The Amish believe that the Lord guides a body of believers who diligently seek God’s will together. And in Amish life that body is the local congregation. Amish skepticism of small-group Bible study arises because sometimes unhappy church members (or former members) use small-group Bible study to challenge church authority. “The Bible,” said one Amish man, “is a mirror to examine ourselves, not a spotlight to shine on other people’s shortcomings.”
Letting Our Light Shine
Many Christians think of personal evangelism—witnessing to one’s faith—as a verbal, one-on-one encounter. And although many believe it’s important to urge new believers to join a church, others take the “lone ranger” route: ride into town, save a few souls, and move on.
Amish understandings of witness and mission could hardly differ more. Citing the words of Jesus, “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid” (Matthew 5:14), they see their collective way of life as a public witness. In publications, sermons, and daily conversations, Amish people emphasize the importance of “letting our light shine,” but as one man said, “not shining it in the eyes of other people.”
“A Christian can be a good witness in many ways,” notes an Amish writer in
Family Life
. “Living a good example has led more people to Christ than any amount of talking has ever done.”
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Another writer echoes this idea: “Plain clothes and a simple quiet life are certainly a Christian testimony which can have more far-reaching good influence on others than anything that we can ever say. A testimony does not necessarily mean for us to go up to a stranger and ask if he is saved.”
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The concept of spreading the faith primarily through words strikes the Amish as hollow. They believe that the best way to judge a person’s faith is to see it lived in context, in community. Unless they are asked, putting their faith into words for people they have never met before and may never see again makes little sense to them.There is little point, in their view, to inviting someone to a personal relationship with God without requiring obedience to a church-based lifestyle.
Ohio bishop David Troyer considered evangelism risky because the missionaries he observed did not follow church guidelines for daily conduct. He suspected that the unconverted would actually be better off without being exposed to such a faith, because Jesus had warned that “he who disregards one of the least commands, and teaches people so, will be rated least in the kingdom of heaven.” In that case, Troyer concluded, “it will be more tolerable at God’s judgment for the untaught heathen than for such who teach and are taught, and yet not correctly, especially for the ones who know better.”
For Troyer and other Amish people, the problem with verbal evangelism is that it neglects the lengthy, formative process of submission and obedience in community. “My heart’s wish is that all people of all manner and races and tongues might come to the Christian faith and be saved,” Troyer emphasized. But verbal evangelism could simply not communicate the complete message of salvation.
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This doesn’t mean that their collective Christian witness stays within their local zip codes. It’s not uncommon for Amish groups to travel great distances to assist non-Amish people with cleanup following natural disasters, as many did following Hurricane Katrina. But Amish relief workers did not expect to convert others to the Amish way through such brief contact, even if their work was deeply appreciated. Their service was an end in itself, not an effort to proselytize. In fact, some Amish view the notion of seeking converts to one’s own church as prideful. They hope that their Christian witness will lead others to deepen or renew their own faith rather than become Amish.
The worldwide media coverage of Amish forgiveness in the aftermath of the Nickel Mines schoolhouse shooting illustrates their style of witness. In the words of an Amish farmer, “Sometimes some of our people think we should do more evangelistic work or begin a prison ministry, but this forgiveness story made more of a witness for us all over the world than anything else we can ever do.” “Maybe this was God’s way to let us do some missionary work,” another member said.
In Amish eyes, the effectiveness of their collective, public witness is confirmed by the millions of tourists who show an interest in their lives. In an essay titled “Learning from the Tourists,” one Lancaster County Amish man notes, “Our ways of living may seem peculiar to an outsider, but we have deep joys that are totally unknown to the world. It behooves us all to be more content with the way of life handed down to us by our forefathers who denied themselves the pleasures of the world to be good examples to their descendants.”
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So the Amish again bring us back to the core values of submission and community. These twin pillars uphold and secure the Amish way, which stands in stark contrast to other spiritual ways that grant greater priority to the individual. With its insistence that individuals submit to the community regardless of cost, the Amish way is deeply countercultural, perhaps even offensive to American sensibilities that consider individual privacy and personal freedom unassailable rights. Only a strong church community can make such a countercultural way of life possible or even thinkable. In the next chapter we venture further into the center of Amish church life and explore, among other things, how rules and standards are established.
CHAPTER FOUR
Joining Church
A person inside the church actually has more freedom, more liberty, and more privilege than those outside.
—AMISH MINISTER
H
ave you seen this? Is this true?” asked our Amish friend Jesse. He had sent us a newspaper column on a survey reporting that about half of all Americans changed religious affiliation during their lives, and that many people changed their religion or religious denomination more than once. The article included quotations from “church hoppers,” people who had switched churches looking for a worship style that matched their tastes, or programs that better fit their family’s needs.
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Our friend was genuinely surprised. His Amish sensibilities led him to expect the world to be faddish, so the concept of church hopping was not startling. He was taken aback, however, that a mainstream newspaper columnist’s critique would so closely mirror his own, that she would suggest that Christians “should submit to the authority of a church and not just walk away in the face of conflict.”
