The Amish often ignore daylight savings time. Tradition and symbolic separation from the world are often cited as reasons why. When attending church in Lancaster in the summer for example, Amish may refer to the 8 o’clock ‘slow time’ church start time, in other words, 9 am on DST. Church begins at the same time, the whole year round, regardless of what the clock says….
The Amish and drugs–it’s another one of those things that grab our attention because it seems so out-of-place. Recall the media reaction to two young Amish men busted for dealing coke among Lancaster Amish “gangs” (ie, youth groups) in 1998. But following up yesterday’s post, it’s worth remembering that ‘heavy’, as the Lagrange meth problem was described, may be relative. Meth has clearly been a…
‘We didn’t get out soon enough.’ In an article (no longer online) from the Toledo Blade, an Amish patriarch talks about moving from a liberal settlement to a more conservative one. This grandfather of 82 laments losing his two oldest boys to the world. Had the family moved sooner, they may have avoided the influences that caused his sons to leave the faith. The Amish…
In the Amish world, when disaster strikes, you help your neighbor. Sometimes that means going two or three states away to clean up. And it’s not just Amish helping Amish–after all, in the grand scheme of things, you, English person, are a neighbor too. Amish often travel to help non-Amish rebuild after hurricanes, such as the Hugo storm in the early 90’s. Amish were active…
“The only treasure we can take with us to heaven is our children.” This came from a mother of five in Holmes county, Ohio, but it could have been just about any Amish parent. For the Amish, children are a blessing, not a burden. Large Amish families are common. America has gone from being an agrarian to an industrial and now a post-industrial nation. We…
Most Amish look alike to the man on the street. In reality the group is surprisingly diverse. Though tied by a set of core beliefs, the Amish have no national governing body, no pope nor patriarch. The individual congregation, guided by its bishop, decides its own rules and customs. This decentralized approach, along with a widely varying tolerance for progressive ideas, creates many different ‘flavors’…