American History Hit - The Amish: Origins and Society

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Simple living, plain dress and pacifism. This is not a lifestyle typical of the United States. So how did the Amish come to be in America? Where did this religion come from? And how has their society changed with modernisation?In this episode, Don and Dr Joseph Donnermeyer journey from the Anabaptist practices of medieval Europe to the faith and farms of modern day North America.Joseph is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at The Ohio State University. Specialising in community sociology and rural criminology, he has been researching the Amish for over 2 decades.Produced by Freddy Chick and Sophie Gee. Edited by Anisha Deva. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORYHIT1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's a calendar shot where we're driving today on this long winding road through Lancaster County in southeastern Pennsylvania. The landscape stretches off in both directions.

Endless rows of horn and fenced in pastures. The proper farmhouses with barns painted red and blue. Coming around the curve, we slow to a crawl, following several other cars behind a single horse and buggy clip-plopping along in the center of the lane. Charming, sweet. The kids are arguing in the back, hungry for lunch. One by one, each car ahead pulls out and passes. And when your time comes, you do the same. Only for just a moment you pause on the accelerator, sidling by the buggy,

matching at speed so the kids can get a look. And then you see, there's a man driving. He wears simple black trousers, a white shirt, suspenders, and a wide-brim hat. He's about your same age, and his wife is by his side, and he has two kids in the back. He turns to look at you looking at him, and he nods. Two men from two worlds, doing exactly the same thing, but each in their own fashion. And you wonder why? What beliefs set him so far apart?

How does it figure? Why would he want that life? And as you accelerate past, motoring speedily, onward. You glance into the rearview mirror at the quaint horse and buggy riding slowly through the picturesque pastures and fields. And you wonder for a moment more, why do I want mine? Hello and welcome to American History Hit. I'm your host, Don Wildman. Over the centuries, so many groups have migrated to the United States in search of a better life. We're rather known for it. Each of these groups bring their own cultures and traditions to the American shores,

enriching our broader society. But one group, however, has remained intentionally distinct from this modern American life. They are the Amish. Most people know of the Amish, certainly those who live near them in notable places like Pennsylvania and Ohio. But to find out more about their beliefs, lifestyle, and how and why they came to the United States, I'm speaking today with Dr. D. Joseph Dunmermeyer, community sociologist, rural criminologist, and professor emeritus. in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at the Ohio State University. Greetings, Professor.

Joe, tell me where this all begins. I mean, I grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania. I know how charming those carriages are. Down in that part of the world, it's looked at as sort of a tourist attraction, but it's a real way of life and an important group of people. Where do they begin in the history of the world? They begin with the Protestant Reformation in about 1525, give or take a year, and the city of Zurich, a group of rather radical Protestants, they were called that at the time,

had decided that both Martin Luther and Hendrik Zingley had not gone far enough in separating from the Catholic Church at that time, and openly declared that baptism should be for adults, which was very threatening to the governments of Switzerland, because baptism of infants was used as a form of keeping a role for taxes, and also a role of males who might be conscripted into the military. So in essence, this group was rejecting the authority of government to sponsor religion, which was very threatening back then. And immediately, the Anabaptist were persecuted, burned at the stake, drowned in rivers with their hands and feet tied behind them.

Yet, Anabaptism, it's its call, which means to be re-baptized, by the way, began to spread along the Danube River and the Rhine River areas, especially among the peasantry. It's interesting that this starts in Switzerland. I recently learned about how Switzerland really came to pass. It's a lot of different provinces. It was an unusual story of its creation, you know, versus other countries in Europe and so forth. I suppose this started in a particular area of Switzerland and therefore was kind of an independent group there. Yes, it did. In the Canton, where Zurich, is located, and then several of the cantons out to the west toward France was where the Anabaptist movement spread. Eventually, a number of Anabaptists ended up in Alsace, what is present-day France,

but I believe was occupied and ruled by Germany at that time. Yeah, there are so many different movements come out of this time. This is one of the real central ones, isn't it? But it itself comes out of the Mennonites, right? Or is it distinct from Mennonites? Well, actually, it is distinct in the following way. As it spread up the Rhine River in particular, there was an attempt by some wayward Antibaptists to take over the town of Munster, Germany, militarily. They were eventually defeated, and the town was brought back under the control of the German authorities in that area. and their bodies were actually putting cages and hanging from St. Lambert's Church in Munster. By the way, the cages are still there if you ever visit Munster.

