Plain and Simple

For those of you who were over-glitzed by the Oscars last Sunday, PBS had the perfect antidote with their premiere presentation of “The Amish”, on the “American Experience” series. Since the Amish won’t pose for photographs or allow for interviews on camera, viewers didn’t see them speaking, but many Amish were interviewed for the show, their voices heard over scenes of the countryside or Amish working at their daily chores. The program started out by stating that there are about 250,000 Amish living in the U.S. at this point and that some twenty million tourists visit Amish communities every year. We are certainly curious to understand something about them. The show focused mostly on current attitudes and lifestyle, but also presented some of the history.

They do see themselves in a line of Anabaptists, who were severely persecuted during the Protestant Reformation, some 2,000-3,000 being killed as heretics during the 16^th century. This sense of being a separated people, in our world but not part of it, still persists in their current attitudes.

Jakob Amman (1656-1730) a Swiss Mennonite leader believed that the Mennonites were drifting away from the original teachings of Menno Simmons. Amman favored stronger church discipline including the use of shunning, where members who are excommunicated from the church are socially excluded from the church and their families. The program raises this issue and its continued current practice in some of interviews.

The Amish began migrating to the U.S in the 18^th century moving to Berks and then Lancaster counties in Pennsylvania and landing on some of the richest farm land in the country. In the early years, their lifestyle was not so different from their neighbors in rural America, but with the advent of the industrial revolution and changing attitudes of the modern world, the Amish were challenged with how they were going to respond.

In 1910 they decided they wouldn’t have telephones in their homes, but could use public telephones. In the 1920’s they decided that they wouldn’t drive or own automobiles, but could ride in them as passengers. By the 1950’s they had opted not to get on to the electrical grid.

As the society was changing around them, they tried to hold their ground in their own way. And as individualism and competition became the way of life for most Americans, the Amish wanted to keep humility, cooperation and obedience as their core values. They didn’t see that technology was going to help them to preserve those values and so tried to keep it out of their lives.

By the 1920’s there were Americans who didn’t think that the Amish were going to survive because of their rejection of modern technology and there was a fair amount of negativity. But even by the 1930’s some of that was changing. American nostalgia for traditions such as the one-room school house and other “rural” values allowed for a more positive view of the group.

In the 1950’s and 60’s there was some controversy because the Amish were not sending their children to high school and in 1971 a Supreme Court case upheld the Amish position. Amish children go to school through the 8^th grade and then begin their working lives.

But now they are facing even more change, some fifty percent of the working Amish are not able to farm and work in “English” businesses and factories. How will this affect their desire to keep their “plain and simple” lifestyle? Only time will tell.