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…
Amish people tend not to be too comfortable in the big institutional medical setting (come to think of it, who ever really is comfortable in a hospital? Shots, flourescent lighting, strange smelling hallways, poking and prodding doctors, ugh). This has influenced the Amish approach to obtaining medical services. Midwifery centers and home births are popular among the Amish, as are the services of country doctors…
I attended the funeral of an Old Order Amish man while in the Holmes County settlement over the weekend. A few observations: Around 200 attendees, mostly Amish, with all four major affiliations represented: Old Order, New Order, Andy Weaver (aka ‘Dan church’) and Swartzentruber. There were only a handful of non-Amish present–mainly consisting of a few plain Mennonites. The Amish funeral takes place in the…
Today is the first day of school for the Lancaster County Amish kids. Despite the rise of small-enterprise in the settlement, the Lancaster County Amish are still highly ag-oriented and the school schedule reflects that. Today commences a week of half-days for all children. Next week will be full-schedule for everyone except the seventh and eighth graders, who will remain on the half-day schedule til…
MY TWO unofficial breakfast jobs at Abe and Sarah’s farmhouse are: 1) hand-grinding the coffee–Abe is a big drinker of the stuff, as am I, and 2) sneaking in to Abe’s dad’s milkhouse to scoop up a pitcherful of ice-cold organic raw milk. Okay, maybe not sneaking in, as Abe’s pop fully condones the practice. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with it. …
Two quick bits of good news: One more tech snag has been overcome-I hope(!) It seems the size of the blog has gotten a bit large, and that’s complicated email or feed reader delivery over the past couple weeks. For reader/email subscribers to Amish America, you’ll now be getting just a short snippet of each post, and you can simply click on the post title…
“When I was a little boy, I often went away with my father–to town, to the neighbors, to the welding shop, to the engine shop–anywhere Dad needed to go. As with all little boys and girls, going away was a treat to me, no matter where we went. “On one such ‘going away’ adventure, perhaps to the welding shop, we chanced to meet a man…
First night at Abe and Sarah’s Lancaster farm went well, except for the friendly rooster who stomps the ground just beneath the window of my room. Apparently concert time is 430 am. I felt compelled to compliment Sarah on her bird’s voice the next morning. That got a knowing chuckle. Earplugs didn’t quite keep it out, but closed windows did the trick last night. Abe is a swell organic farmer, and…
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…
Fireworks and cookouts are the name of the game today. And some Amish people will no doubt be participating in one, the other, or both. But as you’d expect, secular holidays take a backseat to church-sanctioned ones in Amish America. Generally speaking, Amish that are more in tune with the American mainstream (say, by virtue of their occupation, or church affiliation) would be more likely…