The Sugarcreek, Ohio Budget newspaper is a vital print lifeline stretching across the diverse Anabaptist settlements of North and South America. Founded in 1890, this weekly paper out of Sugarcreek, Ohio, serves as an information exchange for families sometimes separated by great distances and formidable technological barriers. The Budget is among the favorites when it comes to Amish reading material. Budget ‘scribes’ regularly report on…
Amish tourism did not begin with Witness. That 1985 film just made it worse (or better, depending on how you look at it, I suppose). David Luthy, writing in The Amish Struggle with Modernity, tells us that the first Amish-themed novel came out in 1905 (wait a minute–back when many of us English were still riding around in buggies!), the first Amish postcards around 1915,…
The Amish don’t use ‘thee’, ‘thine’, or ‘thou’, as you might think after watching Weird Al’s video. Neither do they speak like Alexander Godunov or Jan Rubes did in Witness. Check that, at least one Amishman today does–but he was born in Germany and converted to the faith in his 20’s. They mostly speak English like any rural Americans would. Though you could say there…