids” who went overboard in attending singings and “toeing the line”; 21 attended the singings on a regular basis but were not self-righteous about it; 6 dressed Amish but did not attend singings because their parents were against them; 7 owned vehicles and dressed English but were not full-blown partygoers; and 4 were “borderline” youth who drank heavily, partied, and flirted with breaking the law. In this man’s neighborhood, the majority of youth attended singings, but in other neighborhoods the majority of young people may not. “It varies wildly from neighborhood to neighborhood,” he concluded.

  30. The heavy drinking among some Amish youth typically does not carry over into adulthood if they join the Amish church; however, limited drinking in the privacy of one’s home is not uncommon among the more conservative Amish groups. In fact, some Amish make wine at home, and real wine is used in Communion services in every affiliation, because it is seen as far more symbolic of purity than grape juice.

  31. Asked how the Amish youth acquired alcohol, the officer replied, “There’d be English guys that they knew, usually it was the drivers, the ‘Amish haulers’ are what we call them. They’d make, you know, 100% profit because these Amish kids have money to burn so to pay 10 bucks for a six pack would be nothing to them. A lot of people made money supplying beer to these Amish kids.”

  32. Mackall, Plain Secrets, 84.

  33. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 192–93.

  34. Iannacconne, “Why Strict Churches Are Strong,” 1187.

  35. Stevick, Growing Up Amish, 52, notes that this difference extends to the decor of boys’ and girls’ bedrooms. Boys typically display sports gear, hunting trophies, or other souvenirs, while girls’ rooms are covered with cards, letters, photos, mementos, and furniture with a theme color.

  36. Reiling, “The ‘Simmie’ Side of Life,” 148.

  37. Meyers and Nolt, An Amish Patchwork, 81.

  38. For a while after the 1952 split, a couple could be married by bishops in either affiliation. However, eventually, the Andy Weaver bishops refused to sanction a marriage in which one of their members moved “up,” and this decision has had a powerful dampening effect on the frequency of such marriages.

  39. Kraybill, The Riddle of Amish Culture, 138. The rationale for shunning is contained in the Dordrecht Confession of Faith, which notes that if anyone has been expelled from the church, he must be avoided by all members of the church; “in short that we are to have nothing to do with him; so that we may not become defiled by intercourse with him and partakers of his sins, but that he may be made ashamed, be affected in his mind, convinced in his conscience, and thereby induced to amend his ways” (36).

  40. Perhaps the most noteworthy example is Ruth Irene Garrett’s Crossing Over, a tale of “escaping Amish repression,” to use the title of a Glamour magazine article based on the book. In Garrett’s eyes, the Amish are like a “cult”: the position of women is equated with “a subservient class,” the purpose of the cap on education at eight years is “to keep the Amish people in the dark,” and church rules are both “inflexible” and “stifling.” In a similar vei
n is Ottie Garrett’s True Stories of the X-Amish, a collection of anecdotal accounts by ex-Amish that conveys a very negative view of Amish society. David Yoder’s Web-based account of leaving the Swartzentruber Amish (www.amishdeception.com) and Chris Burkholder’s Amish Confidential, a confessional account of misdeeds by a bishop’s son, both contribute to the image of Amish society as riddled with abuse that is typically shielded from the public eye. All of these accounts convey the very negative message that an overemphasis on rules and conformity limits the freedom of Amish individuals, who are so brainwashed that they do not realize their own state of oppression, fear, or ignorance.

  41. When the ordained leaders make this final visit, they try to secure the individual’s consent to be placed in the ban. As one ex-Swartzentruber put it, “They really want your rights to put you in the ban.” For church leaders, this is a way of emphasizing that excommunication is the result of a sin that remains unconfessed. In practice, however, it is often difficult for church leaders to gain consent from the individual because of the breakdown in communication.