Damsel in Distress! Anyone know anything about the Amish?

Specifically what kinda leadership structures there are and about their worship services? Please, please, please? *crosses fingers*

 

I know, for a fact, that they made a very excellent American film about them, called Witness.

 

The men have freaky-deaky beards.

Y'know what's funny? We can say anything we want about the Amish in this thread and none of them will ever be offended because they don't have computers.

 

No. That bowling movie was a good Amish movie.

 

Sir Kenobi, that is a most excellent point. Perhaps unkind, but certainly a good point, nonetheless.

 

I don't have time to go rent movies. *sniffle*

Old Order, anyway . . . Someone could tell them? That would be mean, though . . .

 

Ask Wylding. He's a Mennonite.

 

Listen to "Amish Paradise" by Wierd Al. That'll tell you all you need to know

 

I had to post the lyrics, couldn't resist (to the tune of Coolio's Gangsta's paradise):

As I walk through the valley where I harvest my grain
I take a look at my wife and realize she's very plain
But that's just perfect for an Amish like me
You know, I shun fancy things like electricity
At 4:30 in the morning I'm milkin' cows
Jebediah feeds the chickens and Jacob plows... fool
And I've been milkin' and plowin' so long that
Even Ezekiel thinks that my mind is gone
I'm a man of the land, I'm into discipline
Got a Bible in my hand and a beard on my chin
But if I finish all of my chores and you finish thine
Then tonight we're gonna party like it's 1699

We been spending most our lives
Living in an Amish paradise
I've churned butter once or twice
Living in an Amish paradise
It's hard work and sacrifice
Living in an Amish paradise
We sell quilts at discount price
Living in an Amish paradise

A local boy kicked me in the butt last week
I just smiled at him and turned the other cheek
I really don't care, in fact I wish him well
'Cause I'll be laughing my head off when he's burning in hell
But I ain't never punched a tourist even if he deserved
An Amish with a 'tude? You know that's unheard of
I never wear buttons but I got a cool hat
And my homies all I agree I look good in black... fool
If you come to visit, you'll be bored to tears
We haven't even paid the phone bill in 300 years
But we ain't really quaint, so please don't point and stare
We're just technologically impaired

There's no phone, no lights, no motorcar
Not a single luxury
Like Robinson Caruso
It's as primitave as can be

We been spending most our lives
Living in an Amish paradise
We're just plain and simple guys
Living in an Amish paradise
There's no time for sin and vice
Living in an Amish paradise
We don't fight, we all play nice
Living in an Amish paradise

Hitchin' up the buggy, churnin' lots of butter
Raised a barn on Monday, soon I'll raise another
Think you're really rightous? Think you're pure in heart?
Well, I know I'm a million times as humble as thou art
I'm the pious guy the little Amlettes wanna be like
On my knees day and night scorin' points for the afterlife
So don't be vain and don't be whiny
Or else, my brother, I might just have to get medieval on your heinie

We been spending most our lives
Living in an Amish paradise
We're all crazy Mennonites
Living in an Amish paradise
There's no cops or traffic lights
Living in an Amish paradise
But you'd probably think it bites
Living in an Amish paradise

 

AP is an awesome song!

 

Amish info

 

I don't think turning that in will get me credit. lol. ^ ^

 

Zasio,
Why don't you use a search engine to find the information you need, rather than asking a bunch of people on a SW message board?

Just a thought.

 

Oh, thank-you . . . I've looked at that site before, though (in fact I'm going through the links . . . ) And it doesn't really offer much when it comes to leadership structure . . .

 

I've been trying to . . . I only use this as a last resort? Because usually people (Pyrus!) are really good at getting the information I need . . . Sorry . . .

 

Hey, why the hell should we do your homework for you?

 

Hello, Zasio. Still feeling like the most useless person in the world?

 

they don't dance.

 

if the library in your school has an online database you can search from, try that. The scholary journals and such.

I work in our uni library and I guess I can help you look up stuff. Is there a particular search term you're looking at?

Or just Leadership System in the Amish community?

(I doubt there'll be stuff but we can try)

EDIT: btw, a particular branch?
Mennonites, Hutterites? (whoa, just realized that word is legit heh)

 

Mennonites are NOT amish. I can tell you that because I am mennonite.

 

From an article:
"The First Migration into Canada
brought about 2000 Swiss Mennonites from Pennsylvania to Upper Canada after the American Revolution. They acquired land from private owners in the Niagara Peninsula and in York and Waterloo counties. This group was followed by Amish Mennonites (named after Bishop Jacob Ammon, a conservative leader of the late 17th century). From 1825 to the mid-1870s about 750 settled on crown land in Waterloo County and nearby."

FRANK H. EPP AND RODNEY J. SAWATSKY, Mennonites. , The 1998 Canadian Encyclopedia, 09-06-1997.

