Author: John A. Hostetler
Source: Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, 1980.
Old-Order Amish Mennonites are a Germanic people who stem from the Swiss Anabaptist movement that emerged during the Reformation in the 16th century. Anabaptists were radical groups holding unorthodox beliefs, and those that have endured, including the Amish, the Mennonites, and the Hutterites, evolved from the original movement that developed between 1525 and 1536. These groups are characterized by the maintenance of a voluntary and disciplined community, pacifism, separation from the world, adult rather than infant baptism, and emphasis on simple living.
The Amish originated between 1693 and 1697 as a dissenting orthodox faction of the Swiss Anabaptists (also at that time called Mennonites, after their founder, Menno Simons). The leader of the Amish, Jacob Ammann, introduced shunning (the social avoidance of members who were excommunicated), foot-washing as a ceremonial part of communion service, and simplicity of dress and grooming styles. The Amish continue to this day to abide by the rules established by Jacob Ammann as interpreted by each local community.
Like other Anabaptist groups in Europe, the Amish were severely persecuted and imprisoned. Later they were allowed to leave the countries where they lived, but if they remained, they were forbidden citizenship and could not own land. Therefore they were unable to establish permanent settlements in Europe in which to develop their distinctive social structure, although by settling in mountainous areas and by becoming farmers they developed techniques of self-reliance. Their livelihood, place of residence, and population growth were subject to the policy of local rulers and neighbors. During their years in Europe the Amish lived in Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine, the Palatinate (in what is now West Germany), France, and Holland.
With other Germanic peoples, the Amish began settling in Pennsylvania from 1727 to 1790. About 500 came to America during this period. A second wave of 3,000 Amish immigrated from 1815 to 1865 and settled in Ohio, New York, Indiana, and Illinois. Those who stayed in Europe have since been assimilated into the prevailing religious bodies there. (See also Hutterites; Pennsylvania Germans.)
About 80,000 Amish people now live in 20 states and one Canadian province (Ontario); of these, 75 percent live in three states—Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Their annual population increase is about 3 percent, which means a doubling of the population every 23 years. This growth results from large families —seven or eight children are typical.
The Amish have no central office. In the regions where they live, families are grouped into "church districts" (congregations), which serve as the governing units. Each district is governed by its own local leaders —usually a group of three or four men selected from the members and ordained to the offices of bishop, preacher, and deacon. A district consists of from 25 to 35 married couples and their children. The districts are bonded together by respect for common customs and by the bishops, who meet informally to share concerns.
The Amish are distinguished by their simple traditional ways of living, nonconformist attitudes, ingroup marriage patterns, and resistance to modernization. By living in rural areas, speaking the Pennsylvania German dialect, using horses for farming, and dressing in "plain" clothing resembling that of Europeans two centuries ago, they have maintained socially distinct communities even though they are neighbors to non-Amish people. Biblical High German is used in religious services, but all Amish people also speak English. They meet for worship in their farmhouses, usually every two weeks on a Sunday for three or four hours. Their rules forbid members from having more than a practical elementary education and prohibit the latest products of technology and convenience, including the ownership of automobiles and telephones and the use of electricity. Such practices distinguish them from more progressive Mennonite groups.
This striking nonconformism within the larger society is grounded in religious and cosmic perceptions not uncommon to monastic groups in earlier centuries. The Amish view of reality is conditioned by Christian dualism that distinguishes between evil and goodness, carnality and spirituality, and pride and humility, but it does not set matter in opposition to spirit. The account of the creation in Genesis, encompassing a garden with animals, plants, and marine life, is accepted as good, with men and women as caretakers or stewards. The Amish accept marriage, family, children, and a disciplined life expressed in a brotherhood. They also accept personal property expressed in farms and family dwellings as a form of stewardship, but they carefully avoid ostentatious display of wealth.
The Amish rejection of worldly value structures is based upon their rejection of carnal or worldly loyalties. Their own cosmos includes the creation of a community of Christian believers who "have truly repented, who are rightly baptized," who are "a chosen people," who live separate and apart from the "blind, perverted world." Living in such a church-community (Gemeinde) is viewed by them as essential for redemptive purposes. The "charter" of Amish society includes, in addition to separation, voluntary commitment to membership (by baptism), conformity to the consensual rules (Ordnung), the practice of excluding and avoiding obdurate members, simple living, and an agricultural way of life.
