The Amish

by Donald B. Kraybill

  Virtually all Amish families have a garden planted with vegetables and often with ornamental flowers. Women, especially, take delight in gardening, arranging winter travel so as to be home at just the right time to start young plants indoors for transplanting outside later in the spring. “What adds more charm to an old farmhouse kitchen than a freshly cut garden bouquet?” one Amish woman asks. “There are always flowers to pick and cut, from spring’s daffodils to autumn’s chrysanthemums. … And they are a pleasure. But they have a deeper value. God created flowers, and he knew that people would need them.”37

  Nature is a source of inspiration and renewal for many Amish people because they believe that the closer they are to nature, the closer they are to God. Whether toiling in fields on sultry days, picking cherries, fishing, stargazing, or birding, they enjoy and marvel at the beauty of the created order.

  Members of a Kentucky Amish community chartered a bus for a sightseeing trip that included a stop at Lookout Mountain, which straddles the Tennessee-Georgia border. Stephanie A. Richer

  Birding is a popular intergenerational pastime. Some families, equipped with binoculars and bird guides, travel by van or bus to visit migratory sites. Likewise, some families enjoy camping, typically pitching tents on private land rather than in public campgrounds. Men and boys (and occasionally women and girls) who live near the Chesapeake Bay, the Atlantic Ocean, or inland lakes and streams enjoy fishing. Other fishing enthusiasts converge on farm ponds or engage in winter ice fishing.

  Hunting, especially for deer, is a popular avocation. Although the Amish consider killing humans a sin, they have few qualms about shooting animals since they are harvesting them for food and protecting gardens and croplands.38 A West Virginia woman wrote about hearing “shots echoing and re-echoing through the hills” and added, “I rejoice whenever any get shot, but even if there’s just one left, it’ll get into my garden.” Venison is canned, frozen, and smoked for year-round use.39

  Hunting tales fill the letters submitted by correspondents to December issues of Amish newspapers and periodicals. “Corn husking is finished … now we are in the whitetail elimination mode,” reads a typical statement. Although hunting is usually a male pastime, some letters point to wider interest: “Three of our granddaughters each got a doe this year in the junior season. They are 12, 13 and 15.”

  Hunting, like other activities, varies by church affiliation and the dictates of the local Ordnung. While the most conservative groups hunt and fish locally and stocking the larder is enough to justify an enjoyable pastime, others go further afield, lured by big game trophies. Some hire outfitters to guide them on trips to the western Rockies. Outdoor sports shows draw Amish customers, who purchase guns, archery equipment, and other accessories. But hunters in traditional Amish groups forego expensive gear, and some have run afoul of state game laws for refusing to wear bright orange hunting vests, which they consider worldly.

  Plain Entertainment

  It is rare for Amish people of any sort to attend professional sporting events, although in some Indiana communities young people are regular fans at local public high school basketball games—even though the Amish themselves do not attend high school. When it comes to playing sports, volleyball is the game of choice for all but the most conservative Amish groups. Most view it as the perfect form of Amish athletics: it involves teamwork, cooperation, and a sizable number of players; both men and women can play with little training or expensive equipment. In the higher communities, youth enjoy baseball or basketball pickup games, and in some cases they form teams that are part of organized civic leagues. Sledding and ice skating are favorite pastimes everywhere, and in some communities, ice hockey on a frozen pond. Amish teens and unmarried young adults in more liberal groups also engage in snowmobiling and water skiing.

  Few Amish families speak of taking vacations, but some members of liberal groups plan trips that mix recreation with business or family activities. Amish newspapers are replete with accounts of interstate trips by van loads of visitors attending weddings, funerals, or family reunions in other settlements. Such excursions can offer relaxation and opportunities to sightsee along the way.

  Although visiting other settlements is quite common, some Amish people also travel to tourist destinations. For example, two or three households may hire a van and driver to take them to see a national park or historic sites on their way to visit, say, an Amish settlement in Colorado or Montana. Some bus operators, in consultation with Amish customers, develop multiday bus tours of scenic areas. Occasionally, Amish people join a commercial bus tour with non-Amish travelers. A few families living on the East Coast take their children to Washington, D.C., to tour the government buildings and visit museums with an eye to education. An Amish man reflecting on a tour of the Holocaust Memorial Museum noted, “It was a profound and moving experience. … While we want to appreciate any respite from persecution we get, may we never become the persecutors.”40

  Whether fishing, hosting a community event, or stopping at a state park on the way home from a cousin’s wedding, Amish recreation typically reflects the Amish way—collective, informal, simple, participatory, and close to nature.

