Few Christian groups are as immediately recognizable as the Amish. Horse-drawn buggies, plain clothing, beards, bonnets, one-room schools and farms without power lines have made them symbols of a way of life that seems almost untouched by the modern world. Drive through parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio or Indiana and you can go from interstate traffic to a horse and buggy in a matter of minutes.
That familiar picture is real, but it can also be misleading. The Amish aren’t people who somehow got stuck in the nineteenth century, and they don’t reject every invention created after Abraham Lincoln. Their choices about clothing, transportation, electricity, telephones and other technologies grow out of a much larger religious vision centered on humility, obedience, community and separation from the world. To understand why an Amish farmer might use a diesel engine but refuse to connect his house to the electrical grid, you have to understand what the Amish are trying to protect.
And to understand that, we need to go back to the Mennonites.
Jakob Ammann
The Amish emerged from the Swiss and German-speaking Anabaptist tradition during the late seventeenth century. By then the Mennonite movement had existed for more than a century, and some Anabaptist communities had become considerably more settled than the persecuted movement of the early Reformation.
A Swiss Anabaptist leader named Jakob Ammann became convinced that the churches had grown too lax. Ammann believed Christian discipleship required stronger church discipline and a clearer separation between the church and the surrounding world. One particularly divisive issue involved the practice of shunning, or avoiding normal social fellowship with members who had been excommunicated from the church.
The disagreement became serious enough that Ammann and his followers separated from other Swiss Anabaptists in the 1690s. His followers eventually became known as Amish, from Ammann’s name. So the Amish didn’t appear as an entirely new religious movement. They emerged from within the Mennonite-Anabaptist tradition and retained many of its basic convictions.
That explains why Amish and Mennonite beliefs overlap so much even though their communities can look very different today.
Anabaptist Christianity
The Amish remain fundamentally Anabaptist Christians. They believe baptism should follow a personal confession of faith rather than be administered to infants, and baptism represents a serious commitment to Christ and the church. They emphasize Jesus’ teachings, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, and traditionally reject participation in warfare and other forms of violence.
They also inherit the Anabaptist suspicion of close relationships between church and government. The Amish generally don’t seek political power as a means of advancing Christianity, and they have historically tried to maintain enough distance from the state to govern their own religious communities. That doesn’t mean they believe government is unnecessary. It means they don’t believe the church needs political control in order to be faithful.
Like Mennonites, the Amish place enormous emphasis on discipleship. Christianity isn’t merely agreeing with doctrines about Jesus. It involves living in a community shaped by his teachings. That’s where many of the practices outsiders associate with Amish life begin to make sense.
Gelassenheit
One of the most important ideas for understanding Amish spirituality is the German word Gelassenheit. There isn’t a perfect English equivalent, but it carries the ideas of submission, yieldedness, humility and surrendering one’s individual will.
That runs directly against a lot of modern American culture. We’re taught to express ourselves, distinguish ourselves, build our personal brand and make sure everybody knows what makes us unique. Amish culture deliberately pushes in the opposite direction. The individual is expected to submit to God and to the community rather than constantly asserting personal preference.
Plain clothing, reluctance to pose for photographs, simple worship, limited decoration and resistance to status symbols all connect in some way with this concern. The point isn’t that buttons, neckties or bright colors are inherently wicked. The concern is what happens when self-expression, pride and competition begin controlling the community.
The Ordnung
People sometimes ask for the list of Amish rules as though somewhere in Pennsylvania there’s a giant book explaining exactly which tractor attachments God approves. It doesn’t quite work that way.
Each Amish community is guided by an Ordnung, a body of expectations governing everyday life. The Ordnung can address clothing, transportation, technology, occupations, education, worship and relationships with the outside world. Much of it is maintained through tradition and communal agreement rather than through a single written rulebook used by every Amish person everywhere.
That’s important because there isn’t one universal Amish Ordnung. Practices vary between affiliations, districts and communities. Something accepted by one Amish group may be prohibited by another, which explains some of the apparent contradictions outsiders encounter when trying to figure out what the Amish are allowed to do.
Do the Amish Reject Technology?
