Amish Clergy

The argument

The Amish do not have a professional group of ministers. Instead, lay ministers are chosen by lot from within the community. Ministers are not paid and add their religious duties to their farm or other work. In addition to being unpaid, those chosen for the ministry are also untrained for these roles. In an Amish community, the bishops act as community leaders. New bishops are assigned every year or two and serve one area. In general, it is not a role that is sought by Amish ministers. Ministers in the Amish community are nominated by the community from the male population, typically when a Minister dies. Ministers in the Amish community do still have the responsibility of preaching on Sunday morning as in other denominations of Christianity. However, as ministers have other jobs within the community they tend to spend most of their Saturdays preparing for Sunday service. Besides ministers and bishops, there are deacons in the Amish church as well. Amish deacons are responsible for collecting money from parishioners to help pay for members who are facing financial challenges. They are also responsible for approaching parishioners who are using forbidden technology or discussing the Amish set of rules, the Ordnung.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Most other Christian denominations have a professional clergy in which the ministers are paid. They are viewed as a beacon of the community for their position in the church. In general, they are identified by their position in the church rather than their other contributions to the community. In the Amish community, women are not allowed to have a position in the church. Unlike in some other protestant religions, they are not allowed to minister or preachers. There aren't even positions such as nuns like there are in the catholic church. The leadership of the church in the Amish community has no place for a woman.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] This is an accurate description rather than an argument, and its details are contestable at the edges: selection by lot follows nomination by the congregation rather than replacing it, and practice varies considerably between affiliations, since the Amish have no central authority to standardise it. "Untrained" also conflates the absence of seminary education with an absence of preparation, which the entry itself qualifies in noting that ministers spend their Saturdays preparing for Sunday. [Rejecting P2] The inventory of offices does not support the conclusion drawn from it. An unpaid lay ministry is shared with other traditions — Quakers, several Anabaptist groups, the Latter-day Saints — so it does not by itself mark out a distinctive form of Christianity; and describing how a church is staffed says little about what its members believe, which is what the question asks. The counter-argument raises a further point the entry omits entirely: these offices are closed to women.