Amish Grace and forgiveness

I hope everyone had a good Christmas.

In the book Amish Grace, which is about the shooting of 10 and killing of five Amish girls at the Nickel Mines schoolhouse in 2006, we see the Amish dwell with some wonder on how much easier it can be to forgive someone you don't know for a big crime than to forgive the people in your community for small transgressions.

I was a religion reporter at the time of the shootings and the Christian News Wire overflowed for awhile with Christians (white, privileged males) stunned and brimming with revelatory enthusiasm for this display of ... Christianity inherent in the Amish forgiving the killer and his family. I remember not being too forgiving of these pundits ... This Amish forgiveness is a revelation? Huh? Isn't this, like, .... you know, "dude," your FAITH? You've been bombastically blowbagging on this wire service about Christianity the whole time I've been a religion reporter and it takes the Nickel Mines shooting for you to "get" what forgiveness is ... ie, the heart of Christianity, what Jesus-died-for?

I remember after 9/11, first hoping fervently that it would be found an act of domestic terrorism, ala Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. My thinking was that if it were domestic terrorism, we'd avoid a war. When I discovered it was Islamic terrorists I realized OK, being a military state, the US will have to drop some bombs on Afghanistan, but let's pray it's short and quick. Beyond that, the passage about "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you" and ... significantly... your lap will be filled with good things, pressed down and flowing over ... rose unbidden to my mind almost constantly. I did feel a forgiveness that had nothing to do with reason and everything to do with living in the spirit. I was surprised to find the rest of the world--even the Christian world--not with me on this.

At that time, I thought, as the Amish later did, well, who am I to forgive? I didn't lose anyone in the attacks. And--how is it that I can forgive this horrendous act and yet become incandescent with homicidal rage when a teenager cuts me off on the highway, causing me to fishtail into the lane with the oncoming 18 wheeler? I would certainly have vaporized that clueless teen, though he clearly had no malice towards me, in an instant. Or why was it so hard for me to forgive the person in my old meeting who stood up shaking with rage over the FUM employment policy but who couldn't see that I felt just as marginalized as a gay person when I heard an Easter message denying the resurrection? When that person told me I was wrong to feel marginalized? When that person dismissed the Israelis and the Palestinians and said they "just have to learn to get along," but then attacked FUM in the most scathing terms and said we had to split from them? Was that such a big deal?

I think of the Browning poem," Soliloquy of the Spanish Courtyard," in which one cloistered brother hates another for no good reason: "Grr, there go, my heart's abhorrence! Water your damned flowerpots do! If hate killed, Brother Lawrence, God's blood would not mine kill you!" Brother Lawrence's offences include needing to go trim his myrtle bush and inquiring after the Latin name of parsley ... in word, he innocently grates on his antagonist's nerves.

When I first read this poem as a college freshman, I saw the narrator as completely other ... and while the intensity of his hatred is extreme, I now realize we all have a touch of him inside us.

I think it's popular to denigrate the Amish--perhaps they speak too strongly to our longings, so we have to keep reminding ourselves that evil patriarchs and pedophiles mingle among them, as well as liars, drug addicts, oppressors and scoundrels... but I think, collectively, the Amish have much wisdom to offer. I do ponder, as they do, how we can be so unforgiving over the small stuff. Any thoughts?

Amish Grace and Quakers

Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy by Donald Kraybill, Steven Nolt, and David Weaver-Zercher focuses on the Amish capacity to forgive after a troubled non-Amish man shot 10 and killed five Amish girls in the Nickle Mines schoolhouse in 2006. To explain the Amish ability to forgive, the authors delve into Amish theology.

I am struck, as I have been before, by similarities between the Quakers and the Amish. Both are peace churches that believe in simplicity, community and integrity. Both seek to "finish" the Reformation by bringing the Christianity back to its earliest beginnings, stripping it down to its essentials.

