Donald B. Kraybill - What the Amish Teach Us: Plain Living in a Busy World

WHAT THE AMISH TEACH US

PLAIN LIVING IN A BUSY WORLD

Donald B. Kraybill

Johns Hopkins University Press | BALTIMORE

2021 Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kraybill, Donald B., author.

Title: What the Amish teach us : plain living in a busy world / Donald B. Kraybill.

Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020057352 | ISBN 9781421442174 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781421442181 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Conduct of life. | AmishConduct of life.

Classification: LCC BJ1589 K73 2021 | DDC 158.1dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057352

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible.

I know it sounds audacious. But its true. The Amish have much to teach us. It may seem strange, even surreal, to turn to one of Americas most traditional groups for lessons about living in a hyper-tech worldespecially a horse-driving people who have resisted progress by snubbing cars, public grid power, and even high school education.

Nonetheless, the Amish deserve a hearing. Their wisdom confirms that old turns new again. Or in the words of another truism, perhaps theyre so far behind, theyre out ahead. So before you toss aside this seemingly ludicrous notion that we can learn something from a low-tech people, consider these facts.

The Amish have out-Ubered Uber since they began hiring rides from neighbors nearly a century ago. They were also into solar power before it was green. Their engineers have developed sophisticated sky tubes for lighting off-grid buildings. Amish entrepreneurs, who never entered high school, have built thousands of successful businesses. Moreover, Amish collaboration with scientists in advanced genomic research has brought pathbreaking medical discoveries. The loneliness epidemic that stalks our society has largely bypassed Amishland. And these are the people whose courage enabled them to forgive, within hours, the man who gunned down ten of their children. They have much to teach us.

Amish ways intrigue. The so-called reality TV shows Breaking Amish and Amish Mafia capture high viewer ratings. The odd genre of bonnet novels, which have flooded bookshelves over the past two decades, has made millions in sales. Amish-wannabe books like Almost Amish: One Womans Quest for a Slower, Simpler, More Sustainable Life also abound. Amish quilts continue to enchant the world of modern art. Plus, some twenty million tourists generate $2 billion a year for a peek at Amish life in Pennsylvania and the Midwest. On many a metric, the Amish score high.

Yet beneath our curiosity, we hold widely different views of these traditional people.

Some of us applaud their strong families, staunch communities, and stubborn resistance to advanced technology. These untarnished tillers of the soila kind of eighteenth-century culture plopped into twenty-first-century lifeappear to preserve the best of what we used to be, a kind of utopian remnant of a virtuous American past. Champions of this blissful view consider Americas Amish the guardians of an ethical tradition that still sets a standard for today.

Others see the Amish as vestiges of a bygone eraa cute relic of colonial life, stirring apple butter over a fire, churning milk by hand, and baking bread in a beehive ovenwho have nothing to offer us now.

Still other people deride themclaiming that Amish society stifles individual freedom and hampers human creativity. These critics consider the Amish an archaic group that perpetuates patriarchy, in-group marriage, and taboos on divorce. They allege that Amish members blindly follow communal traditions that restrict education, reject science, and shun many achievements of the twentieth century.

The real Amish, in all their diversity, are not so easy to pin down.

Discontent with modern life leads some people to fantasize that the Amish can save us or at least lead us out of our cultural quagmire. For example, the 2017 post-apocalyptic novel When the English Fall depicts Amish people as low-tech organic farmers who survive the collapse of American civilization as it implodes into anarchy from climate change. Frankly, I dont think the Amish can save us. And they would be quick to agree. Stillthe thought intrigues.

Overwhelmed with the troubles of our times or the troubles in their own lives, some seekers see a lot of good in the Amishso much so that they yearn to join them. However, Im not recruiting for the Amish. Im not even hinting that you should join an Amish community or pack your bags and head for the boondocks. Nor am I proposing that we cut and paste their habits into our contemporary lives and try to mimic how they live. You may want to explore some of those options, but thats not what this books about.

So what is this book about?

I have given hundreds of presentations on Amish culture as a scholar of Anabaptist groups and culture. After these presentations, people often ask, So what did you learn from the Amish? This book answers that question. It chronicles the lessons they have taught me, lessons of benefit for all of us that include universal themes of family and community.

For me, Amish ways disturb and disrupt. They disturb some assumptions that I take for granted. They disrupt my old habits, my predispositions, and my fixed understandings of how I think the world works. They certainly uproot my a priori assumptions about progress and prod me to question why I do what I do. In this sense, the Amish are silent social criticsoffering a critique of modern culture that is intellectually provocative yet always practical.

An excursion into Amish life sheds light on our culture and allows us to see our own lives from a new perspective. Understanding how they cope with modernity invites us to examine our own assumptions and practices more carefully. It also nudges us to reflect more deeply on the meaning of our lives.

Amish life is not an antidote for all our modern ills. The Amish are not perfect or angelic. As one grandmother told me, We have our good ones and our bad ones just like you. Like any society, they have shortcomings and social maladies aplenty. Despite those warts, they have much to teach us.