For two and a half centuries the Amish have formed unique fanning communities in the United States. They are excellent farmers and usually live on productive soils, most notably in Lancaster County, Pa. The young are given rewarding and meaningful roles of responsibility in family and farm work. Amish children help their parents on the farm until they themselves get married, and then the parents try to secure farms for their children. Influenced by their self-reliant experiences in Europe, the Amish combine family labor and management with an integrated agricultural way of life. The Amish and Mennonites were among the first to practice rotation of crops, stable feeding, and the use of natural fertilizers. The Amish resist large-scale and single-crop farming, and prefer to maintain a "small-scale" farm with a diversity of crops and livestock, and one that is manageable with family labor and horse-drawn equipment. Their charter prohibits the use of tractors and more highly mechanized farm implements in the interests of simplicity and the use of family labor.
Amish communities today are located in regions compatible with their style of community and farm life; the most populated areas include Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. The Amish attempted to form communities on the Great Plains as early as 1871 and at various times since then. These efforts were not successful, as the soils were suited to specialized rather than diversified farming and to large acreages rather than intensive small-scale farming.
Although the Amish people are hard workers and generally good managers of farms, they have not been pioneers in the sense of being the first to possess new lands or territory. As pacifists, they were ill-equipped to cope with frontier situations requiring the use of force and coercion. They are builders and conservators. They have generally followed other pioneers, improving and gardening the soil after others have moved on, and in recent decades they have successfully farmed in areas where the soil has been depleted by their non-Amish predecessors.
As a multibonded group with many ethnic ties, Amish society has many features of a small commonwealth—but not a territorial commonwealth, for the Amish forbid participation in politics or public office-holding. Members are bound by social, economic, ceremonial, kinship, linguistic, and moral ties. The many social rules for living constitute a way of life that is set off by explicit social boundaries and by signs and symbols that delineate the culture. With few exceptions, only the children of members of the Amish church, through instruction and baptism, become members themselves. There are occasional converts to the Amish community, but they must first demonstrate their ability to follow the Amish way of life. The Amish do not proselytize. Of the 126 family names current among the Amish today, one-third are of American origin. The 45 most typical family names derive from the 18th-century immigrants. In Lancaster County five family names—Stoltzfus, King, Fisher, Beiler, and Lapp— account for about 70 percent of the population. In Ohio the most common Amish surnames are Miller, Yoder, Troyer, Raber, and Hershberger.
The Amish appear not to marry close relatives, and marriages between second cousins are rare. However, there has been considerable inbreeding for generations. Several recessive genetic disorders have a relatively high occurrence, among them phenylketonuria, a rare type of anemia; hemophilia; and six-fingered dwarfism. Because the Amish are a well-defined population and have kept good genealogical records, it is possible to trace many of the cases to a common ancestor.
The Amish rely upon mutual aid in many ways, but not to the point of complete self-sufficiency. They emphasize hard work, thrift, mutual aid (barn raisings), and rejection of city ways. Family organization has always been strictly monogamous and patriarchal. The husband is allocated overall authority, but there are many areas of cooperation between spouses; the husband is the farmer or provider and the wife is manager of the household and garden. Amish married couples devote much time to rearing and caring for their children. Parents do not have individual rights, but they have responsibilities and obligations for the correct nurture of their children. Amish women are not employed away from home. Divorce is not permitted. Both men and women vote as individuals in church councils.
The Amish have large families; infant mortality is low, birth-control measures are prohibited, and life expectancy is long. The majority of babies are born in a hospital, though the Amish prefer home deliveries when they can find physicians and midwives to perform them. Amish women do not view birth as threatening, but as status-enhancing.
The continual growth of the population and the moral directive to till the soil have created economic problems, such as the high price and scarcity of land. The Amish have resolved these problems by dividing their farms to accommodate the younger generation and by allowing the younger men to work in woodworking, repair, and construction shops. In recent years many Amish families have moved to less developed areas to form new settlements where land is available at more reasonable prices.
