GroshLink

Just came across In Amish country, a recent piece from the Online edition of India's National Newspaper. Hard not to appreciate the outside perspective on the Amish as we return home to Lancaster County, PA, and consider our relationship to the world, the devil, the flesh AND the Word, the Spirit, the Father, and the People of God.

Although the Amish intersect w/the real world in daily life as they till, craft, weld, sew, sell, birth/raise children, live in community, etc, they come to much different conclusions w/regard to the stewardship of the creation and the common grace which the Father bestows for fulfilling our vocation as beings created in the creative and stewarding image of God to bless, guide, and develop the creation along w/her inhabitants. It is a great witness to see the primacy of community in Christ over radical American individualism in action, but this can be embraced w/o the radical separation and rejection of the good gifts of the creation provided through venues such as higher education.

Actually, Lancaster county and its people could be from another planet altogether. Such is the difference in the lifestyles of the Pennsylvania Dutch (a corruption of Deutch) who inhabit this region and the average American . . .

Also called the Amish, these are people who have consciously chosen to live in harmony with Nature. They eschew most things that are integral to our lives today, such as electricity, telephones, automobiles, machines, chewing gum, even ready-made clothes... the list is endless . . .

The bedrock of Amish identity is the primacy of community over the individual, a concept totally at variance with the highly individualistic lifestyles of most Americans. The Amish Church is another binding factor. Very often, the Amish people are mistaken for Menonites, another religious group that also traces its lineage to the Anabaptists. In fact, the name Amish is derived from Jacob Amman, a Swiss Anabaptist, who first established the community. The Amish don't proselytise; one has to be born an Amish.

The Amish are exempt from military service in the United States, they do not take insurance nor do they avail social security. Amish children attend their own community schools up to eighth grade; they don't see the need for university education.