Fairly Assessing the World Outside (Without Forgetting the World Inside)
My eyes weren’t deceiving me — in front of me sat the local newspaper, and it contained a reader’s cautionary letter on a nefarious group making inroads into Northern Michigan communities (Graham, Reader dislikes Amish Culture 2022). Here are some snippets:
“They come to our country and set their own rules that they want to abide by, which the non Amish could never do.”
“The Amish are of a peaceful culture and are not willing to fight for the freedom they enjoy.”
“They put their children and families in harms way by resorting to the primitive use of horse and buggy for transportation. They have no concern of the emissions the horses produce on our roads and city streets.”
“So I really don’t see anything unique or great about the Amish. All people who come to our country should live by the rules of our land, be willing to fight for our freedom to live here or leave.”
Ouch. This writer had taken affront to the feature of the Amish in several articles exploring Antrim County’s past and present. After he submitted his complaint, later editions of the paper contained pushback, so I didn’t expect to see more from the letter-writer. Two weeks later, a new defense of his initial claims was published (Graham, More Regarding Amish Culture 2022).
I didn’t appreciate the stance. My take was that the Amish should be welcomed, and, further, we’ve got plenty to learn from them, end of story.
Someone later recommended Jeff Smith’s work on the Amish. Jeff has a background as an editor and author and currently serves as communications director at Groundwork in Traverse City. His book, Becoming Amish, is an account of a “modern-American” family’s journey towards a slower, hardier living. I didn’t read the book, but I did read an article Jeff had penned for the Record-Eagle (Smith, Northern Michigan’s expanding Amish population gives rise to church/state questions 2019).
Color me surprised. Right away I realized that some of the points our Antrim county op-ed writer had made bore resemblance to Smith’s concerns — the risks of motorized vehicle-buggy accidents, slick roads due to horse poop, and uncertainty on how church and state separation shapes which regulations and ordinances the Amish are required to abide by. I wondered if our op-ed writer had taken cues from Smith’s book. I wondered how many folks out there had similar concerns.
I continued on with Smith’s words.
“All of these issues will be northern Michigan issues as time goes on and Amish communities continue to expand here.”
Maybe I was too quick to dismiss the anti-Amish rhetoric. I kept on.
“To me, these issues are small, miniscule, infinitesimal, compared to what the Amish bring to our place…
…The Amish are not perfect, of course, and few of us would accept the rules, restrictions, and conformity of Amish life. But we can look to their ways and borrow the best.”
There. That’s it. A sober critique is only as strong as it is honest and encompassing. The fact is, there is instruction worth applying to our own lives that the Amish have long embraced, and there are also some unique circumstances that’ll have to be worked out civilly.
The Amish aren’t perfect. Nor am I, or you. Show me a wholly perfect and consistent person, or a wholly perfect and consistent society. Call me jaded, but I say it’s impossible. That gives us all the more reason to seek to recognize and embrace what’s beneficial in others, whether we’re considering individuals or cultures. There’s room to call out what isn’t helpful, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of clear-eyed assessment and spade identification.
Yes, this makes for a more complicated world. But if you, frankly speaking, want a better world more closely attuned to reality, one that’s compassionate and honest, this is the path. It’s a path trodden by seeking to understand others. And that work best functions from a posture of respect, dignity, and — this is a big one — graciousness. Language sputters in attempts to transfer nuance, experience, and meaning precisely, especially when bridging different cultures and contexts. Be gracious.
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Solženicyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1978)
Here’s a brief primer on the Amish presence in the United States and how different communities operate. And, finally, if you stick around — a list of takeaways from the Amish that deserve acknowledgment.
The Amish are an Anabaptist sect — an offshoot of the post-reformation Protestant arm of Christianity — that began to resettle from Switzerland in the eighteenth century because of religious persecution. This dispersal led to the establishment of Amish communities in the United States, generally in Midwestern rural enclaves. Several different groups within Anabaptism aren’t Amish — Mennonites and Quakers come to mind first, but there are others as well such as the Hutterites and Bruderhof. These other groups vary from the Amish in terms of customs, practices, and beliefs. And within Amishdom itself, there are sectarian differences. Some are generalized distinctions (such as Old-Order and New-Order Amish,) and some are very specific local and regional manifestations. Amish settlements are largely self-governing and tend to operate independently of each other.
Reminders from the Amish
Building Together
Mention the word “Amish”, and the image conjured by a lot of folks is a barn-raising. This bucolic image is a good representation of community support amongst the Amish. Building together — shared work — meets needs and is fertile ground for mutual usefulness and right relationship.
Social Scale
Amish settlements tend to be small. The closest thing to a bustling Amish metropolis is Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, or maybe Holmes County, Ohio, but those areas themselves are each divided into hundreds of distinct settlements. Dunbar’s number, a widely-debated social model theory, postulates that the optimal size of a community, those we try to maintain relationships with, is one-hundred and fifty. Beyond that, we tend to lose track (of ourselves and others) and interactions grow less meaningful. Whether or not this number can be quantified accurately or projected universally, the small size of Amish settlements (and lack of far-reaching social media networks) free members up to be known and avoid loneliness amongst crowds.
