The Amish (, also or ; ), formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss and Alsatian origins. Because they maintain a degree of separation from surrounding populations, and hold their faith in common, the Amish have been described by certain scholars as an ethnoreligious group, combining features of an ethnicity and a Christian denomination. The Amish are closely related to Old Order Mennonites and Conservative Mennonites, denominations that are also a part of Anabaptist Christianity. The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, Christian pacifism, and slowness to adopt many conveniences of modern technology, with a view neither to interrupt family time, nor replace face-to-face conversations whenever possible, and a view to maintain self-sufficiency. The Amish value rural life, manual labor, humility and Gelassenheit (submission to God's will).
The Amish church began with a schism in Switzerland within a group of Swiss and Alsatian Mennonite Anabaptists in 1693 led by Jakob Ammann. Those who followed Ammann became known as Amish. In the second half of the 19th century, the Amish divided into Old Order Amish and Amish Mennonites; the latter do not abstain from using motor cars, whereas the Old Order Amish retained much of their traditional culture. When people refer to the Amish today, they normally refer to the Old Order Amish, though there are other subgroups of Amish. The Amish fall into three main subgroups—the Old Order Amish, the New Order Amish, and the Beachy Amish—all of whom wear plain dress and live their life according to the Bible as codified in their church's Ordnung. The Old Order Amish and New Order Amish conduct their worship in German, speak Pennsylvania Dutch, and use buggies for transportation, in contrast to the Beachy Amish who use modern technology (inclusive of motor cars) and conduct worship in the local language of the area in which they reside. Both the New Order Amish and the Beachy Amish emphasize the New Birth, evangelize to seek converts, and have Sunday schools.
In the early 18th century, many Amish and Mennonites emigrated to Pennsylvania for a variety of reasons. Most Old Order Amish, New Order Amish and the Old Beachy Amish speak Pennsylvania Dutch, but Indiana's Swiss Amish also speak Alemannic dialects. , the Amish population surpassed the 400,000 milestone, with about 415,000 Old Order Amish living in the United States, and over 6,000 in Canada: a population that is rapidly growing. Amish church groups seek to maintain a degree of separation from the non-Amish world. Non-Amish people are generally referred to as "English" by the Amish, and outside influences are often described as "worldly".
Amish church membership begins with adult baptism, usually between the ages of 16 and 23. Church districts have between 20 and 40 families, and Old Order Amish and New Order Amish worship services are held every other Sunday in a member's home or barn, while the Beachy Amish worship every Sunday in churches. The rules of the church, the Ordnung, which differs to some extent between different districts, are reviewed twice a year by all members of the church. The Ordnung must be observed by every member and covers many aspects of Old Order Amish day-to-day living, including prohibitions or limitations on the use of power-line electricity, telephones, and automobiles, as well as regulations on clothing. Generally, a heavy emphasis is placed on church and family relationships. The Old Order Amish typically operate their own one-room schools and discontinue formal education after grade eight (age 13–14). Most Amish do not buy commercial insurance or participate in Social Security. As present-day Anabaptists, Amish church members practice nonresistance and will not perform any type of military service.
History Beginnings of Anabaptist Christianity
The Anabaptist movement, from which the Amish later emerged, started in circles around Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) who led the early Reformation in Switzerland. In Zürich on January 21, 1525, Conrad Grebel and George Blaurock practiced believer's baptism to each other and then to others.Anthony L. Chute, Nathan A. Finn, Michael A. G. Haykin. The Baptist Story, Nashville, 2015, p. 12. This Swiss movement, part of the Radical Reformation, later became known as Swiss Brethren.C. Arnold Snyder. Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction. Kitchener, Ontario, 1995, p. 62.
Emergence of the Amish The term Amish was first used as a (a term of disgrace) in 1710 by opponents of Jakob Ammann, an Anabaptist leader. The first informal division between Swiss Brethren was recorded in the 17th century between (those living in the Bernese Oberland) and (those living in the Emmental). The were a more extreme congregation; their zeal pushed them into more remote areas.
Swiss Anabaptism developed, from this point, in two parallel streams, most clearly marked by disagreement over the preferred treatment of "fallen" believers. The Emmentalers (sometimes referred to as Reistians, after bishop Hans Reist, a leader among the Emmentalers) argued that fallen believers should only be withheld from communion, and not regular meals. The Amish argued that those who had been banned should be avoided even in common meals. The Reistian side eventually formed the basis of the Swiss Mennonite Conference. Because of this common heritage, Amish and conservative Mennonites from southern Germany and Switzerland retain many similarities. Those who leave the Amish fold tend to join various congregations of Conservative Mennonites.
