Posted on 11/28/2015 7:08:09 PM PST by daniel1212
The Amish are online, onscreen, and multiplying fast. In their battle with modernity, it’s tough to say who’s winning
I’ve probably visited more Amish settlements than anyone. Who would venture out to the most remote corners of Montana, Maine and South Texas if they didn’t happen to be a student of Amish culture? Perhaps a peddler of pots and pans; many Amish cooks, I have noticed, gradually gave up their cast iron for stainless steel in the past 50 years...
In my 25 years exploring Amish communities, I’ve witnessed changes that would be unnoticeable to the average outsider...
To the average person, the Amish are flash-frozen daguerreotypes, little changed from their 17th-century roots. Indeed, this image is an enormous tourist attraction: the desire to hear a clip-clopping buggy, to see horse-drawn plows working the fields and bursts of colourful laundry flapping in a summer wind pumps $1.9 billion annually into the economy of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania alone,..
n reality, the Amish cherrypick the progress that best serves their interests. For instance, despite their reputation, they aren’t really against electricity. Yes, the vast majority don’t use it (a handful of Amish settlements do permit electric). But the issue isn’t the juice, it’s some of the items the juice can feed...
The weekly Amish newspaper The Budget is full of advertisements for products you won’t find anywhere else, products that craft a compromise: cell phones without wireless access, computers without internet access, and Kindle-type reading devices that don’t require a connection to load the texts. There are Amish voicemail services, Mennonite phone‑dating services. Anything to make life easier that doesn’t involve the internet. But that task is becoming more difficult with each passing day...
The Amish population is growing. By some estimates there are 300,000 in the United States, and the birthrate is very high: the population doubles roughly every generation. One county in Ohio is poised to become the first majority Amish county in the US by 2020. An Indiana county is close on its heels...
I have a few funny Amish stories to tell.
Yes they are. And tall too.
The Amish population is growing. By some estimates there are 300,000 in the United States, and the birthrate is very high: the population doubles roughly every generation.
...
That’s something to think about, compared to the rest of American society.
I passed by an young amish man in a buggy by himself. I could tell by the phone in his hands, and his head down that he was texting.
There are similar groups, who differ in (for example) how much tech they use, e.g., Menonites, Brethren, and such.
It is my understanding that the bishop of each Amish group determines the extent of modernity, some being more liberal than others.
—Heard from someone I know that he bought a quilt at an Amish store and didn’t quite have all the cash needed. He was told they accepted credit cards. Wait, how would it be processed? With one of those old devices where you put the card in, put in a piece of carbon paper, and move it right to left and back.
—With a friend, I visited the Amish Door restaurant in Wilmot, OH (now part of a whole “village” I think). Two signs the buffet-style restaurant was Amish—no booze, and not open on The Lord’s Day, Sunday.
I like it!
Yes, with given boundaries.
Hope he knows how to call upon the Lord.
A testimony to Special Creation.
Both it seems, yet not feral as in "Wild and menacing" but as in non-conformity to Amish non-conformity.
I think i have read that also. The judgments on such are determined by whether such would foster that which is contrary to the principle of devotion to God and family.
Thanks for the heads up. But i cannot sanction a fake facebook. I do not like Facebook anyway, and only have an account in case i need it, but rarely activate it.
I should correct that — they come down on vans. Mostly Ford E-150s.
It is a somewhat fine distinction, however.
“One county in Ohio is poised to become the first majority Amish county in the US by 2020.”
Which one?
I wonder what an Amish county government would look like.
Another of their unusual beliefs, and observing them you can take not of this:
The Amish believe that when a man marries, the Bible requires him to grow a beard. If they’re clean-shaven, they’re still single.
I’ve also read that the single women wear black apron “overdresses” while th married women wear white ones. But the women at the market all wear black, and I know at least one or two are married.
Both of which are not warranted by Scripture.
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