But the Quakers and Amish have also forked away from each other. Most Quakers don't express simplicity through distinctive dress, habits or transportation. Most Quakers have gone the way of the wider culture in valuing individualism over community. Quakerism from its start embraced equalitarianism, whereas the Amish have always been patriarchal. About 15% of Quakers have moved away from the centrality of Christ to embrace a full-fledged universalism, while the Amish are all devoutly Christ-centered. Many of those Quaker churches that still embrace the centrality of Christ have moved away from Quaker distinctives that Amish groups share, such as no paid clergy, opting instead to hire a minister.

As with the Amish, the Quakers, I believe, put forgiveness at the heart of their faith practice. Peace churches, almost by definition, replace revenge and retaliation with forgiveness. But what if the Quakers adopted some of the Amish practices to underscore forgiveness? Would this help us?

1. "In the Amish faith, the authority of the community overshadows the freedom of the individual."(92) "'Individualism,' said a 40-year-old Amish father, "is the great divide between us and outsiders.'" (93) The primacy of the community is stressed in the following ways:

a. verbal expressions of personal faith are seen as prideful, as if one is showing off one's religious knowledge. Individual interpretations of the Bible and personal testimonies are seen as "haughtiness." "For the Amish, genuine spirituality is quiet, reserved and clothed in humility, revealing itself in actions rather than words. Wisdom is tested by the community, not by an individual's feelings, eloquence of persuasion." (94)

b. crafting your own prayers is seen as prideful. They use the Lord's prayer.

Some of the practices that Amish Grace pinpoints as laying a groundwork for forgiveness are:

2. Emphasis on the New Testament, and especially the gospels. The Lancaster Amish Lectionary focuses on Matthew 1-12, which includes the Sermon on the Mount, for the first 12 weeks of every year. What if we focused on the Sermon on the Mount for three months of the year?

3. Frequent recitation of the Lord's prayer, as noted above. This would bother some, as a rote prayer might seem a "counterfeit" faith, but a thoughtful and frequent recitation--a mindful praying-- might be helpful.

Given that a roomful of Quakers can be markedly lacking in humility, would we do well to adopt some of these practices?

Amish and Quakers

Are these Amish for real or do they roll up their stage set at the end of the day and plop down in front of their flat screen TVs? I asked this question to my friend Jane as we drove from the Amish vegetable stand. Jane laughed and said she knew what I meant. Especially in a world where so much is based on illusion and deception-- the culture of the faux 1950s diner, the faux "handmade" crafts from a factory in China, the idyllic Main Street lined with all-American houses that only mulit-millionaires can afford--it can be almost mind boggling to accept that the Amish really and truly live as they do.

Yet it's true. They may have all the pathologies of the rest of us, but they do live simply. All around in Barnesville, the Amish occupy farms recognizable by simple white frame houses, laundry drying on the line, black metal buggies parked alongside barns. No cars, no electricity.

It's cool to have them here and in the world because money can't manufacture them and because they are a visible reminder that we don't have to live the way we live, with our toxic levels of consumption, violence, stress and waste. There is an alternative lifestyle that is not imaginary, impossible or utopic but which is happening now, all around us. It's flawed, we know that, but it's here.

On the same trip, Jane and I visited our friend "Sarah," an Amish woman who sells us bread--organic homebaked bread for $1.50 a loaf!--milk, butter and eggs. Her house, with its glossy white walls and simple dark curtains, her woodburning stove and long table with the plain white plastic cloth, is filled with the activities of her life--canning, drying apples, sewing, quilting. Although we can never call to tell her we're coming, she always has time for us. Other Amish might not be so welcoming, but she is.

I almost want to cry with gratitude when I see all her happy-seeming chickens wandering around the house grazing because it means I can buy eggs that have not been produced by grossly overcrowded birds whose beaks are torn off at birth to prevent them pecking each other to death from the stress of their living conditions.