No. That’s probably the most common misconception about Amish life. Amish communities use technology selectively. The restrictions are intended to prevent technologies from undermining family life, community dependence, humility or separation from the surrounding culture. Connecting every home directly to the public electrical grid, for example, could bring an unlimited stream of modern entertainment and consumer culture directly into Amish family life.
But that doesn’t mean electricity itself is considered evil. Depending on the community, Amish farms and businesses may use batteries, generators, compressed air, solar power, diesel engines and various kinds of machinery. Some Amish businesses use computers or other electronic equipment under carefully defined circumstances.
The same principle applies to telephones. A telephone may be permitted in a separate building or shared location while being discouraged inside the home. The issue isn’t whether Alexander Graham Bell accidentally invented a sinful machine. The issue is whether constant outside access changes the character of family and community life.
The Horse and Buggy
The horse and buggy has become perhaps the most recognizable symbol of Amish culture. Refusing automobile ownership limits how quickly and how far people can travel, which helps keep families and communities geographically close to one another. That has consequences. If everyone owns a car, employment, shopping, entertainment and friendships can easily spread across dozens of miles. If your primary transportation is a horse, the world becomes considerably smaller.
Again, the Amish don’t necessarily believe automobiles are inherently sinful. In many communities, Amish people will hire non-Amish drivers when they need to travel long distances. The restriction is generally on ownership and regular use because of what automobiles can do to the structure of community life.
A horse isn’t simply old-fashioned transportation. It’s a boundary.
Plain Dress
Amish clothing serves a similar purpose. Styles vary between communities, but men generally wear simple clothing without unnecessary decoration, while women wear modest dresses and head coverings. Married Amish men traditionally wear beards, although mustaches are generally avoided.
The clothing deemphasizes fashion, wealth and individual status. If everyone dresses according to similar community standards, clothing becomes much less useful as a way of announcing who has money, who follows the latest trends or who desperately wants everyone at church to notice the new outfit. Plain dress also creates a visible boundary between the Amish and the surrounding culture. An Amish person doesn’t have to explain that he belongs to a distinct community. Everybody can see it.
Worship
Traditional Amish churches don’t ordinarily build church buildings. Worship services are held in members’ homes, barns or other suitable spaces, with families taking turns hosting the congregation.
Services are simple and can last several hours. They include preaching, prayer, Scripture and congregational singing, generally without musical instruments. Amish hymnody preserves an especially interesting connection with the Anabaptist past through the Ausbund, a hymnal containing songs that originated among persecuted Anabaptists in the sixteenth century. Some of those hymns were written by people who knew they might be imprisoned or killed for their faith. Singing them centuries later creates a connection with Anabaptist history that would be difficult to reproduce with a worship song written last Tuesday.
Communion is normally observed less frequently than in many other Christian traditions and is treated very seriously. Foot washing, following Jesus’ example in John 13, is also practiced in connection with Communion in many Amish communities.
Baptism and Joining the Church
Amish children aren’t baptized as infants. They grow up inside Amish culture and participate in the life of the community, but eventually they must decide whether to become baptized members of the church.
That decision carries considerable weight because baptism isn’t merely a statement that someone believes in Jesus. It also means accepting the Ordnung and submitting to the discipline of the local church. A baptized Amish member who later deliberately rejects the church can face excommunication and shunning. This helps explain why Amish baptism commonly occurs in late adolescence or young adulthood rather than childhood. The person is making a commitment not only to Christian faith but to a particular way of Christian life.
And that brings us to one of the most misunderstood parts of Amish culture.
Rumspringa
Popular culture has turned Rumspringa into something resembling an Amish version of spring break. According to the stereotype, Amish teenagers are sent into the world for a few years to drink, party, drive sports cars and sample every available sin before deciding whether they’d rather return to the farm.
The word refers to the period of adolescence before baptism when young Amish people have somewhat greater social freedom. What that looks like varies considerably between communities and individuals. Some young people experiment with clothing, cars, parties or other aspects of non-Amish life, but many continue living with their families and participating substantially in Amish community life.
