Published August 4, 1999
The Amish culture seems to be frozen in time. Identified by their separatist dress, speech, and horse drawn buggies, the Amish are a nostalgic living history reminder of a simpler life and a popular attraction for curious tourists.
Let’s inspect the Amish, without their rapid communication or mechanization, but sustained by faith and reliance upon cottage industry and agriculture. For 300 years they have retreated into isolation from the advancing modern world around them.
The perception of Amish as shrewd businessmen conforms well with images of frontier trappers and traders on the fringes of society having carved a business niche in the wilderness by their wits and cunning. The Amish identity is evolving.
The Amish exist not on the fringes of American culture physically or symbolically. The non-Amish outsider regularly interact and purchases goods from real Amish in the same neighborhoods.
Amish, named after their leader Jakob Ammann, are the direct descendants of the Swiss Anabaptists, divided at the close of the 17th Century. They believe in separation of believers from nonbelievers and exist today primarily in southeast Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other more eastern states.
Amish had been prevented from forming large community groupings in Europe because of land scarcity and general persecution. The Amish, moved from Switzerland to Pennsylvania in 1727. No people in Europe today bear the name of Amish.
Disputes over conformity to religious practices caused the division from their Mennonite brethren. Ammann’s followers were forbidden worshiping with, giving aid to or eating at the same table as those who had been banned.
Three specific norms of Amish practices are: the Meidung or shunning (avoidance) of excommunicated members; the excommunication of a woman who had admitted speaking a falsehood; and the belief that noble-hearted persons would be saved.
The Amish ceremonial community unites the families in a common sense of reality, reinforce society confidence, dispels anxieties, and disciplines the social organization. The rites of baptism, marriage, and ordination integrate personality with culture. Participation instills their own sense of order.
Amish non-conformity is outwardly distinguishable in their language, dress, and transportation. The Amish social framework is: the family basic unit of their society; the settlement cluster of geographical families; the district of 25-35 family congregation in the same locality; and affiliation cluster of congregations of spiritual fellowship within a settlement.
Commonly trilingual, the Amish speak Pennsylvania Dutch, High German, and English. Among themselves, Pennsylvania Dutch, the mother tongue of those born to Amish parents, is spoken; English for communicating with non-Amish people; and High German, reserved for rituals and preaching.
Amish choice of language is, by design, motivation for remaining within their fellowship and lessening the temptation to join more liberal churches, such as of the Mennonites from which they separated three centuries ago. The Amish sacredly maintain their protective language to further isolate themselves and for identity interaction with each other. English is only used in the outside world to transact commerce.
The progressive Mennonites, after Frisian religious leader Menno Simons (1492-1559), also practice simplicity of life, pacifism, and nonresistance. Contrary to the Amish, however, Mennonites employ modern farming practices and socially intermingle with modern cultures, although are communally separate.
The unfashionable Amish apparel may vary from one district to the next, but are all distinctively Amish. Dress, like language, symbolizes their separateness and identify to a social unity amongst themselves by the minimization of individual differences.
Dress styles are a shield against the approach of outsiders. All Amish men wear: hooks-and-eyes on Sunday coat and vest, trouser styles with a flap that buttons along the waist instead of fly-closings, wide-brimmed black felt hats, and long hair cut in bangs. Amish women wear organdy caps, uncut hair and solid colors, one-piece dresses from traditional patterns. Over the bodice is worn a triangular piece of cloth, white for unmarried and colored for married women.
More than any other symbol, the horse-drawn buggy is their most recognized identity symbol. The distinctive Amish buggy may be accessorized differently from each community: dashboards, whipsockets, roll-up side and rear curtains.
The Old Order Amish regard automobiles as a threat to their society, an easy method of leaving the farm. But the New liberalized Order, Beachy Amish for instance, are moving toward the Mennonites. They use cars, mechanical milkers, tractors and telephones. Maybe one day the Beachy Amish will surprise us by adapting to computers and the Internet, but no one seriously expects it.
The New Order emphasis Bible study for young adults, but the Old Order Amish do not, so not to invite challenging questions of the preacher’s teachings.
The Mennonites don’t attract tourism like the Amish. Although Mennonites sell good agriculture products, the Amish sell their quilts and store goods because they are Amish.