Her son, middle-school aged, showed us a "fiction" book he reads, a book of gentle poems about God illustrated with color pictures that must have been drawn in the 1940s and 1950s. He seemed pleased to have it. How many 12 year old boys from our culture would show off such a book? Another time, we came on a holy day in which the family was resting, and the father was coloring in pictures of birds with crayons. What adult male in our culture would do that? I am astonished that such lives are possible.

We so quickly give up the gentle pleasures of childhood--coloring pictures, enjoying simple prayers. Why do these activities seem so silly to us? Aren't we supposed to come to the Kingdom of Heaven as little children?

I made a comment to Jane as we drove up Sarah's rutty dirt driveway towards the road and home that the Amish seem gentler and more at peace than we do and why-don't-we-raise-our-children-their-way? She reminded me that incidents of child abuse among the Amish are about equal to the larger culture. How do we measure child abuse, I wonder? What do these statistics reveal and obscure?

I know it can be easy ... blah, blah ... to idealize the Amish, who, as humans like the rest of us, have the same failings. But as I said to Jane, the Amish don't start wars. They almost never kill people. That's a start. They show us, in the words of Dorothy Day, that we can build a world in which it is easier for people to be good.

As for Quakers, while I don't think we're called to be as removed from the world as the Amish, we share so much in common with the Amish-- the peace and simplicity testimonies for starters--that it's hard not to feel a kinship. Is there a way we can learn from them without either romanticizing their flawed lives or seeing them as nothing more than an outmoded, oppressive patriarchy? Where's the gray area?

Another Amish visit

Recently, I once again saw my Amish acquaintance "Sarah" and had a conversation with her about the economy. I asked her if the Amish were likely to feel the impact of the economic problems in the wider world or if they were insulated from that shock.

At first, she didn't know what I meant, but as we talked it became clear that the Amish were worried about the larger economy. Those who own stores or businesses are bracing for a downturn in business. The community may have to bail out some members who have gotten too far into bank debt. Some in the community fear that "our people" (the non-Amish) will steal from them if we have no jobs or money.

I told her that perhaps what the Amish own are not the first things thieves would desire, but she didn't seem convinced.

On a lighter note, Sarah showed me the apples she was drying over the wood stove in her living. Her living room is just like her dining room, except it doesn't have a long table or a sink. It was evening, and she turned on the kerosene lamp, which dimly lit a part of the the room. As for the apples, she had cut them up and placed the slices in a wooden box with many flat drawers. This box fits over the woodstove. The apples stand in the heat for about 48 hours, at which point they are transferred to jars.

Sarah also showed me the beautiful quilt she is making, and the stacks of wooden benches piled against one wall. She said they were used for the Sunday meeting for worship, which was held recently at her house. Tweny-eight families attend and most are young, with lots of children, she said.

Sarah is the kindest and gentlest of people. When I leave her house, I have to remind myself that she and her surroundings are real. She seems so perfectly conformed to a storybook image of the Amish, as does her house. Yet, it's real. Then, I wonder, as I drive along her rutty driveway back to the real world, how do I know I'm not imagining all this, because it is all so perfectly how I might imagine the Amish? I ponder the story of the Chinese philosopher who woke up from a dream of being a butterfly and wondered if he were a man dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being a man. I remember, in the end, though, that there is enough trouble and vexation in the world, even here in the hinterlands, to convince me that this is real life, Amish and all.

Visit to an Amish House, 1

On Friday, I visited an Amish farm. I was quite excited to go.

The farm was a few miles from where I live, off a narrow, gravel road and down a windy, rutty driveway into a hollow.

My first thought was "this isn't the 19th century, it's the 18th century."

Before us was a white frame farmhouse with a cow and dozens of red chickens strutting around in the foresty front yard. It reminded me of the Kiera Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice, in which pigs and poultry live outside the Bennet's door. I saw a black buggy tucked near the side of an outbuilding.

