An Amish Paradox: Diversity and Change in the World's Largest Amish Community

Chapter 2 The Origins of Religious Diversity

a฀฀chapter 2฀฀a The Origins of Religious Diversity Why do churches split? Seldom for the reasons stated. —A New Order businessman The Anabaptist Escalator among the Holmes County Amish O ut of the two major waves of Amish immigration to the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at least nineteen Anabaptist groups have sprung up.1 Roughly half have formed the relatively progressive Mennonite or Beachy churches, but the remainder still classify themselves as Amish. This multiplicity of Amish identities is the result of disagreements about “where to draw the boundary between the church and the outside world and how to define nonconformity .”2 While each affiliation considers itself to be true to Anabaptist ideals, each has defined those ideals in different ways. In Holmes County, the result is widely differing cultural and religious practices within a single settlement. The reality of church schism stands in sharp contrast to the outside perception of the Amish as a unified people and has raised serious questions about the meaning and limits of community even within Amish circles. As we survey this landscape of fracture in the Holmes County Settlement , several questions emerge. What factors lie at the root of these splits? Disagreements over theology? Acceptable use of new technologies? Personality conflicts among religious leaders? What are the breaking-off ฀ a฀the origins of religious diversity a฀ 35 points and the corresponding talismans of identity that are seen as nonnegotiable by different groups? And what are the consequences of these schisms for the interaction between Amish groups? For all the talk about the dangers of pride in the Amish community, the groups that have resulted from these schisms share many features of status groups. As noted earlier, the Amish themselves use the terms low and high to classify churches and affiliations in terms of their degree of worldliness . In general, the lower, or more conservative, churches observe stricter discipline, separation from the world, and social avoidance, whereas the higher, or more progressive, churches have made more compromises with technology and emphasize a more personal and reflective religious experience . Value judgments are deeply embedded in the use of these terms as well. The more conservative churches see themselves as humble adherents to the religious core and criticize what they see as “drift” in the higherchurch communities. By contrast, the more liberal churches often chide the lower churches for what they perceive as devotion to “man-made traditions ” rather than “true spirituality.”3 However, the notion of a single continuum—running from conservative to progressive—along which every Amish affiliation can be conveniently placed somewhat oversimplifies the realities of Amish life.For example, the New Order affiliation is technologically progressive but morally and doctrinally conservative. Two aspects of the broader context bear mentioning before we look at the specifics of the schisms. First, the defining dynamic in the Holmes County Settlement is the “sandwich effect” created by the existence of sizable and viable Amish affiliations at both ends of the spectrum. Nearly 50 conservative districts and 25 liberal districts stand as bookends for the roughly 140 church districts that comprise the main body of the Old Order . The presence of large numbers of Swartzentruber and Andy Weaver Amish, on the one hand, and New Order and New New Order Amish, on the other, represent the opposite ends of what Donald Kraybill has called the “Anabaptist escalator” and serve as constant reminders to the main body of Old Order Amish that they have both conservative and progressive choices. In total, eleven separate affiliations represent the Amish in the Holmes County Settlement, but several of these groups have only one or two church districts. Table 2.1 shows the relative size of the Holmes County Amish affiliations, running from the most conservative to the most liberal. Second, church schism has been a recurrent feature of religious life in 36฀ a฀an amish paradox a฀ the Holmes County Settlement ever since the early 1900s, as shown in figure 2.1. The cultural gap between the Amish and the non-Amish in rural Ohio was fairly narrow in the early part of the twentieth century . As the speed of change in the wider society began to increase, Amish church districts found themselves confronting a bewildering array of decisions about everything from appropriate farm technology to the activities of the young people to the conditions under which excommunication would be lifted. Most of the resulting...