Growing Up Amish: The Rumspringa Years

Chapter Eleven: The Future: Keeping Faith in a World of Change

[ Chapter Eleven { The Future Keeping Faith in a World of Change For hundreds of years we have tried our best to keep separate from the world, but now it comes full force to us through something we can hold in our hand. —Amish father An Unpredictable Future Not many Amish, old or young, spend much time ruminating about the abstractions of successful identity formation or cultural viability. Although the older generations may be concerned with the eventual outcome of the young, the Youngie are certainly more focused on the upcoming weekend than on thoughts about the future of Amish society. Riding with one’s friends to a Saturday-night party or deciding whom to take home after the Sunday-night singing most likely are uppermost in the minds of Amish youth. But their parents and grandparents intuitively know that their society ’s survival will ultimately depend on the degree to which their youth absorb an authentic Amish identity and make a lifetime commitment to God, their church, and the community. The last Amish community in Europe disappeared in 1937, almost 200 276 [ Growing Up Amish { years after the ship Charming Nancy docked in Philadelphia with its first recorded contingent of Amish. Subsequently, the history of the Amish in North America includes thousands of people from Amish backgrounds who never joined the church, members who abandoned the Amish way, and scores of failed settlements.1 Some communities collapsed under the weight of economic hardships or natural disasters, and others because of strife within the church. On occasion, entire congregations abandoned their Amish heritage for a more comfortable, “progressive,” or evangelical vision of Anabaptist Christianity. Despite the robust growth in the number of Amish today, these failures remind them that their future existence is not guaranteed. During the crucial rumspringa years, most youth will effortlessly move into Amish adulthood, but some will be tempted to leave for more expressive or liberal churches and lifestyles.2 If most of the youth refuse to embrace the Amish way, however, then the strands that form the fabric of their society will unravel. Few among the Amish predict a sudden demise for their culture, but many wonder how long they can maintain traditional Amish values and practices in the face of modern and postmodern society. Many elders in the large settlements worry that creeping change will eventually destroy the essential core of Amish life. Furthermore, they fear that the “true Amish” may be migrating out to the smaller settlements, leaving behind those who look the part but have lost their core of simplicity, community, and faithfulness . “How much of our tradition can we give up and still be Amish?” an elder asked. “When will we have become worldly on the inside and simply look Amish on the outside?” Leaders struggle with knowing how much and when to change. Amish at either end of the conservative–progressive spectrum agree that change, whether prompted by economic or by moral issues, is inevitable, and they know that it can ultimately contribute to either the survival or the destruction of their culture. Perennial Preoccupations As we have seen in chapter 1, a serious concern among many Amish is that the majority of the families can no longer make a living by farming. In the large settlements, most of the available farmland is either already un- [ The Future: Keeping Faith in a World of Change { 277 der cultivation or has been turned into shopping malls, industrial developments , or housing tracts. Even among most small settlements, few of them have even a third of their families who farm full time.3 Many Amish fear that the loss of a farm livelihood or home diminishes their future viability. Until the mid-twentieth century, the Amish and farming were practically synonymous. Although the Amish never declared that farming was next to godliness, most equated the two. Traditionally, almost all children learned to be Amish in the context of the farm. Farming reinforced the Amish core values of hard work, simplicity, and separation from the world. “Time will tell how we Amish will do as a society,” said a young business owner. “The present generations are the first in which most of the children and youth have grown up off the farm.” Donald B. Kraybill has contended that the occupational shift to business poses a most serious challenge to historic Amish values and viability.4 Despite these concerns, farming may not be the...