We met "Sara" and her son. Sara wore a long, light blue workdress, black work boots, and spoke with what sounded like a German accent. She was very kind. She showed us pears she had ripening between two blankets in her living room. One variety will become pear butter; the other will be preserved. The room also held a woodburning stove and a single bed with a quilt.

In her kitchen/dining room she had a long, narrow dining room table covered with a plastic tablecloth. I remember an enamel sink. Under the windows along the wall overlooking the front yard, she had shelves filled with empty glass canning jars. The walls of both rooms were bare, as you would expect, except for hooks for hanging clothes and implements. The walls were painted sky blue and white. Everything was very still and serene.

While there, I was struck by two things. The first that I was talking to a woman who really could have been transported straight from the 18th century. She may never have seen television or driven in a car. The difference between her, and say, a Jane Austen character, however, is that she would be aware of cars and television and other forms of technology.

The second was a flash I had, one of those moments of opening, when you really, truly see how excessively we "English" live. I don't want to idealize the Amish, and as people tell me, and I agree, I wouldn't --or couldn't-- live as they do. I'm a creature of my culture and moving to a technologically primitive farm life would be painful and difficult for me. That's not to say it wouldn't be "better" (how do I know?) but I imagine that, like one of those children raised by wolves or dolphins, I couldn't, at my age, make the transition. That said, I had my flash, standing in that simple, unadorned home, of how we overload our homes with stuff. No wonder there's an epidemic of obesity (aside, of course, from the glut of food). Our homes are filled with plush, upholstered sofas and armchairs, thick carpets, remote controls, every convenience that would encourage us to loll around being inactive. With its pears and canning jars lined up as if she were running an apothecary shop, Sara's home, in contrast, was a workplace. There was nothing upholstered, no entertainment center. It was a place to work, to eat, and to sleep. Quiet though it was, it seemed more a center of a life than perhaps many of our homes do. It seemed idyllic. It seemed like a miracle that such a place and such people still exist.

Anyway, I thought of those high Victorian rooms you see in photos or sometimes reproduced in museums, where every inch of space is covered in patterned wallpaper, tasselled pillows, and dozens of pieces of bric-a-brac crowded onto every conceivable surface. The rooms are so overstuffed and overdone you can want to throw up. And for just a second, I saw that perhaps we live the same way. That we do live the same way.

I had a similar flash about six years ago. (These flashes, which stick with me, seem to be places where the Eternal breaks through to critique the Now.) It was raining and the kids had to go to school. I began a frantic search for the boys' hooded raincoats, recently purchased. I found jackets, coats and sweaters of every conceivable sort hanging on hooks, on hangars, even crumpled into backpacks, but no raincoats. And I had that flash that we are drowning in such excess that it becomes a form of deprivation. You can't find what you need. You replace order with chaos. I say this, too, knowing we were hardly the most high consumption family in the neighborhood. We were trying to live simply.

While I can't realistically conceive of living exactly as the Amish do, I admire them for putting God at the center of their lives. I see them as patterns, not to be slavishly followed, but from whom we can learn. And I feel grateful to William Penn for opening up this country to them.

Visit to an Amish House 2

As I reflect on my visit to the Amish house, I think about how little the Amish -- especially the more conservative Amish, such as those who live here -- are likely to be ruffled by the current financial meltdown. They don't buy health insurance, so they don't have to worry about losing it. Their jobs, mainly in farming, will continue. They don't go into debt. You can't imagine an Amish person having signed a subprime mortgage. They haven't participated in the frenzy of overconsumption that has seized mainstream America, so are not going to be convulsed by having to cut back on designer clothes and expensive meals out. They will go on spending much as they have. They are not likely to contribute to the breakdown of the American economy by suddenly putting the brakes on consumption. I can envision their lives continuing placidly, much as they always have, connected to the Eternal. Those who earn their living through tourism and more interaction with the outer world may face some contraction, but I wonder how severe it will be.

