AMISH LOBBYIST?

From the Sunday News

A rare coalition of Amish and English farmers has vowed to keep pursuing a proposal for an ag security area axed last week by East Lampeter Township

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The merits of the ag security area aside, Participation in government is a watershed issue for the Amish. The aspect that is the most problematic for them is that they're willing to participate when the issue effects them financially. Somehow business issues are exempt from the "separate and apart" dictum. It would be nice if the esteemed sociologists that are so famous for their work on the Amish, stopped treating them like laboratory mice, and wrote about this issue in a way that the Amish could benefit from it.

WHERE'S THE PRESS?

Book on pacifists during the civil war. found here

In looking at this event, the authors covered the relationship of
faithfulness and relevance and responsibility and idealism involving the conflicts Mennonites and Amish faced to emphasize that their positions were not without their own set of difficulties.
The book serves as a good reminder that not all churches immersed
themselves in super-charged patriotism for either the Confederacy or the Union and, according to Nolt, highlights the stories of Christians who did not accept war as a means of solving deep conflicts. “We wanted to add to the wider Civil War literature the story of conscientious objectors and the role of religion in questioning war,” Nolt said.

Is it to much to ask, where is the press on this subject currently, why do we have to wait for historians to write about it?

citizenship

From the Intell.

The Amish get something many American Christians seem to have a
hard time grasping: We are citizens of God's kingdom first. As such, we have loyalties that may very well put us at odds with the state.

Are we going to take citizenship serious or not? What many references to the Amish response to the Nickel Mines tragedy fail to grasp is the extent that the Amish renounce citizenship. Failure to take this into account leaves attempts at deriving meaning from the Amish response to the shooting in a fairyland similiar to a Rorshach test, (ie; it's what ever you want it to be.)

bs

From the Intell.

The Amish, on the other hand, look to the Gospel for mandates
on guidance how to forgive, love their enemies and trust in God's providential care for them.
For Christians who struggle with the way their faith can be
diluted and warped in cultural practice, the purity of the way in which the Amish responded to last October's West Nickel Mines school shootings offered a lesson in cultural and religious integrity.

(sigh) And so the clap trap is promulgated

. What purity and what lessons? The best she can do is cite Kraybill? It's all hocus pocus and further exploitation.