Actually, I don't know much about the Amish or Mennonites. From what I've seen so far, they're 2 of the main 3 communal sects out there (the 3rd one being Hutterites)

COuld be people just clump them in one collective term (Amish) wihtout knowing the real reason (or if its true or not)

 

There are two types of Mennonites.
1. The stereotypical one - they are like the Amish.
2. Mennonites that are like any other Christian religion.

Sorry, if I jumped on you - I just get sick of that stereotype.

 

no sweat. I didn't get the impression of you jumping on me anyways...

Nice to clear that up. I hate it when people assume too much about Christianity either.


Zas, here's an article I found from Electric Library. It's titled Technology Amish style You can try looking for more stuff by the same author

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD


-------------------------

When it comes to technology, the Amish aren't really close-minded, just choosy.


And given the success of their way of life, we might want to take some lessons from them.


We were busily working, the Amish crew and I, dismantling an old house to gather a cheap lumber supply. The good would be used for a new dwelling now partially completed on the southeast slope of my recently purchased property. After a year and a half living amongst the Amish, my wife Mary and I have decided to stay, and although we have declined to join the Amish church, our "advisory board" - a plain-dressed widower and his four grown children - has exceeded what we thought possible in their friendliness and eagerness to assist.



"Eric...!" someone was calling to me. "Maybe you could come over here and do this for us." What special task have they singled out for me? I wondered. I tiptoed across the exposed floor joists and looked. On the floor below, one of my new Amish friends gazed up plaintively and pointed to an overhead light fixture near my feet. "Could you please take those lights down?" he asked. I suppressed a giggle. I no more knew how to take apart an electric light than how to tie a double half-hitch. Did he actually suppose that because I had grown up in an electrified environment I knew how electric lights were put together?



In fact, he might well have made such an assumption. In many or most Amish settlements, everyone does know how to do everything. Many women know carpentry, including the daughter in the family that was helping me tear down the old house and build the new one. The other day I happened upon an Amish wife sawing boards for a piece of furniture she was building. Cabinetry is her hobby. Simply speaking, most work demands that have been broken down into innumerable fields of specialization in modern technological culture have remained whole among the Amish. Families will fail to make ends meet unless all household members know how to do sundry interconnected tasks - among them growing, preserving, and preparing for the table most of their food; constructing and maintaining homes; making clothes; and often even medicating themselves.



Underlying the reluctance to specialize is an awareness of how well shared know-how helps keep Amish society stable. Without it, how could Amish neighbors so readily join together in undertakings such as tearing down or building a house? Or threshing wheat? This is not to say the Amish are necessarily experts in each of the tasks to which they aspire. "I don't do anything long enough to get good at it," an Amish fellow once told me with a self-effacing chuckle. Still, the extent of their mastery is considerable. A glance at their efforts reveals beautiful, well-maintained farms thriving in an age when many others cannot even survive. Inhabitants of what seems to be a provincial backwater, the Amish turn out to be surprisingly enlightened, at least with regard to the material conditions of their life. Next to them I feel sheltered from the world around me.



I feel oddly ungrounded as well. Life in a fast-paced society is next to impossible without narrowing one's focus - few of us have the time to learn the inner workings of such conveniences-cum-necessities as cars and computers - and it is axiomatic that in narrowing one's focus one can lose sight of the larger picture. But that's not the only problem. New developments continually evolve in the myriad areas that this narrowed focus excludes. The result is that people are often plagued by what seems like uncontrollable change.



The Amish, by contrast, consciously steer their cultural course in the sea of alternatives opened b

 

I see the buggies whenever I'm coming back from school.



Anyway, my newspaper ran a three week story on local Amish. I'll try and see if I can find anything for you.


I do remember that the structure is similar to old German farming villages. Um, and there isn't one standing church. Worshippers congregate at different houses in the community.


EDIT: Not the best journalism, but here you are:

Amish don't spurn all technology

Amish own a variety of businesses

Rules and custom give order to Amish life

Amish try to manage their own legal affairs

Discipline is a key to success in Amish schools

Enjoy.

 

I can't give links to mine because they're subscription stuff...

Anyway, here's a little blurb I got:

The Amish operate on the theory of Gelassenheit-a German word meaning submission-or yielding to a higher authority. Rachel calls it the "order of headship," and she says it goes in this sequence: God, Christ, church, man, woman.

The article is pretty neat. Some stuff about their church in the end. If you need to retrieve it, here's the abstract.

In the name of tradition
New Woman; New York; Oct 1996; Cohen, Sherry Suib;

Volume: 26
Issue: 10
UMI Publication No.: 02958873

Start Page: 144
Page Count: 6
Text Word Count: 4332
Document Type: Feature
Source Type: PERIODICAL
ISSN: 00286974
Subject Terms: Personal profiles
Lifestyles
Amish culture

UMI Article Re. No.: GNWW-2026-14
UMI Journal Code: GNWW
Abstract:
While the rest of the world embraces a culture revering what's new and easy, the Amish carefully retain tradition, and they do so with joy. Cohen describes the life of a woman who is a member of the Old Order Amish, who lives exactly as her mother and her grandmother did before her.