Fundies and the Amish

[homeschoolmomma1]

This documentary is a good insight into how the Amish are really messed up (and I doubt most fundies would approve of their interpretation of the Bible, like being banned from wearing a yellow hat-band :S):

Thank you for the link. Did you by chance see the update documentary? The Ex-Amish became a Fundie.

Interesting

[Tator Tot Tubby]

I wish fundies would take the Amish practice of Rumspringa. It's not perfect in any way but it provides more freedom to the young people and actually allows them to experience life outside the community. Instead, fundie kids are just expected to have no desire to explore the outside world and if they do, they're sent to indoctrination camp

[DowagerDuchess]

My fundie sister has given me those Amish fiction books for x-mas presents!(Yes, I read them too. :)) They are basically one of the few fiction books boring enough that fundies can read them for fun but still get a moral message in the end. They usually deal with safe topics like courting or some kind of moral dilemma that God makes them see the right way in the end. Very traditional roles as all the boys are farmers or carpenters and the girls live at home helping the family until the courting begins.

The Amish romance novels are popular in the Christian community that allows the reading of fiction, which some do and a lot do not. The Maxwell's for example would probably not allow their girls to read Amish romance novels for fear of something or other displeasing God.

My youngest sister is a fundie and has a variety of the Amish romance novels on her bookshelf which I have read while visiting and they are written so simply that it takes literally a couple of hours to get through one--I start one when I go to bed and finish it before I turn off the light to finally fall asleep, eagerly awaiting the next night when I can read part II and follow the story (LO)

[Elle]

I wish fundies would take the Amish practice of Rumspringa. It's not perfect in any way but it provides more freedom to the young people and actually allows them to experience life outside the community. Instead, fundie kids are just expected to have no desire to explore the outside world and if they do, they're sent to indoctrination camp

I think the Amish do have it a lot easier in many ways. They may not generally use electricity and may use old diesel-powered wringer-washers, but they do give their teens a choice between staying and going and encourage taking Rumspringa to help make sure someone really wants to join as a full community member. And it's not a bad thing to have hobbies that don't involve raising the kids, and generally women really are valued instead of being seen as servants. While in public a wife generally defers to her husband, at home the husbands generally defer to their wives. Good luck finding a fundy family where the woman is ever the dominant one at any time. Also the Amish live a way of life that it's easier to feed and care for all their kids, and their kids aren't likely to grow up and struggle in poverty because their educations are inadequate for the world they're expected to live in.

[margiebargie]

Thank you for the link. Did you by chance see the update documentary? The Ex-Amish became a Fundie.

Interesting

Hmmm. I watched the update. Interesting. Basically the evangelicals are poaching the Amish for converts. The sad part is the family went from being independent with a strong work ethic to relying on hand-outs. I hope there's another follow-up in 2 years.

[Third]

Years ago I watched this 20\20 style show about the Amish. I remember this Dad sitting at the table and explaining lying, speaking out of turn, speaking disrespectfully to adults could get a straight pin stuck into the tongue the whole length of the pin. Even small children.

This girl ran away with the help of people who help Amish escape[she left in the dead of night and feared being followed and taken back] and she bought lots of bedazzled clothes and everything ultra tacky because she wanted color! The culture shock was amazing.

I don't think all Amish communities are bad though.

I like some Amish fiction even if it's meant for us English and it's probably not accurate. Some of it is obviously more boring than others.

[Sola]

Those books seem to be marketed at fundies rather than Amish. I know the Wilkinsons read quite a few of them and had recommendations on their now defunct blog.

As for the Amish, there will be good and bad within them like there is good and bad in any demographic.

There was one blog I read a while back, I'll see if I can find it again. The family bought an off-grid Amish farm and started off as fundie-lite. As time went on they became more fundie and made many friends within the Amish community. At one point they suddenly posted that they were going to join the Amish proper but then within a couple of posts that had fallen through and they decided to open up their farm as a guest house. I read through their archives from start to finish and it was one hell of a rollercoaster. By the end they had completely commercialised their farm and guest house and the blog had gone from documenting their lives as they changed to offgrid, to being a big advert for the commercial arm of their farm.

Edit: found it. eclecticculturefarm.blogspot.co.uk/

Go to the archives and start at the very beginning if you want to read about how they went from wannabe Amish to commercial venture.