  Reading and Writing

  Unconnected to the Internet and without television or video games, many Amish people find joy and pleasure in reading and writing, especially during the slower winter season. In all but the lowest groups, families frequent public libraries. For example, according to staff estimates, Amish people “make up 90 percent of the Geauga County [Ohio] bookmobile patrons.”41 Many households also buy books from the more than one hundred Amish bookstores scattered across the country. Popular titles include biographies, histories, books about nature or travel, and, for children, the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. At least one Amish bookstore in Pennsylvania stocks juvenile books from the American Girl series that have rural settings. Some young women also read Amish-themed romance novels. Karen Kingsbury and Francine Rivers are frequently named authors, as are Janette Oke and evangelical nonfiction writers such as Max Lucado. In general, the church discourages mainstream fiction because of its overt sexual themes, violence, and general portrayal of worldly lifestyles. Many families read local newspapers, trade magazines, and birding, hunting, and fishing magazines, as well as Amish periodicals.42

  In addition to reading, the Amish practice another old-fashioned art form: writing with pen and paper. Adults and children write letters, cards, and topical essays. Hundreds of “scribes” send reports of community activities to weekly and monthly Amish periodicals. The number of poets writing for Amish publications has increased dramatically in recent years. In the magazine Family Life, for example, the yearly number of poems increased from 19 to 90 between 1989 and 2009. The editors noted that “20 years ago there were relatively few poem writers among our people. … During the two decades since 1989, a large number of younger and very talented poem writers have come onto the scene. The quality of the poems has kept pace right along with the increase in quantity.”43 In some communities writing poetry or stories is a culturally acceptable form of public self-expression, while in more conservative circles, where Gelassenheit permeates more deeply, poems and stories are shared only among family members.

  Art and Crafts

  The values of humility and simplicity shape Amish approaches to home décor and artistry. Purely decorative artwork is frowned upon because it lacks a practical use. Colorful wall calendars, embroidered family registers, and genealogical charts are more likely to hang on Amish walls because these support family life. Practical expressions of creativity include colorful quilt patterns, attractive flower gardens, and artistic lettering in Bibles as well as sturdy toys, dolls, crafts, and furniture designs. Among change-minded groups, schoolroom walls often display pupils’ artwork and feature colorful bulletin boards created by Amish teachers.

  Many people enjoy making crafts as gifts for family members or to sell to neighbors and tourists. In some communities, older artistic constraints
eroded in the 1990s with the rapid rise of tourist markets. Among more conservative Amish groups, however, craft production is still strictly controlled by the Ordnung. For example, some affiliations limit the production of dolls to the tourist market and stipulate that they not have facial features so as to avoid any semblance of a human visage.

  Even among the more progressive groups, art that exalts the individual artist is generally unwelcome, although the Amish have historically accepted a handful of folk artists who worked within the cultural boundaries.44 Susie Riehl, for example, is a self-trained Pennsylvania artist whose works of nature scenes and Amish life devoid of people sell for more than $3,000.45 Public art shows that call attention to the artist are generally not allowed because they would cultivate pride. One artist explained, “It’s okay to paint milk cans, but not to display your work at art shows.” The longstanding emphasis on practicality is being eroded in some areas by tourist markets and technology. For example, one man in a liberal group creates and sells digital art.46 Churches have sometimes granted artists with physical disabilities special freedom to display and market their work because such sales are one means by which disabled persons can support themselves financially.

  The Shrinking Edges of Gelassenheit

  Gelassenheit remains the deep taproot that nourishes the Amish way, but some of its influence is waning in more liberal groups. Although Amish people have resisted the pressures of individualism and remain accountable to their local Gmay, the extent of that submission is undergoing change in some communities. More openness to individual recognition, for example, is evident in higher groups.

  Increased public recognition of individuals includes the use of full names on business cards, listings in public telephone books, and published materials. In the mid-twentieth century, virtually all Amish authors wrote anonymously, refusing to claim personal credit for their ideas or to call too much attention to themselves. Some authors used only their initials, and others included their name but only on an inside title page, not on the book’s cover. A growing number of Amish authors now reveal their names. Most of the correspondents reporting activities from their communities in Amish publications sign their names, as do authors writing for other Amish periodicals.

  Some Amish authors also use their name in public media. Elizabeth Coblenz (1936–2002) of Geneva, Indiana, began writing “The Amish Cook,” a syndicated newspaper column, in 1991. Her essays blended recipes with vignettes of daily Amish life and were carried by over one hundred mainstream newspapers. Although she wrote under her own name, she would not appear in photographs or on television or allow her voice to be taped for radio. After her death, her daughter Lovina Eicher continued the column.47 Linda Byler, also writing under her real name, has authored a popular series of Amish romance novels, including Running Around (and Such), When Strawberries Bloom, and Big Decisions.48

  The very presence of such cultural negotiation points to the fact that the foundations of the Amish way continue to resist the pervasive pressures of liquid modernity. The values we have examined—obedience, humility, plainness, and simplicity—may not seem like powerful engines of resistance against the forces that drive modernity, yet the way these sentiments quietly steer Amish life offers testament to their influence. The public symbols of Amish identity have provided a more visible form of resilience, as we show in the next chapter.

