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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2391210,00.html
A quiet lesson in forgiveness
Ben Macintyre
The dignity and stoicism of the Amish show how the modern world has forgotten ancient virtues
I WAS DUBIOUS about staying in an Amish hotel. It was my godmothers idea. She said that since we were visiting Amish country in Pennsylvania, we could take either the predictable tourist option marvel at their quaint horse-drawn buggies, buy an overpriced quilt, and then check in to the Holiday Inn or we could try to get closer to the culture by experiencing a little of it. (My godmother is American, and rather serious.)
An Amish hotel is something of a contradiction in terms. The Amish are among the worlds most private people, adhering to a strict set of literalist beliefs and shunning much of the modern world, including most machines. Finally, we found a place that advertised itself as an Amish guest house.
Our hosts were New Order Amish, retaining a respectful distance from the outer world without entirely rejecting it. The patriarch of the family wore the traditional moustacheless beard moustaches being reminiscent of the German militarism they fled. The children wore homemade 19th-century plain clothes without buttons or zips. But the house had electricity (sparingly used) and, as far I could see, just one machine: a toaster. The patriarch of the family noticed my surprise at this single concession to mechanisation. We may be Amish, but we are of this world, he said gravely. And we like toast.
Watching the Amish of Nickel Mines reacting to the unspeakable horror that erupted in their midst this week, I found myself recalling that remark. The news coverage of the school massacre has tended to depict the Amish as some sort of bizarre cult, utterly removed from the reality of 21st-century life, blankly hostile to change and to strangers. In fact, the Amish pick and choose what they want or need from modernity, while retaining a central core of beliefs. The community is the product of multiple schisms, and they have debated how much, or how little, of the modern world to allow into their lives ever since breaking away from the main Mennonite Church in 1693. Today a growing number of Amish have cars, televisions or toasters; but, crucially, they are not enslaved by them.
One does not have to share Amish beliefs to admire a community that has set its own standards of privacy, non-violence and forgiveness. With gun crime spiralling upwards in the US, the Amish have preserved something extraordinary amid the rolling cornfields: there are no guns in Amish country, no police and, until Charles Roberts arrived with his firearms and his madness, virtually no crime.
I am not suggesting that we all retreat from the world, remove our buttons and reject modern medicine, but rather that the Amish demonstrate something important that it is possible, despite a globalising world culture, to create the life you want by accepting some aspects of modernity and rejecting others, to adhere to a set of unorthodox beliefs while remaining of this world.
We have come to expect a grim ritual whenever another American gunman strikes: the keening families, the life stories of the victims, the recriminations of the gun-controllers and the queasy self-justifications of the gun lobby. The Amish, by contrast, have taken their grief away to mourn in dignified privacy. They responded not with outrage and denunciation, but a stoical silence and, astonishingly, immediate, unquestioning forgiveness.
Theirs is an innocence calculatedly embraced. Machines are not seen as intrinsically evil, but as barriers between God and Man. Televisions offer images of violence and sex they do not want their children to see. When a horse is the fastest means of transport, you linger longer and get to know your neighbours better. The Amish did not learn of this weeks events through the screaming media, but by word of mouth.
The Amish belief system aims to preserve a peaceful, self-regulating agrarian society, but though their lives are simple, the philosophy that underpins them is sophisticated. Adolescent Amish boys are encouraged to visit the city a custom known as rumspringe in Old German, literally jumping around to sow their wild oats and understand the English, as outsiders are still known. Nine out of ten come back.
So far from dwindling away, an eccentric sect in a forgotten backwater, Amish life is booming. There are now some 200,000 in the US, a figure that has doubled in the past 20 years, with new communities springing up in other parts of the country. Much of this is the result of large families, but it is all due to the appeal of a unworldly life that keeps the bedlam of the modern world at bay.
This weeks school shooting showed America at its best and worst. The Amish first came to Pennsylvania in the 1730s, drawn by William Penns promise of protection from religious persecution, and prospered thanks to the American tradition of toleration. The right to be Amish is part of the American Constitution, but so, regrettably, is the right to bear arms.
Roberts stage-managed his murderous exit, demanding sympathy and attention, self-pitying and self-indulgent, raging at Gods unfairness. But after that comes the humility of the Amish, demanding nothing but privacy, retreating into their quiet community to mourn with their ancient God. The contrast between Robertss deity and that of the Amish somehow compounds the horror.
The few days I spent in the Amish guest house were like entering an older world. My hosts were gentle, shy, humourless and devout. They worked impossibly hard in their hardscrabble fields, and they prayed harder. I found myself deeply admiring the way my hosts had made an accommodation with modernity, while protecting the essence of their culture.
