Amish

Amish farm in western Pennsylvania.

The Amish are a Christian people whose movement is descended directly from the Anabaptists of the Protestant Reformation of the early 16th century. In the early years of the 1700s, many of them emigrated from their homeland in Europe to take up farming in colonial Pennsylvania, in the present-day territory of the United States. From there, they spread to other areas of the U.S. and Canada and today number about 200,000 adherents, most of whom are concentrated in the states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana.

The Amish are divided into several major sub-groups all of which share the same basic precepts of simple living and adherence to the fundamental principles contained in the Schleitheim Articles, an early Anabaptist document which sets forth the concept of a "Christian brotherhood living in a viable community" (Hostetler, Amish Society, page 28). They are also united by their common ancestry, language, and culture. The major Amish groupings differ from one another in the details of how they implement their ideas concerning simple living, that is, how they live their lives and define their relationship to the rest of the world and to modern society, in particular, their relationship to modern technology.

It is this latter aspect of Amish life which has, more than anything else, fired the interest of the larger society around them. For, in stark contrast to that larger society, the Amish have steadfastly resisted the encroachments of modern conveniences and technology, eschewing even the most ubiquitous aspects of modern civilization, such as the automobile, electric appliances, and the computer. Instead, the Amish have retained many of the key elements of the past, including horse drawn vehicular transportation, horse-powered farming, and what seems to the society around them, an oddly anachronistic form of dress.

By standing as an almost singular exception to the reducing forces of the American "melting pot", the Amish have inspired reactions ranging from distrust and hostility to an idealized, Romantic notion of pastoral simplicity. In this latter connection, the Amish have become the centerpiece of a burgeoning tourist industry in those areas where they can be found, an industry which feeds upon and nourishes the Romantic image while at the same time it may subtley be undermining the very lifestyle they idealize.

The pressures towards conformity and modernity on the Amish emanating from the larger society around them will continue to exert themselves raising the question as to whether the Amish will be able to survive in the long run or whether they will eventually succumb to those pressures or be fundamentally changed by the process of dealing with them.

Origins and history

Although the Amish trace their spiritual origins back to the time of Christ, it is the Anabaptist movement of the early 16th century, which in turn grew out of the Protestant Reformation, to which we must look to find the roots of their actual social origins as a distinctive people. Throughout the 15th century, economic and social pressures which threatened the existing social order had been mounting. Adding to the pressures, dissatisfaction with the Roman Catholic Church and calls for widespread reform had surfaced in many forms and were given voice by a number of critics, including John Hus, John Wycliffe, and others. These forces came to a head, especially in regards to the Church, when Martin Luther, in 1517, posted his famous 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg, calling for broad reforms in the Church.

The Swiss Brethren and the Schleitheim Articles

Most of the early Protestant reformers favored the institution of an official, state religion under the auspices of a Reformed Church which was intended as a replacement for the Roman Catholic Church. In such an approach, the church would be territorially defined in conjunction with a temporal power. This was the case in Zurich, in present day Switzerland, where a Reform Church led by Huldrych Zwingli was established in conjunction with the Zurich Council.

In contrast to this approach towards reform, a number of people, dissatisfied with what they felt to be interference in church affairs by the Zurich Council, and Zwingli's acquiesence therein, proposed that the Church should be completely independent of the state. In particular, they rejected the practice of infant baptism, asserting that an infant could not have the capacity to understand Christian doctrine. They held that, instead, the church should be composed of practitioners who were voluntarily baptised as adults.

Religious beliefs and practices

In stark contrast to today's trend towards the mega-church, the Amish continue to worship in small groups of families each residing within relatively close proximity to one another. In fact, the Amish do not even have separate church buildings. Rather, worship takes place in member's homes.

Each local congregation, or church district, consists of between about 20 and 30 families who also interact socially and in other ways outside of church. Thus the worshippers are all quite well acquainted with one another. When a district grows to the point where it is no longer possible to accommodate the worship service in private homes, the district is divided, thus keeping the congregations numerically small and preserving the personal nature of the services.

The congregations are led by a team of ordained men, including a bishop, a deacon, and 2 or 3 ministers. These men are chosen from among the members of the congregation and serve in a voluntary capacity.