Sunday, July 15, 2007

WHY THE AMISH AND US.?

I believe there is a need for more dialogue about the points of contact between our cultures which the interactive nature of a blog could facilitate. There are multiple subjects that are in need of in-depth discussion and review beyond what my efforts, to date, have affected. So, I'm posting a list of letters to the editor that I've written. I hope to bring vitality and authenticity to the larger understanding of the Amish and address the woefully unexamined relationship between non-Amish people and the Amish.


Here's a piece I submitted to the Lancaster Sunday News for their "In My Opinion" section. They didn't print it.



Recent news reported a three day conference on the Amish being held at Elizabeth town college. The article quoted subjects to be addressed like "Who are the Amish?" and how should we relate to them. I have a few comments on the latter. Here are some examples of how we betray our own values in relating to the Amish.
NO. 1
During my sons' junior year in high-school at a school assembly called to celebrate a successful fund-raising event, faculty divided into two teams and competed to guess the most popular responses to survey questions solicited from the student body prior to the event. The third most popular response to the question, "what's the worst thing about Lancaster county?" was "the Amish". When the teams of faculty faltered in guessing the correct response, the students prompted them, shouting from the bleachers "the Amish, the Amish".
My sons Amish identity aside, the failure of the faculty and students who organized the event to recognize how inappropriate that response was going to be as a part of the event was bad, but it's not nearly as damning as the fact that an event like that could occur and nobody stepped forward to mitigate it and to clarify that it was not a view school officials wanted to promote. When I called the school to complain the principal denied any wrong doing had occurred.

NO. 2
There's a post on the web log "the buck stops here" Which refers to alleged remarks made by supreme court justice Potter Stewart about how and on what basis he was voting in Wisconsin vs Yoder, a 1972 case that relieved Amish children from compulsory education requirements. The author of the post, Stuart Buck, writes, my con law professor Richard Parker, who clerked for justice Stewart during the term Yoder was decided told me "Justice Stewart told me that he was voting for the amish because they were cute". However second hand this reference is, it reveals a demeanor that wouldn't be replicated for any of his other cases.

NO.3
In the magazine Legal Affairs, Nadya Labi writes about a young Amish woman who, after being sexually abused by family members dropped hints about the abuse to non-amish neighbors. When they didn't pick up on the cues,she called a battered women's shelter, but wasn't taken seriously. Only after a month of repeated calls was children and family services alerted. Yet the state repeatedly failed to remove the victim from the abusive environment. Meanwhile she suffered horrendous retribution for speaking up. Only after drama and isolation (akin to a political prisoner in a police state) did her situation change for the better.

NO. 4
Donald Kraybill, a prominent scholar of the Amish is widely accepted and respected as the preeminent authority on Amish life, but I couldn't fully address my concerns without questioning the impact of his work on the community he studies and the perception it fosters in his readers.
Kraybill showcases the communal values of the Amish and juxtaposes them with western cultures individualism, which is a worthy effort for a social scientist, but he fails to ask whether there is a cost to conforming to those values. Since the Amish are a closed authoritarian society, there is a poverty around self-reflective activities that normally enable societies to work through social issues and moral dilemmas. Kraybill is an outside agent that could at a minimum create language for the issues that need to be wrestled with.
Labeling a problem is the first step towards determining a response. Kraybill's consistent rose colored view of Amish life colludes with the Amish leaders efforts to portray, any acknowledgment of problems within the church, as heresy. This squelches dissent or identification of problems and consequently any solutions. Because of this collusion Kraybill's legacy in the end, may be one of having harmed the community he studied.
Kraybill's contribution to how the rest of the world sees the Amish is also problematic. There is a real danger if the general public's perception of the Amish is too simple or rose colored. Our relationship with the Amish is going to demand practical real life solutions. Romanticism will hinder that effort. One of the problems affecting Kraybills work is a lack of aggressive peer review. Because the Amish are a closed society it is hard for anyone else to obtain information so they can test or refute Kraybills conclusions. After the shooting at the Amish school in Nickel Mines Kraybill was reported to have given over one hundred interviews. It doesn't matter how accurate he is on ninety percent of his work, with that kind of coverage if ten percent of his work is flawed, with no other works to serve as an emollient for his errors, the damage can be enormous.

