Just what do the Amish do for a living nowadays? The Amish have long been connected with farming. But in reality, this association has become less and less accurate over the past few decades. Published in 1995 (second edition 2004), Donald Kraybill and Steven Nolt’s Amish Enterprise documents one of the most significant changes in Amish society, the shift from agricultural to entrepreneurial pursuits. Today,…
I took my car in to an ‘Amish mechanic’ last week–actually an established alternator and starter repair outfit run by a white-bearded Amishman and two other Amish guys. I’m pretty dumb when it comes to cars. But it still seemed kind of weird when the teenage Amish kid who works there started telling me things about my engine and I had no clue what he…
Yes, some Amish do use credit cards. Amish are definitely not credit-averse (after all that’s how most of them pay for their homes and farms), but credit cards themselves would depend a lot on local custom and Ordnung. I’ve been in communities where they are surprisingly common, and in others where they are unheard of. How do the Amish buy things, for that matter? Some…
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,…
photo from Wired magazine In Amish Country, Lancaster County, a quiet behind-the-scenes battle is happening–it’s business vs. the bishops, in a discrete tussle over modern America’s favorite portable gadget, the cellphone. Tensions have risen over the now common device. “Sometimes I wonder if we’re not getting to a point where some of our people don’t respect church authority the way they should,” says a frustrated…