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Posted on 08/17/2026 5:02:09 AM PDT by Red Badger
The Amish are what are known as "plain people" … religious Christians who value tradition over change. They dress modestly, and most don't use technology like cars, computers or phones.
So, what exactly is going on here?
VIDEOS AT LINK..........
Meet Lovina Hershberger Zook, the unlikely 23-year-old social media creator who has amassed some six million followers with her recipes and stories about the Amish.
She comes from one of the most conservative subgroups in the Amish, and grew up speaking a dialect of German known as "Pennsylvania Dutch." She's no longer Amish – she left the faith five years ago. But she maintains many of their traditions at home. She made her dress, and prefers to wear it around the house.
Online, she's known for cooking Amish dishes – simple, practical fare that ranges from the super-traditional to the unconventional, like a coffee soup made with hot milk, instant coffee, sugar, and saltine crackers. Her favorite way to eat it is with cottage cheese and meat.
Sometimes it's what's in a name that matters most. She made us an Amish cheeseburger – that's two pieces of homemade bread slathered with butter and layered with cheese, grilled in a cast-iron pan until golden-brown and gooey. (What the non-Amish call a grilled cheese.)
"I've only had an Amish cheeseburger; I have never had a grilled cheese!" Zook laughed.
And that's the thing: She doesn't always know what she doesn't know – what traditions and what words are ones the "English" (as the Amish call the non-Amish) might not know.
Zook had never used a phone before, and didn't know what a computer was. "Like, I knew people worked on their computers. But I didn't know what a laptop was," she said. "And then I bought a laptop, like, a couple years after I left the Amish. Apparently it's a laptop computer. And now I just call it a computer … Why is it called a computer? That's a weird word. Computer. I don't know why, sometimes I say words and I'm like, 'Why is it called that?'" she laughed.
So, when Zook was growing up Amish, if someone had said to her, You're going to be a social media star, what would that have meant? "Nothing," Zook laughed. "Because I didn't know what social media was. I would've been scared, because I would go, 'What is social media?'"
Zook got her start online talking not just about food, but about the culture she left. Her most-watched video is a tutorial on how Amish women do their hair. It has more than 50 million views on TikTok.
Asked what it was it like growing up Amish, Zook replied, "We just live our life. We're like, 'Ooh, I know there's people who live different lives. I know there's people with electricity. But that's wrong. And so, I'll just, like, stay Amish and I'll live an Amish life.'"
And that meant more than just no electricity. It meant no makeup, no dancing. The list of prohibitions was long. "I didn't smoke; was not allowed for women," she said. "No drinking; that's not allowed for anybody. And no cursing. Absolutely not. You can't even say, 'Oh, my gosh.' That's considered a bad word."
Gosh?!? "You can say, 'Darn it!' or something like that. Like, 'Cheese and crackers!'" Zook said.
And any transgressions came with serious consequences. For example, Zook was told, if she left the Amish, she would go to Hell.
Zook is one of 13 children. Her older brother left before her. When she finished eighth grade, she became a schoolteacher. "I loved being a schoolteacher. That was the best part of my life at that time," she said. "But they were paying me $12 a day, and I was driving eight miles a day with horse-and-buggy. So, the wear-and-tear on the horse-and-buggy wasn't covered by what I was getting paid."
Her father said she was going to have to change careers, because teaching did not pay enough. He told her, "You're gonna work at the saw mill."
The last straw for Zook came when her mother criticized how she dressed for church. "She's like, 'You're gonna have to use a smaller band around your neck because people are gonna start talking.' And in that moment – I didn't say a word, but I was like, I'm so tired of people telling me what to do. And I'm always trying to be perfect. And it is never right. And I was just done. And I was like, okay, this is the moment I start planning."
She planned for two weeks, before escaping while her family slept – which she compared to escaping from prison. "I was like, I have to time this so they're sleeping, like, really deeply when I leave, 'cause the stairs creaked a little, and I had to, like, figure out which stairs creaked," she said. "And the day before, I sneakily oiled all the door hinges so they don't squeak when you open and close them."