And at that point, a former Roman Catholic priest named Menno Simons started writing about because he was a priest. He could read, write, which was distinctive at that time. And he began to write about what it means to be Anabaptist. And so the nickname Mennonite came along as a result of that. that. Along the Danube River, one of the leaders was Jacob Hutter, and that's where the Hutterites get their nickname. So the years pass, and the nickname Mennonite really takes hold, especially in the areas that are now the Netherlands. And in 1693, about 100, whatever years later, 170 years later, there was a division between the more conservative Anabaptist, mostly in Alsace.

and a more progressive, willing to assimilate group in Switzerland, also known as a Swiss brethren. And the leader of the conservative group happened to be named Jacob Amman, and that is where the nickname Amish comes from. That occurred, that division, the inability to reconcile differences in what they consider to be important doctrinal issues resulted in the Amish becoming a separate group or fellowship at that time. Over what period of time are we talking about, the development of this? Well, from about 1525 to 1693 is when the Anabaptist movement grew and the various groups that now occupy North America occurred,

such as the Hutterites, the Mennonites, and the Amish. The migration or immigration of Anabaptist groups into North America probably began in the second decade of the 1700s. A great deal of it was under the assistance of the Dutch Mennonites who were fairly successful business people. So ships would go up the Rhine River, and at that point, under the control of the British government, they traveled over to the port of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania itself was named for William Penn Jr. He was given the land because the King of England owed his father, who was in the British Navy, a great deal of money for his.

services, William Penn himself was a Quaker, and Quakers were a persecuted group in England, so we opened up the territory for various religious minorities, and at that time, of course, that was quite attractive. You could own land, you could worship without persecution, doesn't get any better than that, and so the Amish probably began to move to Pennsylvania, the part you mentioned, southeast Pennsylvania, in about 1728 or so. It's hard to document exactly who was the first family and exactly when that occurred. You are speaking to a Quaker, as a matter of fact, my family in Philadelphia goes all the way back to Penn. And so that was always discussed, you know, as a Philadelphia family, our relations to the Pennsylvania Dutch.

We thought they were Pennsylvania Dutch in those days. It's not really. We'll find that out later. So tell me what particular sect Jacob Amin is suggesting when he found what becomes known as Amish. Jacob Amin was one of several leaders, and all of them as a collective were interested in being separate from the world and trying to the best of their ability live according to early Christian beliefs and practices, such as found in the Acts of the Apostles. I'll give you one example. The Amish today, as they have had all of their history, select their church leaders by

a lottery. The lottery, it's for bishop, minister, and deacon. The lottery is according to a passage in the Acts of the Apostles, where the 11 apostles after the crucifixion of Jesus and the death of Judas had to replace Judas with someone else. And they drew lots between two individuals and a person named Matthias became the next apostle. And the Amish followed that. And the Amish followed that today. So if there is a need to fill a position, such as minister, men will be nominated by all the baptized members of the church. The church is only about two dozen families, maybe three dozen at most. And those men will walk out of the room and that passage will be written on a piece of paper, put into a Bible. And if there are three men nominated, there will be three Bibles on the table.

They will walk back in, pick up one of the Bibles after they've been shuffled about, and whoever finds that passage in their Bible is now going to be ordained the minister or the deacon or the bishop. We find that in pretty much all religions. There are those who want to be in the world versus those who want to be separate from the world. I mean, it goes for Judaism. It goes for Quakerism. I'm sure there's Catholics out there that have this argument with each other. But it really defines all religions, sort of the schisms between them. This is no different. They're obviously Christian, focused primarily, as I understand, on the teachings of the gospel of Matthew, especially in the sermon of the Mount, right? Yes, the sermon of the Mount is a very important part of Amish beliefs, and they became encoded in a couple different church doctrines during the earlier years of the Anabaptist movement.

One's called the Sleithein confession, which is a set of confessions about being modest, being separate from the world. be ye not yote to the world, for instance, is, I think, from St. Paul's epistle to the Romans. And it goes like that. And so they decided that no matter where they are, and at what time in their history, they will be a distinctive group, which creates then a number of challenges for them to maintain that distinctiveness in what they do. They don't want to be big, for instance, And so they don't like an evangelical approach to religion. It's a communal, community approach, a collective approach to religious beliefs.

