News this weekend was dominated by the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. When atrocities like this occur thoughts inevitably turn to previous similar happenings. Â In just the past 6 months there have been other mass shootings in the U.S., notably at the Wisconsin Sikh temple and the Aurora, Colorado movie theater. I imagine comparisons will be made with the Nickel Mines Amish…
Just back yesterday from family vacation at the beach in SC. Â This was the first week all year I hadn’t posted anything here, though I did check in on comments and couldn’t resist sharing a few links and photos on the Amish America Facebook page. Â I’m not home for long, taking off today on a week-long trip to Lancaster County. Lancaster in late September–fields emptying…
This October will mark 5 years since the Nickel Mines shootings. Â The Amish forgiveness story was hugely powerful and quickly spread around the world, in part because it was so unusual. Â People just don’t forgive, so quickly, after a crime of such magnitude. Five years on, one wonders how much the lessons of the Amish at Nickel Mines have stuck with us. The Young Center…
You’ve probably heard about the accident in a Kentucky Amish community last Thursday. Â Flash flooding in a normally passable creek caused a crossing buggy to overturn. Â Four children, ranging in age from 5 months to 11 years, were swept away and drowned. The Amish community, in Graves County in western Kentucky, has suffered a difficult loss. Â One hopes the parents take some bittersweet comfort at…
The news this past week has been dominated by the shooting in Tucson. Â A gunman opened fire at a political event, killing 6 individuals, and severely wounding a US Representative. In the aftermath, previous shootings come to mind, including Columbine and the Nickel Mines school shootings, probably the two most infamous in recent history. As in Nickel Mines, a young girl has lost her life….
Today marks the fourth anniversary of the Nickel Mines Amish school shootings. I’d like to share two items with you. The recently-released paperback version of Amish Grace features a Q-and-A with Charles Roberts’ mother Terri, whom Donald Kraybill interviewed earlier this year. In it, she discusses her feelings on learning of the shooting, the Amish community’s response, and how she has interacted with the families…
‘It sure is a hard emotional read. To see forgiveness layed out (sic) in such clinical terms while for us it is just a gut feeling…I was glad to see how you stressed that we also are human and struggle with this issue on a daily basis. The thought came to mind that this generation can not claim credit for our attitude on forgiveness beings…
David Weaver-Zercher is chair of the Department of Biblical and Religious Studies at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. He is also the author and editor of numerous publications on the Amish, including The Amish in the American Imagination, Amish Grace (with co-authors Donald Kraybill and Steven Nolt), and Writing the Amish: The Worlds of John A. Hostetler. His latest book, The Amish and the Media…
Donald Kraybill has written and edited over 20 books and dozens of professional articles on the Old Order Amish, Mennonites, and other Anabaptist peoples, and is the Senior Fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In addition to his current projects, Professor Kraybill has spent recent months in locations from Texas to Vancouver promoting Amish…
I’m not a big television watcher but caught wind of the latest appearance of our friends the Amish in the media, this time propping up the plot of a CBS show called Cold Case. Admittedly, being involved in another task at the time I could spare just one ear and one eye on the show, but what I saw and heard seemed pretty dodgy… …from…