Even in the realm of electricity, however, the Amish are not absolute objectors. Many Amish people use batteries to power clocks, reading lights, hand-held tools, and, in some communities, such equipment as electric typewriters, copiers, and cash registers. LED lights are commonplace on some buggies and are used for many other purposes. Solar power—what some call “hooking up to God’s grid”—is a growing source of electric power in certain areas.
Amish people also draw on nonelectric power sources. In some Amish homes, propane gas powers refrigerators, stoves, and heaters, as well as portable lights, though in more traditional communities, wood-fired cookstoves, iceboxes, and outhouses of early twentieth-century vintage are more typical. Hydraulic and pneumatic power, produced by diesel engines, operates equipment in some machine shops. In Amish communities that are more open to change, households may even use pneumatic power to operate such appliances as mixers, sewing machines, and washing machines.
But even with these alternate power sources, Amish homes are remarkably quiet; the silence is punctuated only by ticking clocks and family chatter. They have none of the modern noisemakers to which most of us have grown so accustomed—no dishwashers, microwaves, doorbells, vacuum cleaners, air conditioners, telephones, digital timers, or hair dryers. Amish homes also lack media technology; computers, radios, DVD players, and televisions are all forbidden. The Amish believe that resisting these technologies not only makes their lives quieter but also keeps them safe from moral peril.
One Amish writer, commenting on the evils of TV, claims that many television programs “portray a way of life and a set of values not fitting for the Christian. How many minds have been damaged and polluted by the diet of romance and violence from these media? Forsaking these is one of the first and most important steps for anyone seeking a fuller and more committed Christian life.”
Amish schools, devoid of all devices except battery-operated wall clocks, send a clear message to children: we will not let technology dictate our lives. The latest technologies may make some tasks easier, and they may even be fun to use, but they carry a cost, both economic and spiritual. From an Amish perspective, streaming popular media directly into the home or school would be an assault on the community’s spiritual well-being. Why, they wonder, should a people striving to live apart from the world welcome worldly values into their homes? By and large they remain unconvinced that the benefits of certain technologies outweigh the costs.
Escaping Fads and Fashions
A well-dressed churchgoer leaving a Christmas Eve service once told us, “I wish I were Amish this time of the year so I wouldn’t have to spend so much time trying to match my clothing.” This woman was surely joking, but she hit on something important: the Amish don’t spend much time selecting outfits for church or any other occasion. The decision about what to wear has already been made.
Although Amish dress practices vary by community, each group has a standard wardrobe governed by its
Ordnung
. “These dress standards,” explains one church leader, “are like a railing surrounding the balcony of a house to protect its occupants. . . . The individual Christian is not sufficient unto himself—he needs the church.” Amish dress is thus one more demonstration of
uffgevva
, giving up the right to dress as one pleases and yielding to the community, which defines and enforces the moral order.
9
“Who should decide what is proper, modest, and practical?” this leader asks. “Shall this be left up to the individual? The popular spirit declares ‘my life is my own to live. No one has the right to tell me what to do or how to dress.’” In the Amish view the church has a responsibility to “set up guidelines and standards for its members to live by. As a brotherhood counseling together, the church decides what is safe and what is not safe, what is proper and what is not.”
When asked why they follow certain practices, many Amish people reply, “That’s just what our people do.” Leaders, however, view dress practices as applications of values found in the New Testament: humility, modesty, separation, and self-denial. The Amish publication
1001 Questions and Answers on the Christian Life
has forty-three questions and answers on dress—second only to the topic of heaven, which merits fifty-eight questions.
10
One key New Testament verse on dress can be found in 1 Timothy 2:9, where the apostle Paul instructs women to adorn themselves in “modest apparel, . . . not with . . . gold, or pearls, or costly array.” In another New Testament passage, women are warned against “outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel.” Rather, they should wear “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price” (1 Peter 3:3- 4). Amish leaders expect adult men to grow a beard, “because God created us that way” and because several verses in the Old Testament, such as Leviticus 19:27, mention the beard.
Although the details of
Ordnung
dress regulations vary from church to church, all Amish communities agree on two things. First, they forbid all jewelry, including wedding rings and wristwatches. Second, they require some form of plain garb. Regardless of its form, all clothing should be “neat, plain, simple, [and] serviceable,” suggests one writer, and it should serve its purpose “in covering the body.” Plain garb, he continues, is very different from worldly fashions, which are “made to give prominence to and advertise certain parts of the human form by means of extra padding, peculiar cuts, and thin fabrics which leave certain parts of the body exposed to the gaze of the public, . . . [cultivate] lust and pride . . . and give preference to the perverted tastes and erratic customs of a sinful world.”
Amish deacon Paul Kline warns, “We dare not use dress to assert wealth, status or physical beauty in order to manipulate others for personal advantage.” Church-regulated garb, he explains, “makes for a brotherhood. It is a way for individuals to express death to self-will.”
Kline believes there is another positive side to church-prescribed clothing: “Uniform dress also provides an escape from the fashions of this world.”
11
In the words of another leader, “The world is willing to make any sacrifice and pay any price to stay in fashion. They will paint their faces, pierce their ears, pluck their eyebrows, freeze their legs, and cramp their toes—none of which is comfortable, practical, sensible, or even beautiful.”
12
Although it may look drab to outsiders, common garb eliminates lots of shopping and stress about keeping in style and looking good. Plain dress is a quiet way of resisting the changing fads and fashions of the modern world.
