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3.32 AVERAGE
3.32 AVERAGE
2/15/2007: This was much drier than I had expected. I found myself counting the pages left as I reached the end. I've read a lot about the Amish so nothing in this book really came as a surprise to me.
Although they appear to be a holy, righteous group, the ones I've read about are overall really a bunch of people so full of pride that they can't even take hope in the Bible they claim to be following.
One concept that has always bugged me is that the Amish that I've read about shun the modern conveniences of the world, yet when a troubling situation comes up that they can't deal with, then it's time to call in the modern conveniences "just this once".
One passage that I liked and I hope will stick with me was where he tells of a homemaker who is folding laundry. As she folds each piece, she thinks of the wearer and the blessing they are to the family. Since I am forever buried under laundry mountain (sister to TBR mountain), this is a good thing for me to hold on to!
Although they appear to be a holy, righteous group, the ones I've read about are overall really a bunch of people so full of pride that they can't even take hope in the Bible they claim to be following.
One concept that has always bugged me is that the Amish that I've read about shun the modern conveniences of the world, yet when a troubling situation comes up that they can't deal with, then it's time to call in the modern conveniences "just this once".
One passage that I liked and I hope will stick with me was where he tells of a homemaker who is folding laundry. As she folds each piece, she thinks of the wearer and the blessing they are to the family. Since I am forever buried under laundry mountain (sister to TBR mountain), this is a good thing for me to hold on to!
Who knew Amish teenagers were so wild and crazy?
Fairly early on, Shachtman makes a point about the Amish being about as close to a foreign culture Americans can get to within the U.S.—that they seem so different as to function, on some small level, as a tourist attraction.
But the broader is of the Amish as far more like the general population than not...just stricter. Much stricter. More isolated, sort of. (Excellent mention towards the end of the similarities and differences between the Amish and Hasidic Jews, too...)
His focus is on, of course, rumspringa—the period when Amish youth have finished school and are working but have not yet joined the church (which is only done as an adult), when they are exempt from the rules the Amish live by. When they can 'dress English' and drive cars and drink and do drugs, if they want, without recrimination from the church.* When the idea is for them to decide whether or not to get married and join the church and be a good Amish Christian for the rest of their lives...or leave.
I learned a ton from this book. Granted, I knew very little about the Amish, but still. That each district basically determines its own rules (certain types of farm equipment are permitted in certain districts but not others, for example; ditto bicycles). Rumspringa is a much more fluid, open-ended period than I had envisioned—I knew of it, but I guess I'd always thought (to the extent I'd thought about it at all) that it was a finite period of a few months or a year. Not so—rumspringa is the period between a child turning sixteen and them joining the church. That might be when they are seventeen or twenty or twenty-six. In theory I suppose somebody could join the church much later, although Shachtman doesn't talk much about that. At some point in the book it hit home to me that in any given community there is always a group of teens who are not subject to Amish rules and who are, you know, being typical impossible teenagers. (Seem obvious? Yes, maybe. I never said I was the brightest bulb in the box...)
One of the things that so fascinated me here is the idea that until a person joins the church, they are free to do as they will—it's okay if they do drugs and have sex and get pregnant out of wedlock—and still be welcomed back, but if they commit to the church (get baptised) and then back out, it's permanent. They are put on bann, shunned.
(I was also struck at one point how commercial some churches seem—'Equally revelatory to her is this [non-Amish] church's assertion that she can simply be baptized and will thereafter be in a spate of grace, "saved," assured of a place in Heaven. She has always been bothered by the lack of such assurance in the Amish church' (149). Not trying to pit church against church, but it is kind of like...'we offer the better deal! Pick us!')
There's a really interesting back-and-forth, though, about the good things about rumspringa (like the chance to experience both sides of things before committing) but how it is also inconsistent. 'He also tells them [church elders] he is bothered by the contradiction of the Amish church permitting him in rumspringa to have a motorcycle thought it was forbidden before he became sixteen and will again be forbidden if he joins the church. How can they both condemn and condone a behavior? To DeWayne, the Baptist stance on sin is less ambiguous and more understandable: a sin is a sin, no matter what the circumstances. For a Baptist, there are no indulgences, no time-out periods during which something usually forbidden is permitted' (134). Most of the people interviewed in the book don't seem to have quite as much of a dilemma there (if they head for the Baptists, etc., it often seems to be because they want religion but also non-Amish material things, or because they want to worship in a different way), but the question of what makes sense about rumspringa and what doesn't comes up over and over again in different forms. (I would have loved a better look at what rumspringa looked like for older generations, though.)