I tried to research the Amish and the Great Depression on the Web to see how they fared during that period, but came away with very little: One site claimed the Amish were unaffected by the economic turmoil of the 1930s, while another site said that some Amish were forced to take jobs outside the confines of their community to survive the Depression, with some even driving trucks. That was what I could discover.

As for now, I am glad they are growing in numbers at much faster pace than the population as a whole. If there was ever a time we needed an example of simple living and community self-help, this is it.

I was a bit stunned to read in the New York Times today the that the $700 billion bailout is a mere "pebble" flung into an ocean of crisis. Wasn't the bailout supposed to be what was needed, immediately, to solve this financial situation? Now, we learn, it will take at least a month to set up the framework for the bailout and that the bailout will not solve the current problem of the seized-up credit markets. So if the frozen credit markets are the current pressing problem, and the bailout is a more long-term solution, what IS the answer to the current crisis? All I have heard is that Fed needs to lower interest rates. I hope the Fed will do that, if it's important, but is that it? Is that the short-term answer? Is the Great Recession (since was are assured it will NOT be the Great Depression) inevitably here in all it's unmitigated force? Was there really nothing to be done? Could all the banks decide to take a big, gulping breath and start lending money to each other again? Isn't commerce supposed to be about risk? (Since I wrote this, I read the Fed is moving to buy up short term loans.)

As I contemplated all this economic turmoil, not without some worry, it struck me that I was putting my faith in money to solve this problem ... and all future problems, such as my retirement and that of my friends and neighbors. And, of course, the real underlying issue is spiritual. We need to get our spiritual house in order. This really is about greed and lack of trust. We could truly transcend the crisis if we could work together out of religious conviction to build a nation for the good of all.

The answer is not 700 billion dollars but 700 billion fervent prayers.

Plain Secrets: Faith Practices

The chapter "The Lot Falls," in Joe Mackall's Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish, gives us a window into the workings of the Amish faith among the Swartzentruber Amish.

Sam Shetler, Mackall's Amish friend and neighbor, is chosen to be a minister. His church district has one bishop, two ministers and a deacon. As a minister, Samuel will preach and look out for the material welfare of the community.

Unlike most faiths, where a person hears a call and goes for specific ministerial training, Swartzentruber Amish ministers are called by the community (and God), work without specific training, as well as without pay or any diminution of their other duties. Most men (and it's always men) hope to be spared this heavy burden, Mackall said.

Samuel is called to become a minister at one of the church's twice yearly communions. Communions occur two weeks after a meeting of the entire baptized church body but only if the entire church body is in unity. During the pre-Communion meeting every individual in the church, male or female, publicly reaffirms his or her commitment to the church rules, known as the Ordnung. If a person has a problem with the Ordnung, he or she is supposed to air it at the meeting. Communion can't occur until any problems are resolved. Sometimes the resolution is for a group to break off and form a new Amish group with a different Ordnung.

To find a new minister, as the Swartzentruber Amish do at one pre-Communion meeting, everybody, male or female, votes. This happens the following way: a current minister stands at an open window. Everyone files by, one by one, and speaks the name of the man they'd like to become minister. A scribe writes all the names down. Any man who gets more than two votes moves on to stage two.

In stage two, the chosen men stand before the church community. In Samuel's case, he stands with seven other men. Eight hymnals are spread out in a table. In one, a "lot" is placed, a slip of paper saying "you are chosen." The books are moved all around on the table so that nobody knows which one holds the paper. Each man picks up a book. The one who chooses the book with the paper in it becomes the minister. In this case, it's Samuel.

Mackall describes other aspects of Amish faith: humility, a literal belief in aspects of the Bible, such as the creation story and the Virgin birth, that are treated more skeptically in other parts of Christendom, a need to live in a community submitting itself to Christ, adult baptism, every individual having a voice in the election of leaders and in the life of the church, staying apart from the "wicked" wider world "that the devil has planted," a peace testimony that says that violence belongs to governments and is outside of the "perfection of Christ" and a refusal to swear oaths.