The important point is that they haven’t yet made the baptismal commitment that places them fully under church discipline. Eventually they must decide whether to join the church. Most do. Rumspringa isn’t a formal theological program requiring teenagers to experience the sinful world so they’ll appreciate Amish life. It’s better understood as the period between childhood and adult church membership.
That isn’t nearly as exciting to television producers, but it’s more accurate.
Shunning
The practice of shunning, called Meidung, is one of the more controversial aspects of Amish life. It applies to baptized members who violate the church’s standards and refuse to repent. Depending on the community and circumstances, shunning can involve restrictions on eating together, doing business together or maintaining normal social relationships.
The theological purpose is discipline and restoration. Amish Christians point to New Testament passages instructing churches to separate from members who persist openly in serious disobedience. The hope is that the person will repent and return to the church.
Critics argue that shunning can become coercive and emotionally devastating, particularly in communities where family, employment, religion and social life are tightly connected. Amish defenders respond that church membership is a voluntary covenant and that a community must be able to enforce the commitments its members freely accepted.
That tension is real. Strong community provides extraordinary support when you’re inside it, but the stronger the community is, the greater the cost can be when you leave.
Education
Most Amish children attend small private schools operated by their communities. Education commonly ends after the eighth grade, with the emphasis placed on reading, writing, mathematics and the practical knowledge needed for Amish life.
The Amish don’t generally believe advanced education is evil. They worry that extended schooling can separate young people from their communities, encourage professional ambitions incompatible with Amish life and transmit values that undermine their religious convictions.
Their educational practices eventually produced an important confrontation with the government. In Wisconsin v. Yoder in 1972, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Wisconsin couldn’t require Amish parents to send their children to school beyond the eighth grade when doing so violated their religious convictions.
The case became an important landmark in American debates over religious liberty, parental rights and education. It also demonstrated something the Amish have repeatedly had to negotiate: how do you remain separate from the surrounding culture while living under its government?
Work and Farming
The Amish are strongly associated with farming, and agriculture remains important in many communities. Farming fits naturally with values of family cooperation, hard work, independence and life close to the community.
But not every Amish man is a farmer. Rising land prices and growing Amish populations have made farmland increasingly difficult to obtain in some areas. Amish families consequently operate construction companies, woodworking shops, furniture businesses, repair shops, stores and other enterprises.
Some of those businesses can be surprisingly sophisticated. This occasionally produces the amusing spectacle of an Amish businessman who doesn’t own a car running a company that sells products across several states.
Family and Community
Family is central to Amish life, and Amish families tend to be larger than the American average. Divorce is strongly rejected, marriage normally takes place within the Amish faith, and traditional gender roles remain the norm.
Children grow up surrounded by extended family, church members and neighbors who often share the same values. Work and family life overlap far more than they do in modern suburban America. Grandparents, cousins, parents and children may live within a relatively small geographical area and see one another frequently.
That structure creates an unusually strong social network. When a barn burns, neighbors show up. When someone becomes ill, families help. When a young couple needs assistance, the community is already there.
There are costs to that level of communal involvement, particularly for people who don’t fit comfortably within the expectations of the group. But there are benefits too, and those benefits help explain why Amish communities have survived despite enormous pressure from the surrounding culture.
Pacifism
Like other historic Anabaptists, the Amish are nonresistant. They don’t serve in combat and traditionally avoid participation in violence, including violence sanctioned by the government.
This comes primarily from their understanding of Jesus’ teachings. Commands to love enemies and refuse retaliation aren’t treated as admirable ideals that become impractical whenever circumstances get difficult. They’re understood as instructions for Christian disciples.
That doesn’t mean the Amish believe governments shouldn’t maintain order or defend society. They distinguish between what governments may do and what followers of Jesus are called to do.
This position has sometimes created conflict during wartime, particularly when governments imposed military conscription. Amish men have sought conscientious-objector status and alternative forms of service rather than bearing arms. For a tradition descended from people who were persecuted and executed by governments, reluctance to pick up the government’s sword isn’t especially surprising.
Politics
The Amish generally maintain considerable distance from politics. Practices vary, and Amish people are legally permitted to vote, but political participation is often limited compared with the surrounding population.
That isn’t because they have no opinions about government. Their history has repeatedly forced them to negotiate with governments over military service, education, Social Security, transportation regulations and other issues.