And that salvation is through the community in which you participate because you've been baptized as an adult. And therefore, you have taken a sacred vow to God to follow the will of the group. That barn raising is more than practical. It's also symbolic. Very. There are many, many, many forms of symbolic participation for the Amish. Here's one that most people would not know about. Circle letters. Have you ever heard of those? Never, no. Here's how it goes, the mechanics of it. I decide that I am a twin, let's say, and I decide to write a letter to somebody else I know is a twin. And that person then adds his or her letter in and sends it to a third person who is a twin. Eventually, all of the letters come back to me, and I will either write a new letter or take my original letter out and replace it with one. So it becomes very much a social activity, a collective activity. Some of these circle letter groups have been around for a quarter century.

That is, they keep writing to each other, and it's a special occasion to receive that in the mail. And what do they talk about? They talk about what's going on, and their local community, from the kinds of birds that have visited to bird feeder to weather, to economic activities, accidents, almost anything, but also how those are related to religious beliefs. Although that may not be the main focus of the letters, it is imbued to be a Christian group in the writing and the tone of the writing in the letters itself. But they are also distinctive in not being evangelical, I suppose, right? That's not their goal to bring others into the group. This works from within. Yes, it does. It does work from within. There are only a few converts every year to

the Amish faith. Reminds me of the shakers in some ways, you know, that same mentality, right? Yes, the shakers were very much that way. Of course, the shakers are an offshoot of the Quakers and have pretty much died out at this point. Well, they didn't have sex, Joe. No, they did not have sex. The great failing of shakers was that they encouraged not having sex. There is apparently about two or three shakers left, and I may be incorrect about the number, and a community in Maine called Sabbath Day Lake. But all of the other shaker communities are now extinct, and if they still exist, they are a state park

or under a land trust of some kind. And so they become tourist attractions. The Amish, on the other hand, are a high fertility group. That's right. The Quakers as well follow the tenant of non-evangelical Christianity. It has to do with the idea that someone is convinced rather than persuaded. You are called. Yes, you are called.

It's a voluntary decision to join an Amish church. There is some instruction to young men and women prior to their baptism and then during one of the Sunday church services, there will be a baptism, and now they are a member of that church and have agreed to abide by the ordnum that is the church discipline, the Pennsylvania Dutch word for church discipline, and they've agreed to abide by it. And furthermore, I'll mention that the ordnong itself, the church discipline, established congregationally, that is twice a year prior to a communion service, and the Amish are two times a year on communion, will have a members' meeting only for baptized members where they might review and possibly revise parts of their church discipline. I think the general idea,

the Protestant Reformation, to be very general, is that you had first movements that violate the state religion, which would have been Catholicism, the Orthodox view of the state, and therefore you have the burnings at the stake, you have all the Joan of arcs, all sorts of things that are going on back then very famously. But then within the religion, you have leaders such as Jacob Amun who are rebirthing the movement, I guess. He takes Anabaptism and rebirths it into Amish, into the Amish religion, right? Or the Amish sect. Yes. In fact, one might say that Anabaptism, like so many other religious movements, began to have a number of divisions. I think schism is too strong of a word, but branching occurred.

And even today, there are continuous debates and disagreements about what it means to be Amish and new branches, new fellowships. Sometimes they're called affiliations occur. Frankly, tongue and cheek, I refer to there's not as branching, but as twigging. Some of them seem that small to an outsider, yet to an insider, there are highly symbolic differences that are debated for quite some time with attempts to reconcile the differences, but many times that does not occur. Tell me about the rituals that they follow back then. Communion twice a year suggests that Christians should wash one another's feet, forbade trimming of the beards or wearing a fashionable dress, excommunicated members who were shunned. or they were shunned by the group, right? That's kind of like the sorts of things that were going on.

Yes, they may not be any different from some other Protestant or protesting groups, but as a cluster of practices, it gave identity to the Anabaptist movement, to what Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites did, which is the church service where communion is conducted also did involve foot washing. Wearing clothes that are more plain, less distinctive, was always part of Anabaptist history, including the Amish. And with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, a whole new series of distinctive practices were developed, such as if one drove over to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and drove into the area where the Amish are primary located, one would have to drive slower to avoid the horse and buggies on the road. And so that technology has been

maintained for now 100 years plus once Henry Ford made cars affordable to everyone. Did the Amish come to America? I know they were recruited by William Penn, right? I mean, that was an act on his part. Did they come to escape persecution or for commercial opportunity or both? There were both push and pool factors. William Penn, first of all, was recruiting religious minorities in general, especially those along the Rhine River, and the Amish and Mennonites, of course, were located there and took advantage of it. Whereas, just to be clear about this, the Hutterites along the Danube River, migrated eventually into Russia, and then when Russia expelled German-speaking peoples, back in the last days of the Tsar, they ended up in Canada and the United States.