  CHAPTER 7

  SYMBOLS AND IDENTITY

  * * *

  Saloma Miller Furlong, who grew up Amish in Geauga County, Ohio, explains that Amish children at an early age “know that they are Amish and different from English people. The first things that identify them as different from the outside world are the obvious ones, such as plain clothing, traditional dialect, and riding in horse-drawn buggies. Everything about their way of life and their belief system shapes and reinforces this identity from the cradle to the grave—at least for the people who stay within the culture.” Even though she left Amish life as a young adult, Furlong says, “that feeling of being fundamentally different has not ever really left me. When I left, I had to ‘graft’ my Amish identity with my newfound mainstream American identity to become a ‘hybrid.’ There are some aspects of who I am that shall forever remain shaped by Amish culture.”

  * * *

  Mapping the Moral Geography

  Humans are social beings with attachments to tribes, ethnic groups, families, teams, friends, neighborhoods, and nations—some by birthright, some by intention. Each of our tribes has its symbols of identity that set it apart from others. National flags, corporate logos, sports jerseys, and job uniforms remind members and nonmembers alike who is on the team and who is not. And our teams, so to speak, have regulations about membership and rules for how to play the game. Amish teams have their own distinctive rules and garb that reflect their moral order. As Furlong’s words demonstrate, that moral order persistently reminds its members of who they are and how they should live.

  The Amish seek to create church-communities that will help members attain eternal life. “Heaven is our ultimate goal,” said a retired businessman. Two key assumptions guide the pursuit of this goal. First, the community must separate itself from the larger world and set guidelines so that individuals do not stray from the pathway to heaven. Second, symbols of separation and norms of conduct create a way of thinking and acting regarding right and wrong, good and bad. In this chapter we explore this Amish moral order and the distinctive symbols that mark its borders.

  Amish cultural norms prescribe how to act toward and think about moral objects—material items, ideas, and activities. Like other societies, the Amish distinguish between desirable or “clean” moral objects and forbidden or “dirty” ones. Boundaries and labels distinguish between things that purify the community and things that pollute it, between those that build it up and those that tear it down. This code of distinctions implies action toward the moral objects: whether you should use, do, or believe in them, or you should not.1

  For the Amish, moral objects fall into four distinct territories: desirable, forbidden, ambiguous, and neutral. Desirable moral objects fill a large landscape that we might call the vestibule of heaven. Here we find obedience, humility, gardening, reading, carpentry, bird watching, dishwashing, and hard work as well as belief in angels, Satan, and divine creation. These desirable beliefs and activities directly or indirectly aid the heaven-bound journey. Obedience to God, parents, and elders directly serves the ultimate goal of Amish life. By teaching children obedience and a healthy work ethic, dishwashing indirectly does the same. All good things, however, are not equally good. For example, while raising vegetables and raising children are both desirable, raising children counts for more. Although they are weighted differently, desirable moral objects for the Amish are those values, practices, and things that clearly contribute to one’s heavenward goal.

  The forbidden region includes things such as killing people, swearing oaths, adultery, pride, evolution, higher education, divorce, boasting, holding public office, owning a computer, and ordaining women as church leaders. Embracing any of these moral objects, the Amish believe, hinders the mission of their society. Pride signals individualism, which can disrupt communal harmony. Lipstick and any type of jewelry call attention to the self. Holding public office reveals disloyalty to God’s kingdom. Many desirable moral objects have a forbidden counterpart: divine creation versus evolution, humility versus pride, and carriages versus cars.

  Yet the Amish recognize that moral geography is not so simple that everything can be neatly sorted into categories of clean and sullied; they know that a vast territory exists where the line between virtue and vice is ambiguous. For example, it may be hard to predict the long-term moral consequences of something new. Or some members may want to lift an old taboo while others worry that doing so will be detrimental. A material item such as a fax machine may at once be dangerous and useful, so its use must be controlled. Because greater mobility could tear apart a close-knit community, the use
of cars must be restrained and their ownership prohibited.

  The showroom of an Amish furniture business near Arthur, Illinois, reflects the moral order of that community. Upscale furniture designed for suburban Chicago homes is manufactured with nonelectric machines. Skylights made by an Amish shop illuminate the showroom. Propane gas lamps in the ceiling provide light at night. Donald B. Kraybill

  It is also possible to “purify” some ambiguous things by adapting them—or, as one man put it, “Amishizing” them—so that they mesh with the moral order. Examples include replacing a tractor’s rubber tires with steel wheels or the electric motor on a sewing machine with an air motor, or stripping a computer of its Internet connection and video capacities. Morally messy things are also regulated by making a distinction between ownership and access. In some groups owning a riding mower is prohibited, but using one owned by an outside employer is permissible. The ambiguity of these moral objects is often a source of contention within and among Amish groups, at times leading to ecclesial divisions.