[homeschoolmomma1]

Hmmm. I watched the update. Interesting. Basically the evangelicals are poaching the Amish for converts. The sad part is the family went from being independent with a strong work ethic to relying on hand-outs. I hope there's another follow-up in 2 years.

I guess I lost respect when he didn't want to give his daughter chemo anymore :( Then he acted like Jim Bob seeing if he could get a cheaper deal. Made me sad

[DistantStar]

Also the Amish live a way of life that it's easier to feed and care for all their kids, and their kids aren't likely to grow up and struggle in poverty because their educations are inadequate for the world they're expected to live in.

Some of this is changing -- PBS did an interesting documentary not long ago on them, and a lot of younger Amish are having to work in factories and whatnot because farming is getting more difficult as land is really expensive and if you have a pile of kids, well, they all can't inherit the farm. So I think the lack of education, at least in some communities, is going to become a problem if it isn't already.

And I saw the ones about the guy who went fundy; it was horribly sad, really. I found his new beliefs really disturbing, as if he'd simply gone from one community where he wasn't supposed to think for himself to another one. He was just as trapped in fundieism as he'd ever felt among the Amish.

[tacky]

I think the Amish get a bad rap sometimes because so many people have a romanticized view of them. I live in Ohio with a lot of Amish around and they're generally good people, but they're human. Their community deals with the same problems any other community deals with; teen pregnancy, abuse, drugs and alcohol, it's all there. They work damn hard and are typically very kind and charitable and, if they know you, friendly and funny, but they have the same human failings as anyone else. I think a lot of fundies who have romanticized the Amish way of life would be pretty disappointed to find out there's nothing magical about being Amish.

[ChunkyBarbie]

Why, you should have looked her up and down, and replied "Ma'am, I don't know what brand of Christianity YOU practice, but in our house, we don"t LOOK for blessings. We simply wait and receive them as they are given. Are you sure you're a TRUE Christian?"

:lol: That is the PERFECT response! Love it.

[ChunkyBarbie]

I believe the Amish are greatly romanticized. They are no better than fundies we read about. If you don't join the Order, you are shunned by everyone. I read an ex-Amish blog, the author is not bitter or out to make the Amish look bad, and she, her husband and children are shunned by her family and old community because they quit the Order. Also, reading about the various orders her family beonged to or investigated, makes me so grateful I was only raised among LDS/athiests. That was hard enough to navigate as a child.

[longskirtlotsakids]

They are romanticized, kind of how the Victorian English days are romanticized. I live right next to an Amish community, and used to drive for them. (1.20 a mile!) Here's some truths about the people I have come in contact with.

1) Generally very kind

2) Generally very stinky (no deodorant)

3) Families I came into contact with had a lot of dysfunction ala domestic violence. There have been a few that have been jailed for sexual abuse of children- I don;t now the rules on it, but once they served their sentence, they were welcomed back.

4) Kids have a hard life. One of the 16 year old girls I drove used to get up at 3 in the morning to vaccinate 15,000 ducks as they came off the truck. They worked them to the bone.

5) The scrupulously clean stereotype is inaccurate because it is clean by 1860's standards, not 2012 standards.

[kunoichi66]

5) The scrupulously clean stereotype is inaccurate because it is clean by 1860's standards, not 2012 standards.

There is quite a lot of difference.

Is part of the romantic-ness of the Amish that they speak to the little corner in quite a lot of people's mind where they see the aAish with their farms and their home grown\home made\home everything produce, their slower pace of life, and they think I want that....?

[dirtyhippiegirl]

Went to a couple of wild field parties as a teenager that were held by Amish teens.

My cousins live in a rural community that has a moderate-ish - they're allowed to have electricity/phones in their businesses moderate, I guess - Amish community nearby. I guess there's such a HUGE meth problem of both the making and using variety within the community that the traditional insular methods of dealing with issues like this simply aren't working and the elders are actually working with community law enforcement to help stop it.

Which serves as a lead-in to a funny story:

I was asking my aunt about one of my cousin's teenaged friends who just seemed a bit...off. "Is he Amish or something?" Aunt gets this horrified look on her face. "Oh, NO! Thank god. You never know what trouble those Amish teens bring in. He's just a Jehovah's Witness."

[gardenvarietycitizen]

There is quite a lot of difference.

Is part of the romantic-ness of the Amish that they speak to the little corner in quite a lot of people's mind where they see the aAish with their farms and their home grown\home made\home everything produce, their slower pace of life, and they think I want that....?

