New Order Amish

How active are Amish in mission work? As touched on in “So you want to join the Amish“, Amish have traditionally looked more inward than outward, focusing spiritual energies on their own rather than seeking converts. But that doesn’t mean they shun all mission-minded outreach. There has been historical interest in mission work within the Amish. The […]

Continue Reading Do Amish do mission work?

Reader Alyssa writes: I have one question about the Swartzentruber Amish: do they have assurance of salvation? To put it bluntly, do they have Jesus in their hearts in order to go to heaven? Are they true Christians? In fact, I think this is 2, or even 3 separate questions.  I can take a shot […]

Continue Reading Are Swartzentruber Amish “saved”?

The New Order Amish in Amish society What distinguishes New Order Amish from Old Order Amish? New Order Amish make up only a small percentage of the total Amish population–roughly 3%. New Order Amish live in a number of states, with the largest group found in the Holmes County, Ohio settlement (around 18 church districts, […]

Continue Reading New Order Amish

I recently read a book I’d been looking forward to for a long time.  An Amish Paradox: Diversity and Change in the World’s Largest Amish Community is an in-depth look at the Amish settlement at Holmes County, Ohio, and one of the most interesting books on the Amish I have read. In Ohio last month […]

Continue Reading An interview with “An Amish Paradox” authors Charles Hurst and David McConnell

North Carolina is my home state, and not one known for having a large Amish population.  Amish have attempted to settle NC in the past, however, and today one settlement does exist, at Union Grove, a hamlet lying some miles west of Winston-Salem. Union Grove, which began in 1985 as a spinoff of the Guthrie, […]

Continue Reading Union Grove and Yanceyville, NC Amish settlements

One writer’s thoughts on the benefits of an Amish school education. The Amish media onslaught continues.  Lately Amish families have showed up on the too-many-kids-to-count reality shows.  I don’t watch them, but I happened to catch pieces of the ’18-kids-and-counting’ Amish appearance (no longer online) last week.  The 18 kids family took their busload to […]

Continue Reading Amish links

Here are a few photos from this past Sunday in Wayne County, Ohio.  One of my favorite times to travel through Amish settlements is about an hour before church begins, around 8am (or 7am ‘slow time’ as the Amish tend to go by slow time year round with regards to church, singings, etc, meaning church […]

Continue Reading Sunday morning in Wayne County, Ohio

I had a chance to catch up with a couple more friends the Thursday before last–‘Martin’, a minister of the New Order Amish persuasion, his wife, ‘Annie’, and their neat kids. My timing was perfect–suppertime!  A grinning Martin plunked me down in front of a ‘haystack’–a potato-lettuce-chili-cheese- crumbled nachos concoction Annie had just prepared.  Yum.  […]

Continue Reading New Order supper and a different sort of haystack

The Amish arrange themselves into compact groupings known as church districts. Each district has its own name, usually a geographically-based one–Lamoni South, Randolph, and Crab Orchard are examples of places providing names for districts, these being found in Iowa, Mississippi, and Kentucky Amish communities. Since the Amish travel by horse-and-buggy to one another’s homes for […]

Continue Reading The Amish Church District

The crime was horrendous. But the point now is not the crime–it’s the hard issues at hand for the Amish community of Ed Gingerich–allegedly the only Amishman ever tried and convicted for the death of another human being. Gingerich killed his wife in a fit of insanity in 1993. A paranoid schizophrenic, he was convicted […]

Continue Reading An Amish killer’s attempt to return