REUBEN

One of the chapters in Pauline Stevick's "Beyond the Plain and Simple" is titled "An Amish Intellectual". In it she writes;

Reuben is unusual in that he is more perceptive than most human beings,
English or Amish, and I often find myself challenged by his intellect. His
education has obviously not terminated with his eight years of formal
schooling.



he can't resist reading what is being written about his people. Sometimes
he responds in writing himself. When he does, the average reader may find it
difficult to discern that the critique has not been drafted by a person with
advanced degrees.



Reuben is often more adept at evaluating our way of life than we are at
understanding his.

Reuben demonstrates remarkable ability to communicate to groups as
well as individuals. He has been a speaker on at least two occasions to
assemblages at a local college. Once he addressed the behavioral science
department at a dinner, and another time he served on a panel with a lawyer and
a businessman, speaking to a group of over 250 students on lifestyle issues. A
professor who attended the session remarked afterward that his was easily
the most organized and articulate presentation of the
three.

He sounds like a sharp dude. Stevick writes that Reuben is now a bishop. I wonder if he will give his congregants the liberty to pursue the development of their intellects, or will they experience the "arbitrary, iron-fisted, and totalitarian control" of which the existence of, Reuben dismissed in his letter to the producers of ABC's 20/20 "The Secret of the Amish."

Stevick excerpts the letter.

With perfect aplomb, the reporter tells us that 20/20's search for truth has
revealed a dark side of Amish culture that heretofore has been hidden behind a
facade of quaint, pastoral tranquility. And now, for the first time in the
history of journalism, the true, correct, and completely honest account of Amish
culture has finally been revealed for all the world to see: Amish bishops rule
with an arbitrary, iron-fisted, and totalitarian control, which leaves their
constituency with no meaningful choices in life; and Amish parents habitually
abuse their children.

His use of the word "constituency," is certainly not a fair way to describe the relationship between Amish leadership and their congregants. It is, representative of the "political spin meister" nature of Reuben's writings.