Homelands: A Geography of Culture and Place across America

THREE: Old Order Amish Homelands

c h a p t e r t h r e e Old Order Amish Homelands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ary J. Lamme III 44 To understand Amish geography requires recognition of one primary constituent of their lives—community. Submersion of the individual within the group is a key ingredient for a happy successful Amish person. Among themselves the Amish speak Pennsylvania Dutch and use various German words to convey ideas related to their common welfare, both spiritually and in a human sense. Gemeinde is the redemptive spiritual community within which Amish collectively seek to do the will of God (Hostetler 1981, 6). Gelassenheit is calm submission to God’s will and God’s way as interpreted by leaders (Kraybill 1989, 25). The Amish are gathered together into a community of believers, acting in concert here on Earth while awaiting ultimate redemption in the hereafter. This concept of the community is of utmost importance, for it has enormous spatial implications. Pulling together into a close-knit group, separating from worldliness, while establishing everyday life practices that purposely exacerbate differences between themselves and the rest of the world, creates distinctive patterns susceptible to geographic analysis. Those buggies filled with distinctly dressed individuals rolling along country lanes are symbolic of a lifestyle closely tied to the land. Old Order Amish Origins Old Order Amish religious practice evolved from the Anabaptist movement of the early Protestant Reformation (Hostetler 1993). In 1525, less than ten years after Martin Luther first challenged Roman Catholic practice, a small group of Protestants began adult baptisms. Religious and civil authorities immediately persecuted this first group of Anabaptists, or rebaptisers, because they had been originally baptized as infants in the Catholic Church. Alienation from society and willing martyrdom in service to their cause are concepts that originated in those times and remain a distinguishing feature of Old Order Amish faith. In the 1530s an influential Anabaptist leader emerged in Menno Simons, a former Catholic priest. Eventually many Anabaptists came to be called Mennonites because of the writing and influence of Simons. Anabaptist beliefs from that time have been summarized as: literal obedience to Christ, the church as a community of believers, adult baptism, separation from the world, exclusion of those who fail to uphold the faith, rejection of violence, and refusal to swear oaths (Kraybill 1989, 5). These fundamental tenets, interpreted in a contemporary context, guide Old Order Amish life today. Mennonites, as the followers of Menno Simons called themselves, spread through many sections of Protestant Europe during the next two hundred years. Present-day Old Order Amish in North America draw their name from a contentious Mennonite leader of the 1690s named Jacob Ammann. Although little is known of him personally, and the Amish have little interest in stressing the role of individual leaders, Ammann insisted on severely conservative interpretations of Anabaptist doctrine, in particular, harsh punishment of the wayward, conservative appearance, and extremely strict discipline within the group. His ideas led to a schism with other Mennonites, creating a group originally called the Amish Mennonites. The Amish applied the designation “old order” in North America to indicate differences with several less conservative Amish groups. Mennonites began coming to North America around the time of the Amish schism. Many settled in southeastern Pennsylvania and became the foundation of so-called Pennsylvania Dutch society. The first Amish Mennonites are thought to have arrived in 1727 and settled in Pennsylvania as well. Over the next century approximately two thousand Amish arrived from Euold order amish homelands . . . 45 rope to form the basis of Old Order Amish society in North America. Today the Amish are simply the most conservative theological branch of a much larger Anabaptist Mennonite religious group in North America. It is the conservative characteristic of these particular Anabaptists that leads them to insist on doing things in ways radically different from the rest of society, such as driving horse-drawn buggies without slow moving vehicle emblems. Amish Homelands In absolute numbers, the Old Order Amish are not an imposing group. Even in the townships where they have significant numbers, they remain a minority population group. In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, perhaps the area most widely identified as Amish, they number only approximately 15,000 out of a total population of around 450,000 (Kraybill 1989, 9). Even among Mennonite affiliated religious bodies, the Amish account for only one out of seven adherents. The Amish and other members of...