But the Mennonites and Amish did come over because of persecution, not only being put to death at one time, but the inability to own land and just sort of continuous harassment, one might say. And so the opportunity to own land and to begin the farm was quite attractive. So they came over. Well, also lifestyle-wise, I mean, there's a lot of similarities, even today, between the Quakers and the Amish there. In those days, certainly, because Quakers were all very simply dressed in black and gray and white and very, you know, intentionally so living this life of simplicity. I think of the Journal of John Woolman, if anyone ever wants to look that up. There would have been a lot of touchstones between their movements, as with others, I suppose.

This is a very successful movement. This really takes hold. We can nail down why in southeastern Pennsylvania, because the Quakers invite them and land is abundant. How does it move then into where they are today, which is to say Ohio and Indiana, all over the place? In general, the Amish began to grow as they cluster together in Lancaster County, maintaining their identity, and then with large families, by the way, completed fertility today for the Amish, even today, is between six and seven live births. That's a lot of children. And so as the population expanded, there was a search for more land. As Native Americans were displaced by the Europeans, that land became available. often said that the Amish are about one generation behind the displacement of Native Americans

and the availability of land. And so by the Civil War, they were as far west as a couple communities in Iowa. And at that point, by the way, there was aicism among the Amish between those from the east and those from the west. It wasn't north-south. It was east and west over various issues of lifestyle and the more conservative group ended up with the nickname old order Amish. The others that were more progressive and tended to be living more in the West ended up forming Amish men and I conferences and eventually they dropped the name Amish from their various fellowships. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. This is a chicken and egg question. Did their martyrs?

beliefs, I mean, which so much of that kind of Christianity is based on, did that come out of the persecution? It's just no coincidence that martyrdom is part of their thought process, right? It is a chicken and egg proposition because they were persecuted. Many were put to death. And all of that is encoded in a very, very large book called The Martyr's Mir. And almost every, in fact, I doubt that there's any Amish home that does not have a copy of the Martyr's Mirror. It is as thick as a Webster's Dictionary in print. And it begins with the martyrdom of the early Christians and then continues with the martyr stories of Anabaptist, especially during their early years in Switzerland.

And some of it is quite gruesome. It reads, as I would say, a bit tongue-in-cheek like a Stephen King novel. But, I mean, it's a be careful what you ask for a scenario where you have a group of people who decide to look like nobody else, act like nobody else, and keep only to themselves, it's almost asking for trouble. You know, like, I'm going to do this thing that everybody's going to suspect things of, especially the state, which is depending on everybody getting on board here. Does this continue this martyrdom in America, or is that a different kind of story? It does not continue in America. In fact, putting people to death tapered off in Europe

in the years before the Mennonites and Amish moved here, nonetheless, there had been, forms of harassment of various kinds. And those often have to do with forcing Amish children into public schools or laws about buggies and what should be on a buggy, things like that, where often the Amish will resist. Probably conscription is the biggest issue through World War I, two, Korean conflict, Vietnam. And the Amish, of course, were forced them to begin to negotiate. with government about what it means to be in a baptist, which is to be a peace group. And so to reject military participation. And they've worked out alternative service compromises. And even today, you'll find some young Amish men who are serving alternative service, but especially during the

Korean War and through the Vietnam War. And so the Amish have honed their ability to negotiate where there are demands, especially from government entities at the national, the state, and the local level that the Amish feel violate their church discipline, their ordnum, and their general principles for living. How much do they participate in conventional community life, like in terms of the state? Social security, I mean, tax paying. How does this all work in terms of that? First of all, the Amish do not participate in social security.

and they are exempt from Social Security tax if it is a self-owned business. If the Amish do work for an English-owned business, they will pay that tax, but they will likely, highly likely, never use it. There is a mythology that the Amish don't pay taxes. In fact, they pay taxes like everyone else. And if you're Catholic, perhaps Quaker, and you send your children to a parochial school where you're paying tuition of some kind, but you're also, are paying property tax to support the public schools.

