The Riddle of Amish Culture

by Donald B. Kraybill

  The typical age of baptism ranges from sixteen to the early twenties. Sixty percent join the church before they are twenty-one. Girls often join at a younger age than boys. Instruction classes during the five months preceding the ceremony place the stark implications of baptism before the candidates. During the first half hour of church services over the summer months, the novices meet with the ministers for instruction. The ministers and bishop review the eighteen articles of the Dordrecht Confession of Faith and emphasize selected aspects of the Ordnung.6 On the Saturday before the baptism, there is a special wrap-up session when candidates are given their last chance to turn back. Hostetler notes that “great emphasis is placed upon the difficulty of walking in the straight and narrow way. The applicants are told that it is better not to make a vow than to make a vow and later break it.”7 Young men are reminded that they are consenting to serve as leaders if ever called by the church.

  The baptismal rite follows two sermons during a regular Sunday morning service.8 After the final instruction class, the ministers will say, “Go take your seats with bowed heads.” The candidates sit in a bent posture, with a hand over the face, signaling their willingness to submit—to give themselves under the authority of the church. The deacon provides a small pail of water and a cup. The bishop tells the candidates to go on their knees “before the Most High and Almighty God and His church if you still think this is the right thing to do to obtain your salvation.” The candidates are then asked three questions:

  The young owner of this carriage will need to get rid of his stereo speakers and other frills before he is baptized.

  1. Can you renounce the devil, the world, and your own flesh and blood?

  2. Can you commit yourself to Christ and His church, and to abide by it and therein to live and to die?

  3. And in all the order (Ordnung) of the church, according to the word of the Lord, to be obedient and submissive to it and to help therein? (emphasis added)9

  The congregation stands for prayer while the applicants remain kneeling. Then the bishop lays his hands on the head of the first applicant. The deacon pours water into the bishop’s cupped hands and it drips over the candidate’s head. The bishop then extends his hand to each member as he or she rises and says, “May the Lord God, complete the good work which he has begun in you and strengthen and comfort you to a blessed end through Jesus Christ. Amen.” The bishop’s wife greets the young women with a “holy kiss,” and the bishop likewise greets the men and wishes them peace. In a concluding word, the bishop admonishes the congregation to be obedient and invites other ministers to give a testimony of affirmation. The ritual of baptism places the new members into full fellowship, with all the rights and responsibilities of adult membership.10

  WORSHIP: A PLAIN LITURGY

  The worship service dramatically reenacts the Amish moral order. Social structure and beliefs coalesce in a sacred ritual that embodies the core meanings of Amish culture. The worship service imprints the “understandings” of the Ordnung in the collective consciousness. This redemptive ritual reminds members who they are as it ushers them into divine presence. With few props and scripts, the drama of worship reaffirms the symbolic universe of Amish culture.

  Each district holds services every other Sunday in the home of a member.11 Services begin early, with some members arriving by 8:00 a.m. Members either drive by horse and buggy or walk to the service. The prelude for the day is played out on the keyboard of country roads as the rhythmic clip-clop of hoofbeats converge on the meeting site. The three-hour service culminates in a light noon meal, followed by informal visiting throughout the afternoon. The local congregation swells in size as some friends and family from other districts join the service. Unlike some contemporary congregations where attendance is sporadic, everyone shows up and packs into several rooms of a member’s home, a basement, or a shop. It is not unusual for two hundred adults and children to squeeze into a house. Partitions between rooms are opened. Backless benches and folding chairs face the preacher in a central area. Benches, songbooks, and eating utensils are transported from home to home in a special wagon.

  The service is organized around unison singing and two sermons. The main sermon lasts about an hour. Illustrations are taken from the Bible, nature, and local events. Preachers follow a published lectionary of New Testament scriptures for the year, which appears in Appendix E. Sermons often include references to accounts of suffering in the Martyrs Mirror. Preachers remind members that they are pilgrims and strangers traveling in a different direction than the outside world. Obedience and humility are key themes in the service. Ministers urge members to obey the commandments of the Scripture, the vows of baptism, and those in authority over them. After reading the Scripture, the deacon may also admonish members to be obedient to the Lord. The following is the traditional order of the Sunday morning service:

  fellowship upon arrival

  silence in worship areas

  congregational singing (40 minutes)

  ministers meet in a separate room

  opening sermon (25–30 minutes)

  silent kneeling prayer

  scripture reading by deacon (members standing)

  main sermon (50–70 minutes)

  affirmations from other ministers and elders

  kneeling prayer is read from a prayer book

  benediction (members standing)

  closing hymn

  Members’ Meeting, as necessary

  fellowship meal

  visiting and fellowship12

  The Amish have no altar, organ, offering, church school, ushers, professional pastors, printed liturgy, pulpit, cross, candles, steeples, robes, flowers, choirs, or handbells. Contemporary props of worship are completely absent. Plain people gather in a plain house and worship in simplicity. A traditional, unwritten “liturgy” regulates each moment of the service. The ceremony symbolizes the core values of Amish society.