Zook says she didn't like living with all of the Amish rules, but she still respects a lot of their ways. And she misses her family: "My siblings, especially, 'cause I was the second oldest and I feel like they always called me Momma #2."
Once she left the Amish, she had to learn all the ways of the "English" world. She stayed with her brother and other family members while she got settled, and five years later she drives. She makes a living making social media. She sells a self-published cookbook. And she's married to an ex-Amish man named Eli.
She says that, rather than believing God will send her to Hell, she is living the life that God wants her to. "Oh, yes. I believe that 100%," she said.
Lovina and Eli are expecting their first baby next month. And she's not done yet: "I want a house. I want a garden. I want to farm. I'd like to someday maybe have an Amish restaurant, and an Amish market. Our plans for the future seem very busy, [and] very bright. My life just seems to get better and better and better every day."
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“I don’t think they vote.”
That is true of some, but they have found that failure to participate in politics at the local level has burned them with Township code enforcement and engineers being unreasonable in dealing with them.
In one local township they were the majority of the population and were getting shafted big time by local government, so we(our office) ran a voter registration with the Amish community and got rid of the corrupt township supervisors and their cronies.
Since they have no computers, fax machines or electronic media(they have no electricity) I end up with them all coming to my office to communicate with the regulatory agencies when they have a problem. The worst are the animal rights activists who became animal law enforcement officers at all levels of government.
They take no government handouts. Our office returned over $2 million in Covid checks and refundable child tax credits to the IRS for them. That was a nightmare as the government is not used to people not wanting their refund checks.
Everything is a cult ...
The Amish still practice economic and social shunning.
“I don’t think they vote.”
The Amish? They definitely vote.
Scott Presler was heavily involved in Amish communities before 2024 election to GOTV. Surprisingly, they were very accepting of him considering his lifestyle and appearance.
“My litmus test for cults are whether one can leave the belief system without coercive repercussions.”
The shunning among the Amish is very great.
I’ve had Amish businesses that lost all their employees when the church disagreed with something the Amish business owner did. The church forbid any member from working there. This has happened many, many times with my clients over the years.
The church community creates a dependency. The pain of being isolated from the group is very great when they shun you.
Interesting.
“Everything is a cult ...”
The key is, does the group empower you as an individual to think independently, or force group think.
The Democrats are much more a cult than the Republicans. That’s the big problem in congress.
FR is a cult.
Excellent! I did not realize.
“force group think.
FR is a cult.”
FR people for the most part search for the truth and the facts. There are a few here who are ditto heads, but for the most part the debate dialog would prove otherwise.
The topic where people tend to not think clearly and follow group think is about their individual religion. Many Freepers imitate the Pharisees.
You must be a warmongering zeeper ... or maybe a Nevertrumper with TDS!
(See what I mean?)
You will, of course, continue to do as you wish. I don’t use the term “cult” much any more; it has ceased to have any sort of objective meaning. To be fair, I was a bit suspicious of the term even back in the late 1970s when it only referred to the Moonies, HareKrishnas, and the Peoples’ Temple.
I’ve spent over forty years studying cults. I presented on this topic in several conference lectures, including one time I presented jointly with Jim Dincalci who spent 14 years with L. Ron Hubbard as his personal nurse, before leaving. He had a top view of the operations of Scientology. If I remember correctly, the lecture title was Mind Control and Manipulation.
I also worked with several cults who were churches as I was an expert on church & clergy income taxes.
Former Amish make great Orthodox Christians!
And now everything looks cultish. And the discussion has become circular.
Steven Hassan is a psychologist who specializes in rescuing people from cults. He was rescued from the Moonies back in the late 1970’s.
His excellent books include:
Combating Cult Mind Control: The #1 Best-selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults (2015)
Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs (2022)
Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves (2000)
Combatting Cult Mind Control: The #1 Best-selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1990)
Understanding Cults: The Official Workbook (2025)
I spent so much time studying it, that my red flags go up quick. I learned stage hypnosis in the early 1990’s just to understand human consciousness and was really disgusted when I observed the manipulation techniques used by Christian Evangelists at the alter.
“How long before Amish women are on Only Fans?”
Seriously, I thought that was what her “online audience” was going to be. Glad it’s not.
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