So the Amish pay taxes, probably the one from which this myth came that they don't pay taxes, is that they don't pay a lot of gasoline tax because they don't pull that buggy up to a place where they can purchase gasoline for, I guess, the horse. Oh, but the hay tax, their hay tax is crazy. Maybe they can write that off, I suppose, yeah. I was going to say everything else, property tax. They are exempt from Medicare, Medicaid, and from the Affordable Care Act, it was written in exemptions for religious groups where such a thing would violate their core principles. A lot of this has been decided by Supreme Courts at the state and the national level, such as the Amish exemption from compulsory education.

What is, I think, really remarkable about this group is that they have maintained. I mean, this is a pretty extraordinary way to live in the modern world. It was 100 years ago. I mean, imagine doing it now with computers and everything else going on. I know that this is not true of all Amish. There have been schisms within even this modern version of Amish life. But for sure, there is a lot of people. First of all, I was really surprised by the population.

I mean, it's a growing population of Amish thanks to the fertility rate, right? Thanks to the fertility rate, they are growing and doubling their population about every 20. to 21 years, but it also requires one other factor. It is the baptism rate. Today, it's likely 85, perhaps 90 percent of the daughters and sons decide to be baptized and participate in the church or community life of the Amish. So we have about 360,000 Amish and about 625 settlements that are distributed all the way from Montana and Idaho over to Maine and even Prince Edward Island in Canada, even though the large share are in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and the Midwest. So it's remarkable growth. And that growth, by the way, began to occur in the 20th century. In the 18th century,

it was easier for a young man or woman growing up in an Amish family to not be baptized Amish because the lifestyles were very similar. Everyone hitched up a horse to go into town and read a book by an oil lamp. But as automobiles, electricity, and all of the other accruiterments of what we consider to be central to a 21st century lifestyle created more distance between Amish and us. Despite that, I will emphasize this. The Amish are continuously changing. They're continuously negotiating. I have several email addresses from Amish who have to use email for their business. Don't be surprised if you see an Amish person with a cell phone, etc. And so those things have changed

as the Amish have shifted, but they always debate these things within their church group and then decide whether to revise the ordnum so that it can be allowed and does not threaten their sense of community. You used a word that's very important to the basics here. Ordnung. What does that refer to? Ordnung is a German word, basically, that refers to order or discipline, sort of like the bylaws of a volunteer group. And that ordnung is reviewed twice a year. And it can be revised. And it allows then the Amish to change and modernize, and I emphasize that modernize in their own way. I always disagree with individuals who mention that the Amish or throwback to the 1800s. They are not. They are a highly modern people because they purposely engineer their culture to fit their

religious beliefs. Fascinating. Another term I did not visit upon was Pennsylvania Dutch. That's what you hear about in southeastern Pennsylvania. It doesn't actually refer to Dutch per se, does it at all? It's sort of a slang thing that happened. Yes, it is a slang word that refers to, at one time, a very large group of people, men and I'mish and others, brethren, for instance, who spoke German or some dialect to German. And somehow that word evolved into the word Dutch. And that's the nickname that was given to all of these German speakers. A lot of those groups have now fallen off from their everyday use of Pennsylvania Dutch. The Amish have not. It is the language they use when they communicate with each other and provides another point of distinction from us Englishers. I read that the literal word Dutch is actually comes from the Deutsch. Deutsch or Deutsch. Yes, it does.

And it evolved. Yeah, so those English, they just call them Dutch because it was easy. Where I'm from, which is Cincinnati, which is very German, was especially when I was growing up back in the 1950s, I'm a baby boomer. There was a term used for little babies, and it was Dutch piney. And I used to wonder, where did that come from, the Dutch or the Netherlands, not Germany. And subsequently, as I became involved in army studies, I began to understand how that nickname likely came about. I always wondered growing up how much they resented us, you know, gawks. and driving slowly next to the carriages and, you know, just treating them like they were a tourist

attraction. What's their attitude towards that? I think for a number of Amish, they would rather be left alone. And it is bothersome when people do stare at you and perhaps come up and ask you questions that are maybe too personal from your point of view. I had the experience of hosting an Amish family as a thank you because the family allowed me and my and my own. my students to visit that business, and they would talk to the students and answer their questions about so many things. So I decided to buy them dinner at a place, an Amish home that serves dinner is rather famous for good food. But there were a group of tourists coming in for the next round, and all they did was stand next to these people and touch their clothes and ask them questions,

and I could see how uncomfortable they were, and they couldn't wait for their van driver, because it was about a 20-mile distance, so they rented a van and hired a van driver to pick them up. They were quite happy to get in that van. And by that time, I was quite embarrassed that these tourists behaved the way they did, but I know that happens all the time. But there are a number of homage, a high-proportionable bombish, in fact, in the big settlements where the tourists show up who benefit economically. So it's an uneven reaction to the...