  Following the last hymn, a brief Members’ Meeting may be held to discuss mutual aid, to discipline a member, or to announce plans for district activities. A light lunch with a traditional menu follows the service.13 The modest meal has the character of a fellowship gathering rather than a large feast. In the afternoon visiting cliques emerge around age and gender, but for the most part, the day is a common experience. From beginning to end, the worship symbolizes waiting, unity, and humility; it is a ritualistic reenactment of Gelassenheit.

  Gender, age, and leadership roles shape the worship in several ways. Men and women enter the house by separate doors and sit in separate areas. Women do not lead any aspect of the worship, but after the service they prepare and serve the meal. They eat at separate tables from the men and are responsible for cleaning up. Age characteristics are pronounced in the ordering of social behavior. The eldest members enter the house and worship areas first, followed by others in roughly descending age. Seating in the worship areas is dictated by age and gender, with spaces designated for older and younger members.

  One enters the worship area as a man or woman, not as a family member or an individual. One is accountable to the church, expected to behave and dress according to the patterns for a particular role—young woman, older man, and minister. By dividing families in the seating area, the church symbolizes its authority not only over the individual but over the family as well.

  Leadership status is also visible. The ministers take their seats in the “ministers’ row.” The adult men shake hands with the ministers outside as they assemble or as they find seats in the house. Women may shake hands with the ministers in the kitchen or as they enter the worship area. The handshake, often without words, is an act of deference to the ministers’ authority and a reaffirmation of good standing in the fellowship.

  As the young unmarried men enter the house, the older men, who are already seated, take off their hats. The young men walk by the ministers’ row and shake their hands in an act of deference as well. As the first song begins, the ministers take off their hats in one
sweeping action. On the first word of the third line of the first song, the ordained leaders take their hats and walk to another room in the house to counsel together and select the preacher of the morning. After meeting for thirty minutes, they return during the last verse of the second hymn, hanging their hats on the wall which signals that the worship is about to begin. Ordained men are the only ones who stand or speak in the service. Afterward, they sit at the table that is served first.

  The cultural values embedded in the ritual structure stun modern consciousness. The entire service creates a radically different world—a world of waiting. There are no traces of rushing. The day of worship stretches from 8:00 a.m. to about 3:00 p.m. The extremely slow tempo of singing ushers in a different temporal order. One song may stretch over twenty minutes. In a rising and falling chant, each word expands into a miniature verse in itself. The congregation sings from the Ausbund—a hymnal with only printed words.14 Many of the Ausbund hymns were written by persecuted Anabaptists in the sixteenth century. The ancient tunes, learned by memory, are sung in chant-like unison without any rhythm. The slow and methodic chant-like cadence reflects a sixteenth-century medieval world in image and mood.

  A song leader sits among the congregation. In a spirit of humility, he is selected on the spot. A member described the selection process: “You’ll see men whispering, ‘You do it, you do it,’ until someone finally goes ahead and does it.” The leader sings the first syllable of each line and then the congregation joins in the second one.

  The lengthy service is conducted without coffee breaks, worship aids, or special music. Very young children sleep, wander among the aisles, or occasionally munch crackers. Four- and five-year-olds sit patiently on backless benches and on the laps of their parents. The service trains children in the quiet discipline of waiting. It is a lesson in Gelassenheit—waiting and yielding to time, parents, community, and God.

  The grammar of the worship incorporates humility and submission. It would be considered pretentious for a minister to prepare a written sermon or even bring a polished outline. Ministers do not know who will preach the morning sermon until they meet while the congregation sings the first hymn. If a visiting minister is present, he will likely be asked to preach. The preacher is chosen by a consensus of the ordained leaders while the congregation is singing. The spontaneous selection preempts any pretensions of pride. As he begins his sermon a few minutes later, the preacher reminds the congregation that he is a servant of God ministering to them in his “weakness.”

  The rite of humility is described by one member: “The one who has the main sermon will often begin by saying, ‘I’m not qualified to preach, but I preach because God called me to preach. I wish that someone else, a visiting minister, or someone who would be more capable of delivering the sermon, would preach but because that’s not the case, I will give myself up to be used by God to preach the sermon today’” (emphasis added). The member continued: “I never cease to be amazed how they can get up and preach for a whole hour without referring to notes or their closed Bible.” In a ritual enactment of humility that downplays individualism, preachers and audience rarely look directly at one another. By yielding in humility to others and giving himself up in front of the congregation, the preacher reenacts the essence of Gelassenheit.

  The congregation kneels twice in prayer. The first prayer, a silent one, follows the opening sermon and lasts several minutes. The entire congregation waits on God quietly, in humility, on their knees on a hard floor. The Amish believe that it would be preposterous for someone to offer a spontaneous prayer. It is better to wait together in silence. The congregation kneels a second time near the end of the service as the deacon reads a traditional prayer.