For Quakers reading this, much of the above "theology," articulated in the mid-16th century, will seem familiar. There's no doubt that Quakers were influenced by much of this anabaptist understanding. Humility (which I think the Quakers would refer to as simplicity) is a part of Quakerism, as is the peace testimony and the refusal to swear oaths. Like the Amish, our leaders are unpaid and many people shy away from the burden of that responsibility. Like the Amish, Quakers must be "gathered," with every single person in unity, before true "communion" can occur. (I'm oversimplifying, but trying to show the connections.) Essentially, in the Amish willingness to give everyone a say in the community, we can see the seeds of the more radical equality of the Quakers. When I write articles about the terrible frustration experienced, say, by women in the Roman Catholic church, who have absolutely no say in who gets into leadership in the church hierarchy, I can appreciate how valuable it is for a woman to have a vote for a minister or the right to stand up and challenge the Ordnung. While Amish women may seem oppressed to the outside world, I know Roman Catholic women who would give almost anything to have privileges of an Amish woman transferred to the RC church.

On the other hand, I also understand the second class citizenship of the women that Mackall describes (how seldom women, for example, actually challenge the Ordnung, a silence or acquiescence which Mackall attributes to social indoctrination) and I better perceive how Quakers were able to take female equality before God to the next level by allowing women to take any position in the community.

Quakers, though they have had periods of withdrawal, value engagement with the "wicked" world as a way to correct present evils, though a compelling argument can be made that they have paid a high price through becoming much more conformed to that world. Many modern-day Quakers have split from the Amish in a move from Christ-centered community. I also see differences in the peace testimony: I would say the Quakers are less likely to accede to the proposition that wars are for governments and more likely to oppose all war, all the time. On the other hand, I wonder if we as a group practice day-to-day non-violence to the same extent as the Amish. I am also impressed that in an Amish minister, spiritual and material concerns have equal weight: the Amish minister is responsible for the physical needs as well as the soul of his community. I believe that Jesus meant for us to have this kind of caring for each other. Mackall, like others, is moved when he sees this caring in practice, such as during a barn raising.

Mackall admits he doesn't really "get" the faith that drives Samuel and other Amish, and while he describes their faith well, it is clear to me as a Quaker that Mackall truly doesn't "get" it. But something in him is drawn to Samuel because Samuel's life, as the Quakers would say, is a "pattern" of faithful living. For instance, when Mackall's Uncle Bob, who suffered brain damage as a child, dies, Mackall instinctively turns to Samuel's spiritual strength.

Mackall is angry that a doctor "screwed up" an operation that left Uncle Bob mentally impaired. How does a God that would let this happen square with Samuel's faith?

"God made Uncle Bob that way because everyone who knew him needed him to be exactly the way he was," Samuel says.

Mackall remembers what a friendly and open-hearted person Uncle Bob was. More than 500 people came to his funeral "sob[bing] for a man with a victimized brain and a damaged heart." Mackall drops an intellectual debate over the nature of God and simply let's Samuel's words soak in. "God made Uncle Bob that way because everyone who knew him needed him to be exactly the way he was." He feels less angry. He understands that Samuel is not trying to evangelize, but is saying what he truly believes.

"I was comforted by his words," Mackall writes. "Instead of fighting usual intellectual battles with myself or with Samuel, I simply gave myself to the moment, allowing Samuel's philosophy to be mine as long as I stayed on the farm."

What do you think? Or as the Quakers would put it: What canst thou say?

Plain Secrets 3

In today's blog on Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish by Joe Mackall, I'll discuss some of the highlights of this book, which is about the conservative Swartzentruber Amish of northern Ohio.