Not all Amish children when they reach the appropriate age (usually 18 to 22) formally declare their intention of becoming members of the Amish church. There is an overall dropout rate of approximately 25 percent, although dropouts do not occur at random, but are clustered in certain families. They are usually the children of family heads who only marginally conform to the rules, of parents who themselves were not farming, and of parents who could not help their young with the economic burden of setting up a farm. In spite of this attrition rate, the Amish growth rate is stable. Most dropouts from the Old-Order Amish join a more progressive Amish or Mennonite church. Differences over the interpretation of Ordnung (rules) and the influence of proselytizing fundamentalist groups have fragmented some of the Amish into progressive and orthodox factions.
The destruction of natural isolation by industrialization and rapid social changes has greatly affected the Amish, as it has other rural communities. The Amish response to rapid change has been further withdrawal from the mainstream culture. Their desire is not to be more different from non-Amish neighbors, but simply not to change so rapidly. They foresaw that their family and church communities could be overwhelmed by wholesale technological changes, large-scale enterprises, and concentrations of power for reasons of convenience and efficiency. Compulsory conscription, federal old-age insurance programs, consolidation of elementary schools, and the extension of compulsory attendance into the high school years all posed specific threats to their communities. Although these threats have been tempered or resolved in recent years, in every instance some of the Amish suffered the consequences by paying fines, serving time in prison, or moving to other localities. The Amish will support the state with their taxes, rarely with their vote, and never with their lives. They hold that Christian brotherhood requires members to care for their own. Their rules forbid them to serve in the military, accept any government subsidy or old-age insurance, or attend schools that do not teach the cultivation of humility, simplicity, and the fear of God.
When the population in the United States was primarily rural and the major occupation was farming; the Amish had no real objections to public schooling, and considered some mixing with non-Amish children desirable. The method of learning (by oral means and by example) was consistent with Amish culture, and the basic skills—singing, memory work, and Bible reading —were relevant to their way of life. Amish schools originated in response to state consolidation of public schools, for the most part since 1940. Today the Amish have over 425 one- and two-room schools that emphasize the basic skills, shared rather than individual knowledge, and the dignity of tradition rather than the importance of progress. Amish schools do not formally teach religious doctrine but support a style of living taught in the home and community. In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Wisconsin v. Yoder that compulsory school-attendance laws that compelled Amish children to attend school beyond the elementary grades violated their religious rights. The court held that the Amish did not pose a threat to the public safety, peace, or order and that their way of life did not materially detract from the welfare of society.
Most theories of survival have assumed that once the peasantlike energy of the Amish tradition was exhausted, the society would be absorbed. This has not occurred. The Amish have increased from approximately 5,000 in 1900 to about 80,000 today. Aside from a high rate of fertility and a tradition that is voluntarily accepted by the members, there are certain adaptive strategies that serve them well. The notion that the Amish do not change or unilaterally resist changes from the outside is not true. The Amish will gradually accept changes that do not threaten the social bond, but they will not permit technology and convenience to dictate their family and community life. Their solution is one of balance between convenience and old-fashioned work, between technology and community self-realization. They see no inconsistency in using magic markers for writing but driving a horse and buggy, in using a pay telephone but not having telephones in their homes, or riding in but not owning an automobile. The rules that forbid members from having electricity mean that electrical conveniences from clothes dryers to toasters are not available to them. In many ways the Amish culture is oral rather than literary, which helps to explain why they maintain limited isolation is spite of mass communication systems. The Amish forbid radio and television in their homes and schools. Their way of life is so far outside the mainstream of American culture that shared knowledge with outsiders is limited.
In some regions, notably in Lancaster County, the Amish have become the unwilling attraction of a multi-million-dollar tourist industry. Tourist enterprises offer the Amish landscape to travelers as a scarce commodity, a living museum, and a quaint sideshow. This activity, together with a change of mood in the larger society whereby the Amish are romanticized and given celebrity status, poses a new problem but apparently no threat to their survival.
For general treatments see John A. Hostetler, Amish Society (Baltimore, 1968); and Calvin G. Bachman, The Old Order Amish of Lancaster County (Norristown, Pa., 1961). For an account of child training and family life, see John A. Hostetler and Gertrude E. Huntington, Children in Amish Society (New York, 1971). Other aspects of Amish society and culture are treated in Albert Keim, Compulsory Education and the Amish (Boston, 1975); Phyllis Haders, Amish Quilt Designs and Patterns (Clinton, N.J., 1976); and Victor A. McKusick, Medical-Genetic Studies of the Amish (Baltimore, 1978).