Shunning is controversial, but helps uphold Amish society For the Amish, shunning only happens among baptized members. Youth may bend or break rules during Rumspringa, though Amish parents do not necessarily condone or encourage such behavior.  But in practice, some Amish youth buy cars, wear ‘English’ clothes, and so on. If they cross the line too blatantly, they may get a ‘talking-to’, but they won’t…
Taxes, puppy mills, cream-cheese muffins–I just looked down the list of posts for the last couple weeks and realized that the Amish have been the subject of a good bit of controversy recently. Most of it fairly tame. But this one made me do a double-take. Apparently tempers got hot at the championship game of the Regency Hockey League in Lancaster County last night. According…
An Amish teen is just that–a teen, in many ways like any other. Here is a Toledo Blade report on youthful indiscretion in an Ohio Amish community.
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…
In The Riddle of Amish Culture, Donald Kraybill explains Amish ‘gangs’ in Lancaster county: By the age of ten, an Amish child will be able to name some of the groups—Bluebirds, Canaries, Pine Cones, Drifters, Shotguns, Rockys, and Quakers—and even describe some of their activities. Youth are free to join the gang of their choice…Parents worry about which groups their teens will join because they…
‘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…