Amish History/schism

The argument

The Amish church began with a schism in the Swiss Anabaptist church around 1693 led by Jakob Ammann. The community expanded to Alsace, Germany, Russia, and Holland. Many subsequently emigrated to Pennsylvania in the early 18th Century to escape persecution. In the 1990's, there was about 90,000 Amish people in North America and very little left in Europe. After the technological advances in the world, the community split into two communities: one that accepts social change and other that rejects it. This led to schism in the Amish groups into ones who follow small independent churches, and others who joined the Mennonite church. Different Amish groups took different takes on how to deal with technology. For example, some groups only ride horses and bikes while others accept to ride automobiles but not drive them. Individuals who do nor follow the rules of the group get excommunicated.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Defining Amish Christian identity by schism and boundary-enforcement foregrounds division and misses the positive theological core the Amish themselves emphasise: Anabaptist convictions about adult baptism, nonresistance and pacifism, humility and yieldedness (Gelassenheit), and separation from the world as a form of discipleship. The schisms and the varied rules on technology are consequences of those commitments, not the essence of the faith. The account also carries factual looseness in its population figures and its description of the technology 'split,' which makes it a shaky basis for characterising what Amish Christians believe.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting C] Amish identity is defined chiefly by Anabaptist belief and practice — adult baptism, nonresistance, humility, separation — of which schism and technology rules are downstream effects, not the defining feature.