There’s More to the Amish Story

Under the image of peacefulness lie patterns of rules-based righteousness and abuse.

OPINION—Warren Smith’s January essay on the numerical growth of Amish and Old Older Mennonite groups caught my attention. Indeed, their numbers appear to be increasing due to their very high birthrate. However, many of these congregations have two other features that deserve greater attention: their rules-based belief system and the evidence of frequently high rates of abuse.

Photo by Kia Sari / Unsplash / Creative Commons

I know this situation very well, as I was raised in an Amish community and now participate in outreach to Amish people across the U.S.

I grew up in Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania. My community split off from another community called Troutville about 20 years ago because of disagreements regarding the ordnung (the extra-biblical rules that are a major part of any Amish community). Troutville had separated from Smicksburg 20 years earlier for similar reasons.

I was ordained into Amish ministry at age 19. My understanding of religious commitment at that time was that I needed to believe in the existence of Jesus as the Son of God and do my best to be a good Amish person. If I did that, I could then hope to be good enough to get to heaven. This is basically the gospel preached in most Amish communities. In those communities there is no invitation to become “born again” through a personal commitment to Christ as evangelical Christians generally understand it. To claim that you are born again and know that you are going to heaven is viewed as being proud and preaching a false gospel.

About five years after becoming an Amish minister, as a result of some issues arising in our church for which I did not have answers, I decided to read the Bible for myself and believe it for what it said. In short order, my wife and I both gave our lives to Jesus.

Now that we knew we had eternal life, we wanted to share this good news with others. We began a Bible study in our home, and over the next several months about 25 adults became born again as well. Some of them were set free from years-long addictions to alcohol, pornography, and other sins.

But because we were teaching people that we can be saved only by faith and cannot earn our way to heaven, we and our 25 friends were excommunicated. The account brought against us was that we were preaching a new gospel as described in Galatians 1.

Sensing that this issue was deeper than just our community, we connected with a nearby evangelical ministry called Heaven’s Family. We obtained mailing lists and sent a letter to about 60,000 Amish households, sharing what the Lord had done in our life and inviting them to believe the gospel. The response to that letter led us to start a periodic publication called The Awakening! Ten issues have been published in the last three years.

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We have received thousands of letters and phone calls—some encouraging, most negative. All the encouraging ones came from people who had been born again. These people knew they were now swimming against the current of their community, and that their new birth was likely to lead to excommunication. We have seen people lose their job, their business, and their relationship with their families because of their decision to follow Jesus.

This correspondence also made us more aware of the high prevalence of sexual abuse among Amish communities. Last year we conducted a survey of Amish and former Amish individuals, asking if they had been victims of child sexual abuse (CSA) as children. Among the 500 people who responded, 50% were victims of CSA and 85% knew someone who was a victim.

Scores of respondents commented that adults in their life knew they were suffering abuse as children but did nothing to stop it. In the cases where something was done, it was handled by the local church. Almost never were other authorities involved. Typically, perpetrators would go through several weeks or months of excommunication and then would be reinstated as members of the church, with the understanding that no one would speak of their crime again.

The Amish community has indeed been growing rapidly and has a high retention rate. But I would hesitate to say that is because of good discipleship. The Amish tend to teach their children that because they were born Amish, God expects them to remain Amish, and that if they don’t remain Amish they will go to hell. Many of those who leave, if they have not become born again, think they are automatically destined for hell unless they ultimately return to the Amish community.

We should not generalize these descriptions to all Amish communities. There have been countless schisms among the 400,000 Amish in North America, usually resulting from differences over community rules. Some Amish communities are experiencing renewal. But sadly, I believe many of them should be regarded as people who need to hear the gospel, not as models for Christian growth.

In the MinistryWatch database, Heaven’s Family earns 4 stars for financial efficiency, an A Transparency Grade, and a Donor Confidence Score of 100.

Jonas Kurtz directs the Amish outreach of Heaven’s Family. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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