Commitment to Place
The Amish are slow to move. Their migrations are better thought of as long-term, slow, and considerate repositionings brought on by substantial push and pull factors, than movements on a whim. Their commitment to place and land is generational; a contrast from the roving nature often the norm amongst us “English” today.
Local, Small-Scale Integrated Economies
Communities sufficiently skilled and connected enough to meet their own basic needs are a bit of a holy grail amongst those concerned about ecological footprint, corporate dependence, peak oil, financial manipulation, government overreach, and more. We tend to concern ourselves with scheming how to establish these environments — the models of numerous largely self-sustaining Amish settlements might offer inspiration.
Willingness to Be Outliers
Freedom to be different can be radically freeing. The willingness to be an outlier offers the opportunity to take paths and actions that aren’t normative. The Amish stance of commitment to ideals, practices, and questions unpopular in mainstream Western culture demonstrates this freedom. In fairness, there’s also a deep tension — homogeneity and groupthink within Amishdom are strictly enforced, and understood to be foundational to group preservation and defending against the corrupting influence of pride and vanity.
Waste Stream Diversion
We get a lot of our groceries from the Amish. Many of these are scratch and dent or slightly expired products that aren’t fit to be sold in conventional grocery stores. I remember day trips in a crammed car, heading from the Delaware farm I was staying at toward Amish country in Pennsylvania. We would stock up on discount groceries and make visits to Amish friends with pantries full of all manner of shapes of all sorts of hard, artisan cheeses, all free, all beyond the point where they could be sold at the farmer’s markets. Some Amish take things that ordinarily would be wasted, and salvage them to support their communities and get food to those who need it.
Organic Farming
Speaking of diverting waste streams, many Amish bolster their soil fertility with manure, turned in cover crops and crop rotation, rather than imported fertilizers and nutrients. (I’m not referring to models like what led to this produce recall in Southwest Michigan.) This is one of those areas where discernment is necessary. Nowhere close to all Amish farming operations are organic, small-scale, low-tech, or regenerative. But a lot are. Not all Amish farmers treat themselves, their employees, or their animals in admirable ways. But a lot do. And there are a lot of Amish farmers. While the percentage of Amish working on farms has dwindled, it’s still hovering around 10 percent. That’s substantially more than the 1.3 percent of the U.S. population directly working on farms.
Humility, Lack of Marketing, and Lack of Aggressive Proselytizing
The Amish tend to be somewhat reserved, to avoid drawing unnecessary attention to themselves. This absence of self-promotion means less proselytizing and marketing than other groups. Of course, this rule has its exceptions. Some New-Order Amish tend to have a more missional focus that results in attempts to draw others into the fold, and some larger Amish settlements are notorious for their marketing as tourist destinations.
Relatively Small Carbon Footprint
This is similar to being organized as small-scale, self-sustaining communities. The Amish live out a reality that many of us are trying to figure out how to envision. Reliance on hand tools, manual equipment, and small-scale, off-grid technology, along with living simply and locally, allows the Amish to meet their needs using a fraction of the fossil fuels most of us do.
Commitment to Craft, Skill, and Permanence
Amish workmanship has developed a reputation for craft, precision, and longevity. Their culture emphasizes skillful handwork from a young age, and the home-based businesses many Amish operate rely on this notion: what’s built by the Amish will last. This is markedly different from planned obsolescence and careless construction.
Technological Critique
Everybody knows this one. It’s lived out differently in different communities. Some Amish settlements have hardline stances against electrification, large-scale equipment, and other things they consider to be unnecessary. Others are more open to varying forms of technology, so long as they don’t present the temptation of excess. For example, a massive combine might be a boon for the harvest of wheat, but in the process, it could lead an Amish farmer to try and work more land than they can reasonably care for. Despite the different conclusions, all Amish communities work to deliberately and considerately ask whether adopting different forms of technology will be helpful or harmful in the long run.
There you have it. Now put yourself under the same scope of critique. If someone wrote to the local newspaper because they were concerned about you or your community, what would their words say? What reminders do you model in your own life? You’ve got some real good stuff to share. And you’ve got some spots to work on too. We all do. And if we can grow together, learn from each other, and also critique lovingly, we’ll all be better off.
Graham, T. (2022, September 8). Reader Dislikes Amish Culture. The Antrim Review.
Graham, T. (2022, September 22). More Regarding Amish Culture. The Antrim Review.
Smith, J. (2019, October 6). Jeff Smith: Northern Michigan’s expanding Amish population gives rise to church/state questions. Traverse City Record-Eagle. Retrieved April 18, 2023, from https://www.record-eagle.com/news/northern_living/jeff-smith-northern-michigans-expanding-amish-population-gives-rise-to-church-state-questions/article_80b5db5c-e3bd-11e9-a2b9-678bdd737f7f.html.
Solženicyn, A. (1978). The Gulag Archipelago. Harper & Row.