Amish beliefs may seem anachronistic, a peculiar defiance of what we think of as reality, but in their simple, ancient courtesy and private grief they have preserved something we English have almost forgotten.
A reader is impressed by the dignified way in which the Amish community has dealt with the terrible toll of recent days:
The thing that has struck me about the Amish, is how truly Christian they are ... they will not be photographed or interviewed because is it too vain. We won't see any Amish on CNN, Oprah or the like because they believe in humility and privacy. They have thanked the police and firefighters who helped their community. They have expressed forgiveness to the murderer and have also expressed sympathy towards his wife and children. They have noted how difficult it will be for their and the murderer's children to go back to school. This tragedy has deeply affected me. But, I have come away with a sense that the Amish have shown us all an example of how Christ would behave ... with dignity, forgiveness and love. They are a real Christian community.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How easy to say. How hard to practise. When people actually practise what Jesus preached, it still shocks, doesn't it? And Jesus' teaching is nothing if not shocking.
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/10/the_amish_and_f.html
Rod Dreher:
Amish faith shines, even in tragic darkness
08:21 AM CDT on Friday, October 6, 2006
Is there any place on earth that more bespeaks peace, restfulness and sanctuary from the demons of modern life than a one-room Amish schoolhouse? That fact is no doubt why so many of us felt so defiled there is no more precise word by news of the mass murders that took place there this week. If you're not safe in an Amish schoolhouse ... And yet, as unspeakable as those killings were, they were not the most shocking news to come out of Lancaster County this week.
No, that would be the revelation that the Amish community, which buried five of its little girls this week, is collecting money to help the widow and children of Charles Carl Roberts IV, the man who executed their own children before taking his own life. A serene Amish midwife told NBC News on Tuesday that this is normal for them. It's what Jesus would have them do.
"This is imitation of Christ at its most naked," journalist Tom Shachtman, who has chronicled Amish life, told The New York Times . "If anybody is going to turn the other cheek in our society, it's going to be the Amish. I don't want to denigrate anybody else who says they're imitating Christ, but the Amish walk the walk as much as they talk the talk." and this is where the sheepdogs come in...
I don't know about you, but that kind of faith is beyond comprehension. I'm the kind of guy who will curse under my breath at the jerk who cuts me off in traffic on the way home from church. And look at those humble farmers, putting Christians like me to shame.
It is not that the Amish are Anabaptist hobbits, living a pure pastoral life uncorrupted by the evils of modernity. So much of the coverage of the massacre has dwelled on the "innocence lost" aspect, but I doubt that the Amish would agree. They have their own sins and tragedies. Nobody who lives in a small town can live under the illusion that it is a haven from evil. To paraphrase gulag survivor Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and evil does not run along the boundaries of Lancaster County, but through every human heart.
What sets hearts apart is how they deal with sins and tragedies. In his suicide note, Mr. Roberts said one reason he did what he did was out of anger at God for the death of his infant daughter in 1997. Wouldn't any parent wonder why God allowed that to happen? Mr. Roberts held onto his hatred, purifying it under pressure until it exploded in an act of infamy. That's one way to deal with anger.
Another is the Amish way. If Mr. Roberts' rage at God over the death of his baby girl was in some sense understandable, how much more comprehensible would be the rage of those Amish mothers and fathers whose children perished by his hand? Had my child suffered and died that way, I cannot imagine what would have become of me, for all my pretenses of piety. And yet, the Amish do not rage. They do not return evil for evil. In fact, they embody peace and love beyond all human understanding.and here is where we could all learn from the lambs...
In our time, religion makes the front pages usually in the ghastliest ways. In the name of God, the faithful fly planes into buildings, blow themselves up to murder the innocent, burn down rival houses of worship, insult and condemn and cry out to heaven for vengeance. The wicked Rev. Fred Phelps and his crazy brood of fundamentalist vipers even planned to protest at the Amish children's funeral, until Dallas-based radio talker Mike Gallagher, bless him, gave them an hour of his program if they would only let those poor people bury their dead in peace. and here is where I part company with the Amish, this is a guy upon whom I wish God would exact revenge. But that's me, Irish temper and all.
But sometimes, faith helps ordinary men and women do the humanly impossible: to forgive, to love, to heal and to redeem. It makes no sense. It is the most sensible thing in the world. The Amish have turned this occasion of spectacular evil into a bright witness to hope. Despite everything, a light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Rod Dreher is assistant editorial page editor. The views expressed here are his own. His e-mail address is [email protected]