I did wish that Shachtman had spent more time on the 'tamer' side of rumspringa. He says early on that 'many, maybe even a majority, do not go to the parties or otherwise engage in behaviors that Amish parents and church officials consider wild. Rather, they attend Sunday singings, occasionally go bowling, take part in structured activities supervised by church elders...' (11). Probably not as interesting to read about, but the amount of time spent on that end of thing is tremendously slim in comparison to the time spent on parties and drugs and uncertainty about whether or not to go back to the Amish. If 80 to 90 percent of Amish-raised youth end up joining the church (251), I would expect that a lot of those are youth who never strayed far in the first place.
I also had a tremendously difficult time keeping the different individuals straight; although it's not the sort of book that follows just a few people through a given time period, I wouldn't have minded more detail. In some cases I think the lack of detail was to preserve privacy/anonymity, which is fine, but even when reminders were given I could dredge up only the most basic of memories. Maybe following fewer people but in more depth would have helped...wait, I just acknowledged that it wasn't that kind of book.
And a lingering question: One of the individuals in the book mentions that 'he knows that Amish young men do not treat women well—he admits to not having done so well himself in that regard—and doesn't feel that his female friends "need to be put through that kind of situation"' (195). And then the subject is dropped. Umm, what? That deserves a great deal more detail. (Shachtman does talk, elsewhere, about general abuse rates in Amish communities—that several studies have indicated that they are lower than in the general population, but this is separate, I think.) There's a whole trove of material to be considered on the topic, not just in terms of people being treated badly but in terms of what relationships tend to look like during rumspringa—which is largely, now that I think of it, ignored beyond the fact that there are relationships, they are sometimes sexual and sometimes not, and they sometimes end in marriage and entry to the Amish church (and sometimes not).
*From families and from the law—that's another matter.
But the broader is of the Amish as far more like the general population than not...just stricter. Much stricter. More isolated, sort of. (Excellent mention towards the end of the similarities and differences between the Amish and Hasidic Jews, too...)
His focus is on, of course, rumspringa—the period when Amish youth have finished school and are working but have not yet joined the church (which is only done as an adult), when they are exempt from the rules the Amish live by. When they can 'dress English' and drive cars and drink and do drugs, if they want, without recrimination from the church.* When the idea is for them to decide whether or not to get married and join the church and be a good Amish Christian for the rest of their lives...or leave.
I learned a ton from this book. Granted, I knew very little about the Amish, but still. That each district basically determines its own rules (certain types of farm equipment are permitted in certain districts but not others, for example; ditto bicycles). Rumspringa is a much more fluid, open-ended period than I had envisioned—I knew of it, but I guess I'd always thought (to the extent I'd thought about it at all) that it was a finite period of a few months or a year. Not so—rumspringa is the period between a child turning sixteen and them joining the church. That might be when they are seventeen or twenty or twenty-six. In theory I suppose somebody could join the church much later, although Shachtman doesn't talk much about that. At some point in the book it hit home to me that in any given community there is always a group of teens who are not subject to Amish rules and who are, you know, being typical impossible teenagers. (Seem obvious? Yes, maybe. I never said I was the brightest bulb in the box...)
One of the things that so fascinated me here is the idea that until a person joins the church, they are free to do as they will—it's okay if they do drugs and have sex and get pregnant out of wedlock—and still be welcomed back, but if they commit to the church (get baptised) and then back out, it's permanent. They are put on bann, shunned.
(I was also struck at one point how commercial some churches seem—'Equally revelatory to her is this [non-Amish] church's assertion that she can simply be baptized and will thereafter be in a spate of grace, "saved," assured of a place in Heaven. She has always been bothered by the lack of such assurance in the Amish church' (149). Not trying to pit church against church, but it is kind of like...'we offer the better deal! Pick us!')