  Symbols of collective integration unite the ritual. Singing in unison prevents the showy display that accompanies solos, choirs, and musical performances. A praise song, the “Lob Lied,” is the second hymn in every service just before the sermon.15 Thus, on a given Sunday morning, all the congregations holding services across the settlement are singing the same song at roughly the same time, an experience one member described as giving a beautiful feeling of unity among the churches. From the elderly bishop to the youngest child, kneeling together in prayer and singing in unison create a shared sense of humility. Children are not shuttled off to church school, and adults are not given a chance to select a stimulating adult class. The common worship does not cater to special-interest or age groups. The specialization of modern life is simply not present. There is little individual expression in the service. One does not choose a special pew. Seating patterns are determined by age and sex, and one simply follows in line and fills in each bench. Ministers and a few elders give brief affirmations to the main sermon—in essence, endorsements of it. For the most part, the service is a common experience for old and young alike.

  Simplicity pervades the service, from backless benches to bare walls and black vests. The uniform dress code prevents ostentatious display. Members dress in full conformity with the Ordnung. Some young men may sport styled hair to show off their last months of independence before joining the church, but they also kneel in humility. Members dress appropriately for their age and sex because this is the sacred moment of the religious week when even the careless are careful to follow the Ordnung. The outward uniformity signals spiritual unity as the community gathers in the presence of God.

  Fitting some two hundred people into several large rooms or the basement of a house forces a physical closeness. Chairs and benches are packed tightly together. A young minister replayed the surprised reaction of visitors to the kneeling: “They said, ‘Everyone squats, bangs, crashes, and suddenly goes down, and where’s the kneeling pads?’ We don’t have them, you know, and it’s nothing to us because it’s our tradition.” Though viewed as confining by Moderns, the physical closeness symbolizes the unity of the tight-knit community, close to one another and close to God, in worship. For some, of course, the worship becomes an empty Sunday protocol. But for most, it is a redemptive heartbeat that reaffirms the community’s moral order twenty-six times a year.

  The continuity of Amish worship over the decades is striking. A description of an Amish service written more than a century ago is virtually identical to the format today.16 Members born at the turn of the twentieth century report few changes across the decades. “It might be a little shorter and the singing might be a little faster! The sermons are very similar. There has been very little change in the Scripture that is quoted. Each minister is different, but, as a whole, it’s the same meaning expressed in different words.” Indeed, the speed of the singing signals the extent of assimilation into the larger culture. High districts sing faster.17 As the geographical size of some districts shrank in the 1990s, their services began earlier because people had less distance to travel. Compared to other spheres of Amish life, the patterns of worship have remained largely unchanged.

  Hymn books and benches arranged in an Amish basement await a worship service.

  Sunday is a holy day and many things are sacralized. Work, unless required for the care of animals, is forbidden as is the use of money or any purchase. Carriages are used to attend church services; cars may be hired only if there is an emergency. Coats with hooks and eyes and dresses fastened with pins are worn to Sunday service. Even smoking is discouraged among the few men who do. One minister said, “Those who smoke should leave their tobacco at home. Who would think of carrying a loaf of bread to church and eating a slice of it in front of others?”

  COMMUNION: A UNIFYING EXPERIENCE

  Communion and the ordination of leaders are ritual high points that underscore the lowly values of Gelassenheit. The fall and spring communion services are rites of intensification. They revitalize personal commitment and fortify group cohesion within each district and throughout the settlement. A traditional sequence of events prepares the way for each fall and spring communion service: the Bishops’ Meeting, a congregational Counsel Meeting, the Ministers’ Meeting, a
nd finally holy communion.

  An all-day meeting of the bishops in September and March addresses controversial issues stirring in the community. Contentious issues, such as using voice mail, playing baseball in local leagues, playing golf, using computers, using harvesters, and troublesome youth, are discussed. If a consensus among the bishops emerges, it becomes embedded into the “understanding” of the Ordnung.

  Following the Bishops’ Meeting, a “preparatory,” or Counsel Meeting is held in local districts in conjunction with the regular worship service. This service of self-examination is held two weeks before communion. The sermon of the morning creates an emotional buildup to the counsel service, when members are asked to affirm the Ordnung, indicate peace with God, and express a desire to partake of communion. Sometimes the counsel service is a tense time when sin and worldliness are purged from the community. A member said: “Twice yearly, you know, they have their Bishops’ Meeting, and then they come back to the church and announce what’s up, you might say. Then the church, everybody, is given a voice to say ‘yes or no.’ And you can say, ‘No, I’m not agreed,’ but you’d better have good documentation, and that’s the way it should be.”

  The counsel sermon is often two and a halfhours long, signaling the meeting’s importance. Children and nonmembers usually are not present. The sermon traces the Old Testament story from Genesis to the conquest of the Promised Land. The pivotal moment is the defeat of Joshua’s army by the people of Ai. Amish ministers stress that hidden plunder had to be confessed and given up before Joshua’s army could proceed to victory. The sermon then turns to the New Testament and shows how the golden thread of the Bible leads to Christ. Ministers plead with the congregation to destroy the “old leaven” so the body can be healthy and grow. They stress that hidden sins of pride and disobedience, if not confessed, will, like the hidden sins of Israel at Ai, lead to the church’s defeat.