With an eye to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, Amish Cook Gloria Yoder devotes this week’s column to the idea of giving thanks. An excerpt: No human being (or at least not me) is naturally filled with thankfulness. There’s a person I know who has gone through more pain than any human could ever tell and more surgeries than I can count, and that individual is…
In the above video I explain why Amish don’t want – or maybe the better word is “need” – outsiders to join them. In a nutshell, the Amish do not typically seek converts, and there are a few reasons why. 1. The Amish don’t need converts One very practical reason that they Amish don’t want you to join them is the fact that the…
“Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” ~John 3:3 (KJV) This question has come up a lot over the years and has been addressed here before (see this post from 11 years ago titled Are Swartzentruber Amish “saved”?), so I did a video on it as well….
If you’ve spent a little time in an Amish home or around Amish families, you may have noticed the children and their behavior. Many people comment that Amish children are – generally – especially well-behaved (at least in public or in the presence of non-Amish). I’d say that is generally the case as well. I’ve seen it from two angles. First, as someone visiting Amish…
After a little hiatus, I’ve still got a couple more podcasts from Donald Kraybill’s “What I Learned From The Amish” series to share with you. In this eighth episode, he explores that characteristic trait espoused (and generally demonstrated) by Amish, humility. He starts with an example of why Amish don’t seek media attention – at least not the type that exalts the individual. He looks…
It was 15 years ago – October 2, 2006 – that the school shooting at the West Nickel Mines School took place. I made a video looking back at that day, but especially focusing on what came afterwards – the forgiveness shown by the Amish. The forgiveness story went around the world, covered in media far and wide. In the book Amish Grace: How Forgiveness…
You may have heard the Amish described as a “separate people” or “in the world, but not of it“. These kinds of descriptions can make the Amish sound like they are simply apart from everyone else – isolated somehow from the rest of us. I think this is one thing that leads to the picture in some people’s minds of the Amish living in closed…
Gloria Yoder writes an introspective Amish Cook column this week, on why she is Amish. As she often does, Gloria first notes that there are many different types of Amish people and that she can only speak for her community (Gloria belongs to a New Order Amish church). She then explains: Of the thousands of denominations out there, there is no other I’d rather spend…
“Amish Atheist” certainly feels like an oxymoron. That’s what I thought when first hearing about the turn in Kenneth Copp’s life in a story four years ago. Copp originally appeared on this site even earlier than that, when he was still with the Amish and living in the Unity, Maine community. In 2013 one of our readers contributed a guest post on Unity, much of…
I recently checked in with the head of a large tourist business in one of the main Amish settlements. He told me that 2020 “was certainly an absolute disaster.” Things are somewhat better this year, but apparently not by a ton. That said, it is only May, and states are still in the process of releasing their citizens from restrictions. So I’ve been wondering about…