Mackall deals at length with buggies, which are of symbolic as well as practical importance to the Amish way of life. He points out that there is no more potent symbol of the Amish to the outside world than the buggy. Also, no Amish group, no matter has liberal, has given up the buggy. They may air-condition them, put in modern upholstery and attach headlights, but all groups are wedded to the buggy.

This is not because of nostalgia for an idealized 19th-century past. Instead, Mackall says, the buggy holds the community together. Buggy travel is slow and this keeps the Amish close to home, he says. It keeps them tied to the community. Mackall describes a trip he takes to a Home Depot with his friend Samuel. It takes about two hours to drive the 10 miles by buggy and after they arrive, they spend a long time in the store, both because frugal Samuel has to calculate building supply prices to the penny, but also because the horses need time to rest. Not only does the buggy tie Samuel to his community, it also causes people to adapt to a slower, more natural life rhythm.

Mackall is also critical of the buggy, at least as the Swartzentruber Amish use it. Unlike other groups, they won't put on lights, so the buggies can be difficult to see in the dark. As I remember, they have compromised and will use some sort of reflective sticker, but that can be difficult to see in a fast moving car until it's too late.

As a neighbor, and as himself a parent, Mackall worries about the safety of the buggies on roads increasingly crowded with cars. (My impression is that the roads near Mackall's and the Amish homes are sparsely traveled by the standards of most of America but have seen an increase in cars. The Amish worry about the increased number of cars, but seem unwilling to change their ways. ) Mackall cites statistics about accidents and fatalities with buggies, which are low, but still occur. Mackall is frustrated, because he believes many of the accidents and fatalities could be prevented.

He also worries about the Amish habit of letting children stand in the back of the fragile buggies. Once, he's sees a young child fall out of the back of buggy that is only secured with an X made by two bungee cords. The child hits its head, but the father insists the youngster is fine. Mackall is concerned and again, frustrated that the Amish won't take more precautions.

He notes that Swartzentruber Amish approach medicine somewhat differently from the rest of us, relying heavily on chiropractors. Of course, they have no medical insurance. They do use hospitals when necessary. They're also likely to pull teeth more quickly than we are, taking the practical approach (to them) that lots of costly dental work isn't worth it.

The story of Jonas, who has left the Amish to join the "English" world, is woven throughout the book. We see how very difficult it is for someone with no documentation, not even a social security number, and no high school diploma or GED (the Amish leave school after grade 8), to make it in the modern world. His family, under pressure from the wider Amish community, shuns Jonas in hopes of getting him to cave in and come back. Jonas is also hampered by his own naive views of the wider world. He initially survives only because English friends take care of him. Part of the discussion of Jonas describes a halfway world of Amish "ex-patriots" who have left the Amish community but never quite give up Amish ways. Jonas is both attracted to this half-way world and yet determined to fully assimilate into "English" life.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Swartzentruber Amish is their courtship rituals. While different Amish groups have different rituals, among the Swartzentrubers, young people between 17 and 21 engage in a dating practice in which they will lie awake all night on a bed together.

Mackall touches on the low status of women in the Swartzentruber hierarchy. He worries about Samuel's daughters and their lack of choices in a patriarchal community and wonders if he would feel compelled to help them, betraying Samuel, if they wanted to leave. Yet he sees Samuel's wife as contented with her lot as homemaker and mother of ten children, though he also applauds her literacy and her enthusiasm for reading Amish fiction. I wish Mackall had spent more time on the topic of women's status in the community.

Mackall tries to paint a balanced portrait of the Amish community. A thread of anxiety runs through the book: He fears that it will be perceived as a betrayal by Samuel and possibly get his friend into trouble with the community, where he is a minister.

It's difficult to see how Samuel won't be wounded by the book. The book does raise concerns about the line between friendship and scholarship. Is it ethical to make our friends subjects we dissect and analyze? How do we walk that line? Clearly, it's valuable for the wider world to gain insights into the Amish culture, but at what cost?