The deeper concern is theological. Politics involves the exercise of worldly power, while the church is supposed to demonstrate another kind of kingdom. Historic Anabaptism has therefore been much less interested in taking control of the government than many other forms of Christianity.
For Christians accustomed to fighting over elections, that can seem almost incomprehensible.
Are the Amish Saved by Works?
Because Amish Christianity emphasizes obedience, discipline and community standards, outsiders sometimes assume the Amish believe they earn salvation by following rules. That’s probably an oversimplification.
Some do drift off into legalism, but most Amish understand salvation as dependent upon God’s grace through Christ. Their Anabaptist heritage doesn’t separate faith from discipleship as sharply as some Protestant traditions do. Genuine faith is expected to produce obedience, humility and a transformed life.
There can also be differences in how individual Amish people express assurance of salvation. Traditional Amish spirituality has sometimes been cautious about confidently declaring oneself saved, partly because such certainty can be regarded as presumptuous. That sounds strange to evangelicals accustomed to asking people exactly when they “got saved,” but it reflects a different spiritual vocabulary.
The underlying question is one that has appeared throughout Christian history: How should grace, faith, obedience and assurance fit together? The Amish answer that question in a distinctly Anabaptist way.
Not All Amish Are the Same
The word Amish covers several different affiliations. The largest and most familiar are generally called Old Order Amish, but even among Old Order communities practices vary substantially. Other affiliations may be more restrictive or somewhat more accommodating toward technology and interaction with the outside world.
That’s why universal statements about what “the Amish” do can become unreliable very quickly. One community may allow something another prohibits. A technology that is unacceptable for personal use may be permitted for business. Rules can also change gradually as communities confront circumstances their ancestors never imagined.
Jakob Ammann never had to decide whether a solar panel could charge a battery used to power an LED light in a woodworking shop like his descendants do.
Why Are the Amish Growing?
One of the most remarkable things about the Amish is that they haven’t disappeared. Modernization was supposed to make communities like this impossible. Cars, television, higher education, consumer culture, the internet and smartphones transformed nearly every part of American life. Yet Amish communities continue to grow and establish new settlements.
Large families are a major reason, but family size alone doesn’t explain it. Most young Amish people eventually choose baptism and remain within the tradition. A community can’t survive merely by producing children if nearly all of them leave.
Apparently the Amish way of life offers something many of its members believe is worth keeping.
That doesn’t prove every Amish practice is wise or every Amish community is healthy. No Christian tradition deserves romantic treatment simply because its members dress differently from everybody else. But survival itself tells us something.
What the Amish Question
The Amish aren’t primarily interesting because they use horses. They’re interesting because they question assumptions most of us never think to question. Does every new technology automatically improve life? Does convenience always make us happier? Does unlimited individual freedom strengthen families? Does constant connection create genuine community? Does having more choices necessarily make us more free?
Most Americans answer those questions without realizing they’ve been asked. We buy the device, download the app, sign up for the service and reorganize our lives around whatever comes next. The Amish ask what it will do to the family and the church first.
Sometimes their answer seems unnecessarily restrictive. Sometimes their communities can become controlling, and separation from the outside world can create problems of its own. There’s no reason to pretend that Amish life is some perfect Christian society untouched by ordinary human sin.
But the question is still worth asking.
More Than a Buggy
It’s easy to turn the Amish into scenery. Tourists drive through Amish country, photograph the buggies, buy homemade bread and furniture, and go home thinking they’ve encountered a surviving piece of nineteenth-century America.
But the horse, the beard, the bonnet and the one-room school aren’t the point. Behind them is a religious tradition reaching back to the Radical Reformation and the conviction that Christians should form communities that actually live differently from the surrounding world. The Amish inherited believers’ baptism, nonviolence, church discipline and separation from the state from their Anabaptist ancestors, then built a distinctive culture intended to protect those convictions from forces they believed would eventually weaken them.
You don’t have to agree with where the Amish draw every line to understand why they draw them. Maybe that’s the most interesting thing about them. The Amish haven’t simply rejected the modern world. They’ve spent more than three centuries asking how much of it they really need.