Migration to North America The Amish began migrating to Pennsylvania, then regarded favorably for its lack of religious persecution and attractive land offers, in the early 18th century as part of a larger migration from the Palatinate and neighboring areas. Between 1717 and 1750, approximately 500 Amish migrated to North America, mainly to the region that became Berks County, Pennsylvania, but later moved, motivated by land issues and by security concerns tied to the French and Indian War. Many eventually settled in Lancaster County. A second wave of around 1,500 arrived around the mid-19th century and settled mostly in Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and southern Ontario. Most of these late immigrants eventually did not join the Old Order Amish but more liberal groups.
1850–1878: Division into Old Orders and Amish Mennonites
Most Amish communities that were established in North America did not ultimately retain their Amish identity. The major division that resulted in the loss of identity of many Amish congregations occurred in the third quarter of the 19th century. Scholar Steven Nolt considers the year 1865 as the symbolic point of public separation between change-minded and tradition-minded Amish. The forming of factions worked its way out at different times at different places. The process was more a "sorting out" than a split. Amish people are free to join another Amish congregation at another place that fits them best. However, scholar Donald Kraybill noted that residents of one district cannot become members of another one unless they move into its territory.
In the years after 1850, tensions rose within individual Amish congregations and between different Amish congregations. Between 1862 and 1878, yearly (ministerial conferences) were held at different places, concerning how the Amish should deal with the tensions caused by the pressures of modern society. Though the initial idea of a continental conference was floated by tradition-minded leaders to bring churches together around the "practical expressions of humility, simplicity, and peace," it fell to a progressive Amish deacon, eastern Lancaster County's John Stoltzfus, to call the first conference. From the beginning, the ministerial conferences favored change-minded Amish agenda. Conservatives attended in growing numbers through 1865, when they presented the Holmes County manifesto; after it was set aside, most of them stopped attending. After 1865, only a few conservative Amish leaders attended another annual conference. Marginalized within their church, traditionalists withdrew from the activities of an Amish majority increasingly open to change.
The more progressive members, comprising roughly two-thirds of the group, became known by the name Amish Mennonite, and eventually united with the Mennonite Church, and other Mennonite denominations, mostly in the early 20th century. The more traditionally minded groups became known as the Old Order Amish. The Egli Amish had already started to withdraw from the Amish church in 1858. They soon drifted away from the old ways and changed their name to "Defenseless Mennonite" in 1908. Congregations who took no side in the division after 1862 formed the Conservative Amish Mennonite Conference in 1910, but dropped the word "Amish" from their name in 1957; in the year 2000 many congregations left to organize the Biblical Mennonite Alliance in order to continue the practice of traditional Anabaptist ordinances, such as headcovering.Stephen Scott. An Introduction to Old Order and Conservative Mennonite Groups. Intercourse, Penn.: 1996, pp. 122–123.
Because no division occurred in Europe, the Amish congregations remaining there followed the same path as the change-minded Amish Mennonites in North America and slowly merged with the Mennonites. The last Amish congregation in Germany to merge was the Ixheim Amish congregation, which merged with the neighboring Mennonite Church in 1937. Some Mennonite congregations, including most in Alsace, are descended directly from former Amish congregations.
20th century
Although splits happened among the Old Order in the 19th century in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, a major split occurred in World War I. At that time, two very conservative affiliations emerged – the Swartzentruber Amish in Holmes County, Ohio, and the Buchanan Amish in Iowa. The Buchanan Amish soon were joined by like-minded congregations all over the country.
With Germany's aggression toward the US in World War I came the suppression of the German language in the US that eventually led to language shift of most Pennsylvania German speakers, leaving the Amish and other Old Orders as almost the only speakers by the end of the 20th century. This created a language barrier around the Amish that did not exist before in that form.Donald B. Kraybill, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner, Steven M. Nolt. The Amish. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, p. 122.
In the late 1920s, the more change-minded faction of the Old Order Amish, that wanted to adopt the car, broke away from the mainstream and organized under the name Beachy Amish.
During the Second World War, the old question of military service for the Amish came up again. Because Amish young men in general refused military service, they ended up in the Civilian Public Service (CPS), where they worked mainly in forestry and hospitals. The fact that many young men worked in hospitals, where they had a lot of contact with more progressive Mennonites and the outside world, had the result that many of these men never joined the Amish church.
In the 1950s, the Beachy Amish laid heavy emphasis on the New Birth, personal holiness and Sunday School education. The ones who wanted to preserve the old way of the Beachy became the Old Beachy Amish.
In 1966, the New Order Amish were formed after certain congregations left the Old Order Amish due to issues regarding salvation and "the use of modern agricultural methods". The Old Order Amish believe that they have a "hope for salvation", reckoning that "joining with other church members to live according to the Ordnung and the Bible will give them the strength to lives worthy of salvation". The New Order Amish, on the other hand, affirm that a believer can have assurance—"that one can know the state of his soul while on earth".