-
CHAPTER 1. Private Schools and Old Order Life
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
K chapter 1 L Private Schools and Old Order Life Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. —Proverbs 22:6 I n 1937, writing to “our Men of Authority” in the Pennsylvania state government, a group of Old Order church members from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, argued against a new law that would extend the school year from eight months to nine and raise the age at which children could leave school from 14 to 15 years old. “We do not wish to withdraw from the Common Public Schools,” they noted, “but at the same time we cannot hand our children over to where they will be led away from us” (Shirk 1939, 86). Following years of legal battles in several states and finally in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Old Order Amish and the Old Order Mennonites have established their own schools, and in the last fifty years the number of Old Order private schools has mushroomed. As Meyers (1993) notes, today maintaining private schools has become essential for the preservation of Old Order culture. Within the larger symbolic framework that structures everyday Old Order life, Old Order schools function to define and perpetuate a system of social relationships and community norms that helps to maintain Old Order religious beliefs, values, and patterns of language use. In their schools, in the choices they make about pedagogy, curriculum, textbooks, assessment, parent-teacher-student interaction, and even school design, Old Order church-communities1 realize and reinforce religious beliefs and preserve the social, cultural, and linguistic markers of Old Order identity. The Amish and the Mennonites Today’s Amish and Mennonite church-communities have their roots in the suffering and martyrdom of the Radical Reformation of the sixteenth century. Frustrated by the slow pace of church reform, several students of Ulrich Zwingli, leader of the Swiss Protestant Church, defied their teacher and the Zurich City Council by meeting secretly in January 1525 and illegally rebaptizing each other. In so doing, these early Anabaptists— the term, a pejorative one in the sixteenth century, means “rebaptizer”— set out to establish a church of believers “according to evangelical truth and the word of God.” Their goal was a church separate from the state, in which membership was voluntary and marked by adherence to the principles of nonresistance, pacifism, and non-conformity.2 The Anabaptists came to be called Mennonites after Menno Simons, a Dutch priest turned Anabaptist preacher whose teachings helped shape Anabaptist views of baptism, nonconformity in attire, pacifism, and the shunning of excommunicated members. In 1693 an Alsatian preacher, Jacob Amman, argued that the Mennonites were becoming too “worldly,” thattheywereinteractingwithandevenmarryingnon-Mennonites.3 The majorityofMennonitepreachersandcongregationsrejectedAmman’scall for greater separation from the world, so Amman excommunicated them. The conservative minority became known as Amish Mennonites or simply Amish. Since arriving in North America, Amish and Mennonite churches have experienced additional schisms. Today the most conservative of modernday Anabaptists, the Old Order Amish and the Old Order Mennonites, remaindistinctfromthedominantsocietyintheirdress,theirmodeoftransportation , their use of technology, and their patterns of language use. The Old Orders The early Anabaptists saw clearly that the church of true believers must be opposed to the outside world and would be persecuted by it just as the early Christian martyrs had been. Their Old Order descendants continue 2 K train up a child L [3.94.150.98] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:20 GMT) to maintain a lifestyle informed by “religiously based conflict with the secular environment” (Redekop 1989). The church is the one pervasive force in Old Order life. Not just a building or a ritual service, the church is a redemptive community of those dedicated to putting the teachings of Jesus Christ into practice (Cronk 1981; Hostetler 1993). The Old Orders call it Gmay in Pennsylvania German, from the standard German Gemeinde, which means community. One joins the Gmay by being baptized. Like the first Anabaptists, the Old Order Amish and the Old Order Mennonites believe that baptism is literally a covenant with God. Only adults can appreciate the importance of this commitment, and they are urged to think carefully before taking such a step. The Old Orders do not believe that baptism brings salvation. It is instead a public symbol of one’s repentance and vow to serve God and God’s church. In joining in fellowship with others in the community and being guided by its wisdom, the...