Five Amish girls were massacred in their Pennsylvania schoolhouse
on Monday, October 2, 2006, and five more are still in the hospital trying to recover from grievous gunshot wounds. The shooter,
a non-Amish truck driver, killed himself, too.
The tragedy has focused much unwanted attention on Pennsylvania's
Amish community, which normally minimizes contact with the outside world. We'll keep our own contact to a minimum--just a
peek at how the Amish came to be.
Say "Amish," and most people picture bearded men in black
hats and makeup-free women in white bonnets, working old-fashioned farms with no electricity. These are the "Old Order" Amish.
There are also several "newer order" Amish groups that are less socially isolated and "plain" than the Old Order Amish. But
most Amish are Old Order, and all are spiritual descendents of the Mennonites.
The Mennonites were part of the Anabaptist movement, a
radical wing of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation (and precursor to today's Baptists and Quakers, too). Early Anabaptists
strongly opposed infant baptism, swearing oaths to civil authorities, and attending state churches. Many were also pacifists.
For their radicalism, they were widely persecuted in Protestant and Catholic states alike.
In 1536, a Dutch Catholic priest named Menno Simons turned
Anabaptist and rallied pacifists in the Netherlands and Germany. Menno's followers came to be known as "Mennonites." Persecution
dispersed them throughout Europe and, eventually, drove many to the American colonies--notably to Pennsylvania, a colony founded
by a Quaker, William Penn, who promised to protect religious freedom.
Late in the 17th century, a conservative Swiss Mennonite,
Jakob Amann, launched a reform movement, insisting (among other things) that excommunicated Mennonites be socially shunned.
Amann's followers became the Amish Mennonites, or, simply, the Amish. Many immigrated to Pennsylvania in the early 18th century.
Those who remained in Europe were eventually reabsorbed into Mennonite communities.
In the mid-19th century, the Amish movement in America
underwent its own split, as some Amish folks decided to adapt and integrate more with a changing world. Mennonite communities
eventually absorbed some of these comparatively liberal groups, too, which ceased to be "Amish"--at least in the eyes of the
Old Order Amish, who rejected change then as they still do today.
Why reject what others regard as progress and remain isolated?
The Amish point to scripture, notably 2 Corinthians 6:14-17, which says:
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers:
for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? . . . Wherefore
come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing: and I will receive you.
Yet even among the Old Order Amish, the extent of separation
from the rest of the world varies from place to place. Independent Amish communities now exist in at least 21 states, as well
as in Ontario, Canada, and there's no centralized Amish authority. Local groups set their own rules, and some are much stricter
than others. Some even wind up shunned by more conservative Amish groups.
Steve Sampson
October 6, 2006
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