Church hopping is hardly an option for Amish church members. For them, joining church is a lifelong commitment to God to participate with a particular group of people in a particular place. Those people and that place in Amish life is the
Gmay
—what other traditions call a local congregation or a parish.
People, Not Steeples
Driving through an Amish area, you won’t see any Amish churches. That’s because there aren’t any. In fact, the Amish rarely use the German word
Kirche
, which suggests a church building. Instead, they use the Pennsylvania German word
Gmay
, a short form of
Gemeinde
or community, for both the local congregation and its worship services. Amish families gather for worship and fellowship in the homes of church members, underscoring their conviction that the church is a group of people, not a building or a meeting place.
The
Gmay
gathers every other Sunday morning, and households take turns hosting the services, which rotate around to all the homes with sufficient space. Members of the
Gmay
live within geographic boundaries known as the church district, often a square mile or two, but sometimes larger. For better or worse, a family’s address determines its district, which means that changing churches isn’t an option unless the family moves to a different district.
Each
Gmay
has its own set of leaders. Typically the bishop, the spiritual leader, performs the most important rituals, including baptisms, weddings, and funerals. The bishop is the only member who brings proposals for the congregation’s consideration and action. Two ministers assist him, especially with preaching. The deacon helps the other leaders and coordinates material assistance for members with special financial needs.
A district typically includes twenty-five to forty households, usually 130 to 175 people. About 40 percent of them are baptized members, and the rest are children and unbaptized teenagers. When the number of people grows too large for them to gather in members’ homes—as children are born or new families move into the area—the district divides and forms two new ones.
Thus congregations have a similar number of members. There are no Amish megachurches, and no communities of worship where some members know only a few others. Because members live near one another, the
Gmay
includes kin and close neighbors who often see one another throughout the week. This is the body to which Amish people commit themselves. Here they hold membership, and here they are held accountable for their conduct.
Certainly there is some mobility in Amish society. A family might move to a new settlement in another state, or a couple who began their married life on a rented farm may move to another district to buy land. In that sense, membership in the
Gmay
fluctuates, but church hopping as a matter of preference rarely occurs. Whether they move down the road or across the country, a family’s new address dictates the
Gmay
in which they participate.
To Be or Not to Be?
Although Amish people have little choice regarding their church district, they do have a choice about church membership. The idea of voluntary church membership has a long history for the Amish, and it’s one they take very seriously. As we saw in Chapter Two, some of their spiritual forebears, the Anabaptists, died for their convictions about adult baptism and church membership. Five hundred years later, the decision to join—or not to join—continues to be the most significant choice an Amish child will ever make. Although we’ve never met a parent who did not want his or her child to join the church, every parent knows that it’s the child’s choice and that some may reject the Amish way.
Before baptism, Amish children live under the discipline of their parents. They are not formally bound by the rules of the church because they are not yet members, though they follow established norms, such as wearing plain dress. Most parents grant their children more leeway after age sixteen, the time when teens begin to socialize with their peers and seek a spouse. This period of teenage “running around,” often called
Rumspringa
, has attracted media attention because some teens rebel in dramatic ways—racing cars on rural roads or hosting beer parties, for example. For many youth, however, socializing during
Rumspringa
is more apt to involve hymn singing, volleyball games, and canoe trips. Even those who engage in activities the church discourages are generally doing things the rest of us would consider quite tame, such as waterskiing, snowmobiling, buying a cell phone, or going to a movie.
Rumspringa
fascinates and perplexes outsiders, who wonder why seemingly sheltered children are allowed to “run wild” as teenagers. From an Amish perspective,
Rumspringa
looks quite different. First, no parents send their child into the world, either literally or figuratively. Teens continue to live at home, and those who engage in the most deviant behavior know that their parents strongly disapprove.
Rumspringa
also serves an important purpose in Amish theology: it underscores the belief that no one should be railroaded into church membership. Amish teens, meanwhile, are sorting out whether to accept the authority of the
Gmay
as they embark on adulthood. It’s a weighty choice, and
Rumspringa
reminds them that they will be giving up a bundle of other choices should they opt for the church.
Eventually, about 90 percent of Amish teens choose baptism. The rest end up in a variety of spiritual camps: some in more liberal Anabaptist groups, some in evangelical or Pentecostal circles, and some in no church at all.
Baptized on Bended Knee
“I desire to have peace with God, and with the church. And I request that the church pray for me.” These are the age-old sentences a young person speaks to the bishop when she or he decides to get baptized.
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They are understated, humble words, but they carry a weight that non-Amish people can barely comprehend. Undertaken with eternity in mind, baptism proclaims that a person has chosen to submit to the
Gmay
for the rest of his or her life. “Baptism is an indication of our willingness to die to self [give up self-interests] . . . so that one can fit into the brotherhood as a useful member” is how Ohio deacon Paul Kline puts it.
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Other life decisions usually hinge on the choice for church membership: whom to marry, where to live, and what kind of work to pursue. Few contemporary cultures contain a rite that so completely shapes how young people will live for the rest of their lives.