the outside world. Well, there are only 5% of the population in Lancaster County, but they're one of the attractions. I'm sure the Amish get thanked a lot by the governments and the chambers of commerce and so forth, because it really is something to come and see. It's really lovely. I mean, I have just to tell you, it's a very positive experience to go out there and see these beautiful barns, these gorgeous iconography on them and so forth. Yes, it is. By the way, the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, does have the largest Amish population because Lancaster itself is a large metropolitan county of about 500, 550,000, there are only 5% of the county is Amish. If you go over to Northeast Ohio, Holmes County, Ohio, which has only about 45,000 people,

45% are Amish, that is, buggy drivers. And LaGrange County in northern Indiana is close. behind Holmes County with about 44.5%. And they represent, in that sense, the two most Amish counties in the United States. But they do that by virtue of the fact that the denominator is much smaller. That is the total population is much smaller. And in fact, their populations are smaller than Lancaster County. They're very good at what they do. They're good businessmen. They're good farmers, right? I mean, that's part of the appreciation is that they make these farms count. The Amish, because of their collective nature and their ability to communicate,

really provide a sense of higher education. That is, when a young Amish man wants to start a business, such as making stoves, there's going to be someone in his extended family or someone in his community who was already a stovemaker. And that mentorship, that apprenticeship really begins to help the next generation establish successful businesses, a very, various kinds. Yeah, and I'm being silly about saying it's just farmers. They do all sorts of trades. It's a very multi-level economy, I suppose, right? In fact, over the past century, the proportion of men who farm to make a living for their families have declined from about 75% roughly to less than 20% roughly, although it does vary from settlement to settlement, but the Amish had begun to

shift out of farming, in part because land cannot be found fast enough to keep up with the population increase today. So, for example, Montana is now becoming a place for Amish. I believe there are 12 settlements out there today. Almost all of them are building log cabins or working in sawmills, and only a few are farmers and ranchers. How likely is it for somebody like me to be able to be accepted it. And if I decided tomorrow, if I wanted to be an Amish, could I be welcomed into that world? Yes, you would be welcome, but in a very slow and self-conscious way. I've heard one Amish bishop asked that very same question by one of my students when I taught at the Ohio State University, who said it takes about three years to learn the culture and abide by the ordnum of whatever

church group, one will join. The fundamental religious beliefs are central to most Christian faiths. So that's actually an easy step. It's learning Pennsylvania Dutch. If you're from the city, learning how to drive a horse and buggy, hitch up that horse and put up with when that tail lifts as you're driving about. And things of that sort. And so the Amish would say you're welcome, but it's going to be about a three-year commitment before we decide you're ready to be baptized. I'm not going to be doing it. I was kidding, but is that actually a factor in that community? Are there a lot of people joining from the outside? No, there are not many people joining, probably less than a dozen every year, throughout all of the Amish church districts.

And because, as I mentioned, a church district is two or three dozen families with a bishop, a minister, or two in a They're very small scale. There are about 2,500 church districts today. And if one could survey all of them, one would discover that there may be only a dozen cases every year of people converting and joining the Amish. And the religious practices, the worshiping is done in the home, right? The worshiping is done at the residence. Would be a better way to say that.

The Amish, from the very beginning, part of the Antibaptist, movement did not want church buildings. They did not want those big Catholic cathedrals. They wanted to be playing, like the early apostles who met in various places. Because the Anabaptist early on were being persecuted, you're not going to hang out a sign that says Antibaptist Church. So they were meeting in caves and in woods secretly. That practice has turned into a tradition today where within a single Amish church district, there is a church service every other week, and it's rotated from residence to residents. As the church gets bigger and the house is not able to accommodate the group, there'll be a place set up in a building like a barn where the service can be held. It's one of the great

things in America. I really do mean this. I mean, if you're a parent trying to figure out what to do in the summer vacation or something like that, choose one of these Amish areas. I would be partial myself to southeastern Pennsylvania because your kids will have a real thrill. I mean, it's a really interesting, vivid example of how different life can be in the modern world. And it really is happening. It seems quaint, but it's actually not quaint. It's real, as we've discussed. There are calendar shots abounding. It's gorgeous where these people live and how they live and the buildings they construct. Thank you so much, Dr. Donnemeier, Dr. D, as I say.