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This book tells a story which until now has not been available in such an interesting and comprehensive form. What holds these people together? Why are they growing in number? Where do they live? The Old Order Mennonites are less well known than the Amish, but are similar in many beliefs and practices. Some Old Order Mennonites drive horses and buggies. Others use cars for transportation. Conservative Mennonite groups vary a great deal, but in general espouse strong faith and family life and believe that how they live should distinguish them from the larger society around them. The author details courtship and wedding practices, methods of worship, dress, transportation, and vocation. Never before has there been such an inside account of these people and their lives. The author spent years conferring and interviewing members of the various groups, trying to portray their history and their story in a fair and accurate manner. An enjoyable, educational, inspiring book.
Examining how the Wengers have cautiously and incrementally adapted to the changes swirling around them, this book offers an invaluable case study of a traditional group caught in the throes of a postmodern world."--Jacket.
Lee focuses on the Weaverland Conference of Old Order Mennonites, a group formed in 1893 and now consisting of over 5,000 members. A large concentration of Weaverland Mennonites live in upstate New York near Seneca Falls, and Lee focuses his easily readable sociological study on that community. Individual chapters deal with the worship, rituals, rules, and discipline of the group, and with a number of recent defections to a more mainstream Mennonite Church located in the same area. Lee argues that Weaverland Mennonites are held together by their practices alone, rather than by a common underlying set of beliefs. --Choice Magazine
Old Order Mennonites are deeply faithful, agrarian-rooted, Swiss-German Anabaptists who have called Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, home for 300 years. Their meetinghouses silently embody their religious traditions, and yet few outsiders have seen the startling utilitarian beauty of these rural structures up close. The author and photographer were allowed rare access to 22 austere houses of worship. The result is a one-of-a-kind book featuring over 300 photos and diagrams that document all aspects of the meetinghouses, from the design of their benches and buggy sheds to the arrangement of tables central to worship. As fast-growing Lancaster County encroaches on the Old Order way of life, their communities are changing. This book is a record of an extraordinary religious heritage.
This first comparative study sketches the differences as well as the common threads that bind these groups together.
Now back in print with a new essay, this classic of Iowa history focuses on the Old Order Amish Mennonites, the state’s most distinctive religious minority. Sociologist Elmer Schwieder and historian Dorothy Schwieder began their research with the largest group of Old Order Amish in the state, the community near Kalona in Johnson and Washington counties, in April 1970; they extended their studies and friendships in later years to other Old Order settlements as well as the slightly less conservative Beachy Amish. A Peculiar People explores the origin and growth of the Old Order Amish in Iowa, their religious practices, economic organization, family life, the formation of new communities, and the vital issue of education. Included also are appendixes giving the 1967 “Act Relating to Compulsory School Attendance and Educational Standards”; a sample “Church Organization Financial Agreement,” demonstrating the group’s unusual but advantageous mutual financial system; and the 1632 Dortrecht Confession of Faith, whose eighteen articles cover all the basic religious tenets of the Old Order Amish. Thomas Morain’s new essay describes external and internal issues for the Iowa Amish from the 1970s to today. The growth of utopian Amish communities across the nation, changes in occupation (although The Amish Directory still lists buggy shop operators, wheelwrights, and one lone horse dentist), the current state of education and health care, and the conscious balance between modern and traditional ways are reflected in an essay that describes how the Old Order dedication to Gelassenheit—the yielding of self to the interests of the larger community—has served its members well into the twenty-first century.
Train Up a Child explores how private schools in Old Order Amish communities reflect and perpetuate church-community values and identity. Here, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner asserts that the reinforcement of those values among children is imperative to the survival of these communities in the modern world. Surveying settlements in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, Johnson-Weiner finds that, although Old Order communities have certain similarities in their codes of conduct, there is no standard Old Order school. She examines the choices each community makes—about pedagogy, curriculum, textbooks, even school design—to strengthen religious ideology, preserve the social and linguistic markers of Old Order identity, and protect their own community's beliefs and values from the influence of the dominant society. In the most comprehensive study of Old Order schools to date, Johnson-Weiner provides valuable insight into how variables such as community size and relationship with other Old Order groups affect the role of these schools in maintaining behavioral norms and in shaping the Old Order's response to modernity.
Here at last is an authentic portrait of the Amish, in striking photographs and honest accounts of their daily concerns and enduring traditions. Photographer Lucian Niemeyer earned the trust and friendship of Amish families by helping to harvest crops on their farms in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, site of one of the oldest Amish settlements in North America. After "many backbreaking days" in the fields, he gained acceptance in a community that draws sharp lines of separation from the outside world--and has, by tradition, shunned photography. With the encouragement of his Amish friends who welcomed the chance to correct inaccurate accounts of Amish ways, Niemeyer began to assemble this honest and sensitive photographic record. He worked without filters or darkroom manipulations, using only natural light. The results are unprecedented--photographs of families, community gatherings, even the seldom seen interiors of Amish homes and schools. These unique images capture the deliberate simplicity and the natural beauty that characterize Amish life in Lancaster County. In the accompanying text, Donald Kraybill--author of the highly acclaimed Riddle of Amish Culture--tells the often surprising story of today's Old Order Amish. His introduction provides a sweeping overview of Amish life in North America and explains how a traditional people have managed not merely to survive but to flourish in the midst of modern life. In thirty-five "vignettes" throughout the book, Kraybill explains Amish views on issues ranging from "Childbirth" and "Women Entrepreneurs" to "The Riddles of Farm Machinery," "Sowing Wild Oats," and "The Politics of Separation." His concluding essay examines why modern observers are so drawn to the Amish and their traditional values.
Rolling Down Black Stockings is a personal recollection of Esther Royer Ayers's youth spent in a highly restrictive and confined religious community. Her story is as much a search for identity and a longing for a mother's love as it is a tale about a totalitarian culture that led to her departure from the Old Order Mennonite religion. This poignant story is told in three books: book 1 describes her youth in a farm community on the outskirts of Columbiana, Ohio; book 2 follows the struggles of Ayers as she tries to fit in with another culture after leaving the church when her family moves to Akron, Ohio; and book 3 discusses the history and cultural dynamics of the religion. Ayers recounts how the Old Order Mennonite Church came into existence. Her personal account begins when she was eight years old, watching as her mother took care of her sick father. With intel-ligence and insight, Ayers describes how her family coped with the burden of not having enough income, which meant that the children were expected to work instead of getting an education. her Mennonite community, Ayers relates her difficulties trying to fit in at the public school and how she and her siblings were required to fall classes so that they would be expelled. It concludes with reflections on what all this meant to her. A rare and moving memoir, Rolling Down Black Stockings is also a valuable piece of social history that will appeal to historians as well as those interested in separatist communities and women's studies.
"A historic perspective on how members of the close-knit communities and their leaders responded to the challenges posed by the intrusion of the telephone into long-standing traditions of work, silence, and visiting in the early 1900s" -- Harrisburg Patriot