There's a really interesting back-and-forth, though, about the good things about rumspringa (like the chance to experience both sides of things before committing) but how it is also inconsistent. 'He also tells them [church elders] he is bothered by the contradiction of the Amish church permitting him in rumspringa to have a motorcycle thought it was forbidden before he became sixteen and will again be forbidden if he joins the church. How can they both condemn and condone a behavior? To DeWayne, the Baptist stance on sin is less ambiguous and more understandable: a sin is a sin, no matter what the circumstances. For a Baptist, there are no indulgences, no time-out periods during which something usually forbidden is permitted' (134). Most of the people interviewed in the book don't seem to have quite as much of a dilemma there (if they head for the Baptists, etc., it often seems to be because they want religion but also non-Amish material things, or because they want to worship in a different way), but the question of what makes sense about rumspringa and what doesn't comes up over and over again in different forms. (I would have loved a better look at what rumspringa looked like for older generations, though.)
I did wish that Shachtman had spent more time on the 'tamer' side of rumspringa. He says early on that 'many, maybe even a majority, do not go to the parties or otherwise engage in behaviors that Amish parents and church officials consider wild. Rather, they attend Sunday singings, occasionally go bowling, take part in structured activities supervised by church elders...' (11). Probably not as interesting to read about, but the amount of time spent on that end of thing is tremendously slim in comparison to the time spent on parties and drugs and uncertainty about whether or not to go back to the Amish. If 80 to 90 percent of Amish-raised youth end up joining the church (251), I would expect that a lot of those are youth who never strayed far in the first place.
I also had a tremendously difficult time keeping the different individuals straight; although it's not the sort of book that follows just a few people through a given time period, I wouldn't have minded more detail. In some cases I think the lack of detail was to preserve privacy/anonymity, which is fine, but even when reminders were given I could dredge up only the most basic of memories. Maybe following fewer people but in more depth would have helped...wait, I just acknowledged that it wasn't that kind of book.
And a lingering question: One of the individuals in the book mentions that 'he knows that Amish young men do not treat women well—he admits to not having done so well himself in that regard—and doesn't feel that his female friends "need to be put through that kind of situation"' (195). And then the subject is dropped. Umm, what? That deserves a great deal more detail. (Shachtman does talk, elsewhere, about general abuse rates in Amish communities—that several studies have indicated that they are lower than in the general population, but this is separate, I think.) There's a whole trove of material to be considered on the topic, not just in terms of people being treated badly but in terms of what relationships tend to look like during rumspringa—which is largely, now that I think of it, ignored beyond the fact that there are relationships, they are sometimes sexual and sometimes not, and they sometimes end in marriage and entry to the Amish church (and sometimes not).
*From families and from the law—that's another matter.
Did you know that the Amish use celery as a wedding decoration?
I didn’t know that until I read this and found that interesting (Definitely made me re-think flowers at a wedding). This was a savory bit on non-fiction to sink into over a weekend (I love sub-cultures) and enjoyed it at Avenue over a cup of coffee. Certainly a good read for those who are interested.
I didn’t know that until I read this and found that interesting (Definitely made me re-think flowers at a wedding). This was a savory bit on non-fiction to sink into over a weekend (I love sub-cultures) and enjoyed it at Avenue over a cup of coffee. Certainly a good read for those who are interested.
"What the Amish Can Teach Us..." reminded me that I read this shortly after it came out in '06. Ummm...Paints a very different picture.
I borrowed this one from my local branch of the public library.
Find my note on the book in my blog:
[http://gypsylibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/07/booknote-rumspringa.html]
Find my note on the book in my blog:
[http://gypsylibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/07/booknote-rumspringa.html]
Honestly, I'm not going to finish this. I'd rather watch The Devil's Playground. Actually, I watched that and didn't care for it either. I'm totally fascinated with and by Amish life but I think having actually spent time around Amish, I'm way more fascinated with their actual beliefs, rituals, and normal functioning than I am the things like Rumspringa.
Wonderful factual novel that is informative and interesting.
Very interesting facts about what Amish youth experience during "rumspringa". They go a little wild, but most still join the church.
Interesting topic, but the way the author writes makes the book kind of boring.