Seeking Simplicity
No cars, no televisions, no fancy dress—these aspects of Amish life, all of which point to their view of material possessions, are well known. But Amish spirituality shapes their approach to possessions in less obvious ways. With heaven as their home, they seek to have few earthly possessions and to hold them lightly. The way of
Gelassenheit
—of not striving to get ahead of others—“demands a plain and simple lifestyle. Our furnishings and way of life need to be plain and simple so as not to appear more wealthy than others,” according to Deacon Kline.
13
“Unless we are truly humble, we are not truly plain,” writes Sadie, a young mother. “We must be willing to be something less than our neighbor across the road.”
14
For her, plainness stretches beyond simple dress and basic possessions to attitudes of humility and contentment.
Sadie sees holding possessions lightly as one of her responsibilities as a parent, for “eventually our children will see that the luxuries and complexities of the world are a hindrance to our faith.” In addition to curbing her own desire to consume, however, she believes it’s important for her—and other Amish parents—to rein in their children’s desires. In an Amish family magazine, she offers these guidelines for teaching children simplicity: (1) keep toys few and simple; (2) dress and name dolls plainly; (3) teach basic sewing skills rather than embroidery and painting; (4) make new out of old in the course of hooking, braiding, and sewing rugs; (5) piece quilts from scraps of clothing; (6) remove needless fringes, ribbons, and tucks from dresses; and (7) remind children “that the trend toward what is bigger, fancier, and more expensive leads rapidly in one direction—away from God.”
Because these values have been handed down through the generations, Amish people have become experts at frugality, thrift, and practicality. Clothing is reused and passed on to others. Strips of old clothing are woven into braids for making rugs. Broken furniture and equipment is repaired, not tossed into the dumpster. From clothing to haircuts, goods and services are more likely to be home- or community-made than purchased at the mall. Amish businesspeople operate some fifty “bent-and-dent” stores that purchase surplus products from national chain stores. They clean and relabel canned and dry goods and sell them at discounts in these stores, which cater to both Amish and non-Amish customers.
Amish people uniformly praise the virtues of simplicity and plain living, but those ideals find many different expressions. Families in the most tradition-minded groups have austere homes without indoor plumbing, whereas others have spacious homes with fine cabinetry, exterior stone façades, and professional landscaping. Income level also varies, from that of small farmers who just make ends meet to that of owners of multimillion-dollar manufacturing firms. Despite this real economic diversity, the principles of simplicity and frugality minimize the signs of social class. All members wear similar garb, travel by horse and buggy, and will be buried in simple wooden coffins.
These practices are rooted in a spirituality that prizes humility above almost every other virtue. Those who show off their wealth or brag about it are charged with pride and arrogance, and those with traces of ostentatious living and conspicuous consumption are chided. Pride, whether it is revealed by boasting about personal achievement or showcasing wealth, is considered sin.
The Amish also display a practical frugality that stems from two things: the survival skills of their rural heritage, and their spiritual understanding that human beings are stewards of material things. They are caretakers of the possessions given to them by God. In a lengthy admonition, one leader writes, “These earthly goods are not really ours—they are loaned to us by God, and we are to be responsible stewards.”
15
The Lure of Walmart
To be sure, Amish people struggle with their consumerist desires, trying to balance earthly possessions with eternal ones. One Amish minister cautions members not to desire “something here in this life that we should wait to have in eternity. . . . When the money comes in fast, we are apt to worship the golden calf of money.”
16
Preachers often remind members that “the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10), and that Jesus urged people to lay up their treasures in heaven, not on earth (Matthew 6:20).
These warnings wouldn’t be needed, of course, if Amish folks had no material desires. Amish people do shop at Walmart, however, and they join Costco and Sam’s Club if they are nearby. They buy books, go on vacations, and appreciate well-crafted furniture. Amish hunters purchase state-of-the-art archery equipment, rifles, and camping gear. New buggies are a source of satisfaction, and you wouldn’t be a true Amish man if you didn’t find pleasure in a horse that’s both spry and dependable. For their part, Amish children appreciate new skates, new scooters, and new baseball bats.
All things considered, however, the Amish are surely less possessed by earthly possessions than most Americans. Their rejection of fashionable dress, motor vehicles, public-grid electricity, television, and other electronic media provides formidable resistance in an all-consuming world that often equates happiness with the purchase of material things. Living in a mostly media-free zone, they are sheltered from the seductive blitz of Madison Avenue ads that punctuate television shows and pop up on computer screens.
As pilgrims on a path to heaven that meanders through a world of things, Amish people struggle with temptations as they try to keep their eyes on the heavenly prize. But those temptations hold less sway in a community that continually reminds its members that this world is not their home. Simplicity is “not the key to eternal life,” writes Sadie, the young Amish mother. “Yet we feel plainness is necessary evidence that we have set our affection on things eternal.”
17
CHAPTER TEN
Nature
All children should have a creek wandering through their childhood.
—AMISH BISHOP
I
t was a sultry August Sunday in Ohio. An elderly bishop in Stark County had invited us to a church service in a member’s barn where newly threshed oats overflowed the granaries. As we arrived, the women gathered in the farmhouse, while the men formed an oval under the barn’s forebay. We joined the men in conversation as little boys in bare feet milled about. As more carriages arrived, a hostler brought each horse into the barn, breaking our circle as he passed through it. The sound of horses snorting and munching grain, the pungent smell of manure, and the constant buzz of bees and flies offered a prelude for the service.