I think that's a lot of it, yeah. The Amish are fetishized, just as various other groups around the world get fetishized (Tibetans for one). Surely they live this ideal life where the pace is slow and everyone is happy... etc.

I have to say though I think the idea of Rumspringa gets overly romanticized too, sometimes. Sure, kids are given a "taste of the outside" but with NO supports at all, and no chance of seeing what a normal secular educated modest lifestyle is like. They can party all they want, because inevitably they will get bored of it and realize the emptiness and so "come home." But trying to go on in education is an entirely more threatening thing and not nearly so accepted. In short, I don't think it's really a true free choice at all. Like so many other groups they set up the false binary of "safe nice modest clean life with us, or depraved druggie sex-crazed life of the outside with no morals" and it's bogus. (You can find the same stuff going on in the stories of Footsteps members who leave very restrictive Jewish communities too - always the first thing the community says is "oh you just wanted to sleep around do drugs and eat cheeseburgers, well fine but your life can't possibly have any meaning now.") You can be secular and have a modest, meaningful life. The way that so many religious groups insist that's not possible just really rubs me the wrong way.

That's not to say that people don't leave the Amish after Rumspringa, of course - they do. I know a guy who did (and yeah, if you just never join the church, you're not shunned, you just don't belong anymore so absolutely stuff can be awkward, but it's just garden variety "we live such different lives now" awkward).

I suppose one of the things that I find irritating about some of the over-romanticized portrayals of the Amish is the idea of them being so self-reliant. They ARE, to a point day-to-day, but without allowing their members to take higher education, they are 100% dependent on the outside non-Amish world. They are not restricting themselves to medical care standards of the 1850s, after all.

[Deleted03]

I think that's a lot of it, yeah. The Amish are fetishized, just as various other groups around the world get fetishized (Tibetans for one). Surely they live this ideal life where the pace is slow and everyone is happy... etc.

I have to say though I think the idea of Rumspringa gets overly romanticized too, sometimes. Sure, kids are given a "taste of the outside" but with NO supports at all, and no chance of seeing what a normal secular educated modest lifestyle is like. They can party all they want, because inevitably they will get bored of it and realize the emptiness and so "come home." But trying to go on in education is an entirely more threatening thing and not nearly so accepted. In short, I don't think it's really a true free choice at all. Like so many other groups they set up the false binary of "safe nice modest clean life with us, or depraved druggie sex-crazed life of the outside with no morals" and it's bogus. (You can find the same stuff going on in the stories of Footsteps members who leave very restrictive Jewish communities too - always the first thing the community says is "oh you just wanted to sleep around do drugs and eat cheeseburgers, well fine but your life can't possibly have any meaning now.") You can be secular and have a modest, meaningful life. The way that so many religious groups insist that's not possible just really rubs me the wrong way.

That's not to say that people don't leave the Amish after Rumspringa, of course - they do. I know a guy who did (and yeah, if you just never join the church, you're not shunned, you just don't belong anymore so absolutely stuff can be awkward, but it's just garden variety "we live such different lives now" awkward).

I suppose one of the things that I find irritating about some of the over-romanticized portrayals of the Amish is the idea of them being so self-reliant. They ARE, to a point day-to-day, but without allowing their members to take higher education, they are 100% dependent on the outside non-Amish world. They are not restricting themselves to medical care standards of the 1850s, after all.

I agree with everything you say, however, I think that the difference with our brand of fundies (who also look down on higher education) is that the Amish would accept living in 1850s medical conditions, when most of our brand of fundies would not. increasingly more amish work in factories too, which is also something not really accepted by the regular fundies and makes them dependent on other people for that.

[tacky]

If you don't join the Order, you are shunned by everyone.

You're shunned if you join the church and then leave. If you never officially join the church and leave the order then you are not shunned. At least that's how it is in the communities around here.

[apple1]

I think that the difference with our brand of fundies (who also look down on higher education) is that the Amish would accept living in 1850s medical conditions...

No. We have Amish children being cared for in the hospital where I work all the time (and I am glad about that), receiving the same care as anyone else.

[ElphabaGalinda]

I think that's a lot of it, yeah. The Amish are fetishized, just as various other groups around the world get fetishized (Tibetans for one). Surely they live this ideal life where the pace is slow and everyone is happy... etc.

