The New Order Amish and Para-Amish Groups : Spiritual Renewal within Tradition
2008; Volume: 82; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0025-9373
Autores Tópico(s)American Political and Social Dynamics
ResumoAnyone who has spent time living among or trying to understand their spiritual, material and cultural life knows that the Amish do not exist, at least not as a monolithic, homogenous entity. More so than at any point in past century, are an internally diverse and culturally dynamic group. The assumption of many scholars over past four decades that a single specific group--almost always Lancaster Amish--is representative of whole has resulted in a distortion of totality of life, a flattening of various diversities and complexities that enable to continue to survive as both a distinctive people and a church. Most people are familiar with idea of a continuum of church options within Anabaptism--ranging from Old Order, horse-and-buggy groups to those groups who may still use Mennonite or Brethren names but which are virtually indistinguishable from Protestant mainstream. Over time, movements up and (more rarely) down this continuum, for various reasons and with various goals, have kept conservative Anabaptist circles dynamic, even fractious. (1) Through years calls for spiritual have resulted in mass defections from Amish. recent decades, however, groups have shown a growing tendency to accommodate spiritual and material demands that earlier in twentieth century would automatically have led to non-Amish futures. The calls for that prodded many to leave church in 1940s and 1950s would be tolerated today in dozens of districts, even welcomed in others. At same time, rapid acculturation of many Mennonite groups has rendered them less attractive to those wishing to make a spiritual change. As gulf between and mainstream cultures has widened, a greater reluctance to leave has emerged, even among those whose ideas regarding spiritual would have placed them at odds with Old Order leadership a generation or two ago. If we assume that church continues to represent a viable vision of New Testament Christianity, question arises as to how these calls for renewal have been incorporated into a recognizably framework of lifestyle, worship, and belief. When I began my own sojourn with in early 1995, I was surprised by how warm and evangelical-minded group I'd encountered seemed to be, and by fact that they preached in English. Soon I discovered that district I had stumbled upon, and which I eventually joined, was New Order Amish. It had never occurred to me that, if there were Old Order Amish, then there must, logically, be other types of Amish. Later I was told, half in jest, that there were actually three main groupings of Amish: Old Order Amish, New Order Amish, and out-of-order Amish. I thought this was very funny until I realized that most of my friends privately considered my particular district to be part of third group, not second. The essay that follows outlines briefly history and trajectory of New Order Amish--the first major movement since late nineteenth century that attempted to rejuvenate spiritual life within church while explicitly remaining Amish. It will also explore a few groups some might consider out-of-order or, less snidely, para-Amish--that is, groups with origins and many resemblances to but which have never been accepted as part of larger Old Order or New Order circles. Both New Orders and some of these para-Amish groups, I argue, have had a much wider influence on thinking than their small numbers might suggest. (2) ORIGINS OF THE NEW ORDER AMISH The New Order have dual origins, involving separate sets of circumstances in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and Holmes County, Ohio in mid- to late-1960s. In Lancaster, an elderly New Order Amishman once explained to me, the New Orders wanted a lot of new stuff, but they also wanted to be a little more spiritual. …
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