Why I Left the Amish: A Memoir

Differences between Amishand Mennonites

appendix 2 Differences between Amish and Mennonites The Amish and Mennonites share common European Anabaptist roots. The Anabaptists (including the Swiss Brethren) were often persecuted for their religious beliefs, which differed from the state-sponsored Catholic, and later Lutheran and Reformed churches. The difference most espoused by the Anabaptists was their belief that infant baptism was not biblical and therefore not valid—that one needed to understand that Jesus Christ is one’s savior for baptism to have meaning. To make such a choice, they claimed, one needed to be an adult. This is how they got their name—Anabaptist means “Rebaptizer.” At the time, this was a derogatory name, which the Anabaptists claimed was inaccurate because they weren’t rebaptizing at all, since infant baptism was invalid in the first place. However, this is the name they ended up with, and is the one still used today when referring to this religious group. In the 1690s, a passionate new convert, Jakob Amman, began admonishing his fellow brethren for what he saw as lack of overall discipline. He wanted stricter adherence to the Anabaptist tenets, such as footwashing, shunning, dress, and the attitude towards people who sympathized with the Anabaptists. The followers of the more established group, led by a well-respected leader named Hans Reist, believed these people, too, could achieve salvation, even 186 / appendix though they were not actually Anabaptists. They also believed that refusing to include former church members from communion practices was adhering to the practice of shunning. Not Amman—he claimed that nothing short of refusing to eat or drink with them in all social situations would suffice. He took the hard-line approach and began banning church members who did not agree with him. Needless to say, the two groups split. Amman and his followers became the Amish, and the people who stayed with the Hans Reist group became the Mennonites (named after one of the founders of the movement, Menno Simons). The Mennonites were considered to have the more established viewpoint, while Amman was the fervent new convert, wanting to make changes to the status quo. The Amish and the Mennonites have altered their positions over the last four hundred years. Their worldviews are quite different from one another today. Most Amish want to be left to their lifestyle without intrusion or challenge, and they require their members to follow the church rules and customs without question. Therefore they do not find a need to convert new members into their group, because their retention rate is high. Conversely, the Mennonites place a high value on becoming “born again.” The Mennonites send missionaries all over the world to “spread the word of God.” The Amish find this off-putting and deem them “mission-minded,” especially when the Mennonites are successful in converting members of the Amish church. The most common outward difference between the Amish and the Mennonites is that most Amish don’t own cars, but most Mennonites do—this is complicated by the fact that a few Amish communities allow cars, and a few Mennonite communities (known as horse-and-buggy Mennonites) do not own cars. And then there are the Old Order Amish versus the New Order Amish, and a whole spectrum of Mennonites, from conservative to liberal—the most conservative can hardly be distinguished from the Amish, and the most liberal cannot be distinguished from mainstream Americans by their mode of dress. Also, not all Mennonite groups maintain the dialect, but nearly all the Amish do. There is another group often mistaken for Amish or Mennonites. The Amish, the Mennonites, and many other Germans settled in various parts of Pennsylvania in the late 1700s and early 1800s. All spoke the same dialect, which is often referred to as Pennsylvania Dutch, though they weren’t all Differences between Amish and Mennonites / 187 Amish or Mennonite. These people collectively are referred to as “Pennsylvania Germans.” Few of the present generation of Pennsylvania Germans who are not Amish or Mennonite speak the dialect, which makes it more likely that those who speak the dialect are either Amish or Conservative Mennonite. ...