I have to say though I think the idea of Rumspringa gets overly romanticized too, sometimes. Sure, kids are given a "taste of the outside" but with NO supports at all, and no chance of seeing what a normal secular educated modest lifestyle is like. They can party all they want, because inevitably they will get bored of it and realize the emptiness and so "come home." But trying to go on in education is an entirely more threatening thing and not nearly so accepted. In short, I don't think it's really a true free choice at all. Like so many other groups they set up the false binary of "safe nice modest clean life with us, or depraved druggie sex-crazed life of the outside with no morals" and it's bogus. (You can find the same stuff going on in the stories of Footsteps members who leave very restrictive Jewish communities too - always the first thing the community says is "oh you just wanted to sleep around do drugs and eat cheeseburgers, well fine but your life can't possibly have any meaning now.") You can be secular and have a modest, meaningful life. The way that so many religious groups insist that's not possible just really rubs me the wrong way.

That's not to say that people don't leave the Amish after Rumspringa, of course - they do. I know a guy who did (and yeah, if you just never join the church, you're not shunned, you just don't belong anymore so absolutely stuff can be awkward, but it's just garden variety "we live such different lives now" awkward).

I suppose one of the things that I find irritating about some of the over-romanticized portrayals of the Amish is the idea of them being so self-reliant. They ARE, to a point day-to-day, but without allowing their members to take higher education, they are 100% dependent on the outside non-Amish world. They are not restricting themselves to medical care standards of the 1850s, after all.

I do agree that the idea of Rumspringa gets overly romantisized. They don't get any idea of how real secular people live. from my limited exposure, they just party a lot with other Amish teens going through Rumspringa, and they don't interact with outside people much during that time. So they're not given a real option of what their alternate choice might be. Like why don't we see them during Rumspringa trying to get educated beyond 8th grade. I don't think they're supposed to get a realistic view of the outside world, because they're supposed to come back. It's kind of like how Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar say to their kids you're lucky to live with us, because other parents kick their kids out at 18. They're made to believe they're lucky their parents let them stay there so they should obey everything, but only because they're being given false ideas of the outside world.

[kunoichi66]

I think that's a lot of it, yeah. The Amish are fetishized, just as various other groups around the world get fetishized (Tibetans for one). Surely they live this ideal life where the pace is slow and everyone is happy... etc.

I have to say though I think the idea of Rumspringa gets overly romanticized too, sometimes. Sure, kids are given a "taste of the outside" but with NO supports at all, and no chance of seeing what a normal secular educated modest lifestyle is like. They can party all they want, because inevitably they will get bored of it and realize the emptiness and so "come home." But trying to go on in education is an entirely more threatening thing and not nearly so accepted. In short, I don't think it's really a true free choice at all. Like so many other groups they set up the false binary of "safe nice modest clean life with us, or depraved druggie sex-crazed life of the outside with no morals" and it's bogus. (You can find the same stuff going on in the stories of Footsteps members who leave very restrictive Jewish communities too - always the first thing the community says is "oh you just wanted to sleep around do drugs and eat cheeseburgers, well fine but your life can't possibly have any meaning now.") You can be secular and have a modest, meaningful life. The way that so many religious groups insist that's not possible just really rubs me the wrong way.

That's not to say that people don't leave the Amish after Rumspringa, of course - they do. I know a guy who did (and yeah, if you just never join the church, you're not shunned, you just don't belong anymore so absolutely stuff can be awkward, but it's just garden variety "we live such different lives now" awkward).

I suppose one of the things that I find irritating about some of the over-romanticized portrayals of the Amish is the idea of them being so self-reliant. They ARE, to a point day-to-day, but without allowing their members to take higher education, they are 100% dependent on the outside non-Amish world. They are not restricting themselves to medical care standards of the 1850s, after all.

I agree - rumspringa isn't really a free choice at all, is it? I also think that people maybe don't think beyond the 'quieter lifestyle' idea of the Amish - without modern technology, things take a long time to do. That's why life is slower.

[mpheels]

I just watched the PBS/American Experience episode on the Amish this weekend, and got a totally different impression of Rumspringa than from watching The Devil's Playground. The PBS special described how different teens take Rumspringa to varying extremes, with most sticking to traditional dress (or mostly traditional), and really just partying/dating. Some kids were wearing "English" clothes, but not the majority. Honestly, from the PBS portrayal, Rumspringa looked almost more like a great time to meet your future spouse than a way to explore the outside world.

[homeschoolmomma1]

I forgot the Duggars when to see the Amish and Johannah wanted to stay