NO.5
The local paper has repeatedly reported on three young Amish families who recently left the Amish church. The coverage referred to their efforts to evangelize the Old Order community they had just been expelled from. Contention over religious purity from people leaving the Amish church is common. What is unusual is the grandiose intent of this groups effort. They are holding an event called, "The Glory Barn", basically a revival meeting that is running non-stop 24\7, for fifty days from Easter to Pentecost. A mission statement on their web site envisions bringing a purer form of Christianity to all the Amish in the U.S. and the accompanying request for funds to enable them to personally fulfill that mission.
Also promoted on the web site is their intent to promote emotional and spiritual healing. What bothers me is, being ex-amish myself, I am aware of allegations that this group mistreated an Amish relative of mine whom they were trying to minister to. I contacted one of her siblings to ask if he would confirm the allegations. He strictly adhered to Amish custom of refusing to speak ill of others. I tried to explain the legitimacy of public interest in knowing the track record of a group who was garnering news coverage and publicly asking for support for a mission in which more innocent people would be entrusted to their care and influence. He proved himself a loyal Amish man but not a good defense attorney, by informing me that the family had an agreement with the health care provider, that assessed his sister after her stay with the "Glory Barn" folks, to not report her condition to authorities.
So I called the editor of the paper that ran the Glory Barn story, he informed me they were aware of the allegations. I wonder if he would take the same approach if his paper were covering a group of Pagans under similar circumstances. Given the popularity of fundamentalist Christianity in conservative circles in Lancaster, ( which is the purer version the Glory Barn participants want to convert all the Amish to.) this situation doesn't pass the smell test.

in conclusion; From High School Faculty, Supreme Court Justice, Social Worker, Scientist, to Reporter, in each example the competence and character to uphold certain values and function within a certain parameter is inherently responsible for why these individuals are entrusted with their jobs. But when they are dealing with the Amish for some reason a different standard applies.

Here's another letter I submitted to all three Lancaster Newspapers, It wasn't printed.

In a recent column, New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt wrote the following, "oped pages should be open especially to controversial ideas, because that's the way a free society decides what's right and wrong for itself, Good ideas prosper in the sunshine of healthy debate, and bad ones wither. Left hidden out of sight and unchallenged, the bad ones can grow like poisonous mushrooms.
The concept Hoyt refers to is useful in examining the idealized portrayals of the Amish so common currently in the media and academia for their ignorance of the realities that exist in a closed authoritarian society. The credible and established works on the Amish unfortunately are the most egregious. Inspite of their otherwise accurate portrayals they unanimously gloss over or omit referring to the benifits of a free society versus a closed, rigidly authoritarian one.
It may not be useful to make comparisons of the Amish with Fidel Castro's Cuba, but the similarities non-the-less are plentiful and the hypocrisy revealed by our different responses to the two couldn't be more stark. One thing is certain, any beneficiary of our free and open society, who idealizes the Amish and ignores the poverty that's inherently a part of their culture, demeans the centuries of progress all of western culture takes for granted and they promote a harmful environment which they themselves don't have to live in.

Another one, not printed

The deluge of news coverage glorifying of the Amish people's ability to forgive continues, "first book on Amish tragedy published" New era 5\31. Albeit with the caveat "that we shouldn't imagine that it is 'easier' for the amish than for 'normal' people"' to forgive. If any other group was refered to as the other of normal, there would be a law suit. Shame on the authur and the New Era for useing and perpetuating demeaning language. Suggesting we all start from the same place only magnafies the end result the Amish are portrayed as having attained.
The article informs us.
No. 1 The Amish think anger is unneccessary and are "startled" that anyone would find their response of forgiveness, rather than anger, "mysterious".
No. 2 Forgiveness is somthing the Amish take for granted and is innoculated in children.
No. 3 It's impossible for them not to forgive, because their salvation depends on it.
As a former Amish man I find these portrayals dehumanizing and unrecognizable. If we allow ourselves to be fed a view of Amish faith that is unrealistic and impracticle, we'll form perceptions that will add injury and insult to the horror they have already experienced.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great point, Elam