Anabaptist Martyrs

Saloma, as I read through your blog and the older posts I am so impressed with the quality of your writing. You could turn this into a book! There are so many things your write about that resonate with me, and I would love to talk with you about this sometime...have you ever considered an open letter to your followers sharing how it is for you to write this blog? Your courage and resilience really comes through. I am especially struck by your comment that you believe the Amish culture is a martyr culture. I have for a long time thought that the concept of intergenerational historical trauma applies to the social and psychological life of Mennonite and Amish peoples. I would be interested in more of your thoughts on that. Anniliz

Anniliz, thank you for your comments and your desire to know more about the Amish being a martyr culture. There are few things I can generalize about among the Amish, but this is one of them. Most Amish households have a copy of the Martyr's Mirror in their homes, which is a detailed and intense account of many Anabaptist sufferings. This book is like a second Bible to the Amish and is  read and discussed often as a way of remembering the sufferings of their martyred ancestors.

I agree with your thoughts about intergenerational historical trauma that affect the Amish people, and I think you are right to include the Mennonites, though I have less experience with their culture. There is, however, one difference that I see, in that I think of intergenerational trauma as being something that gets passed down unwittingly, which usually plays an unconscious role in our lives. But the Amish make a conscious effort to "remember" the trauma of their ancestors through reading and discussion of these accounts. They warn one another "not to ever forget," lest they lose their faith and go "the way of the world."

For the Amish, martyrdom is closely related to sainthood. They believe that the Anabaptists who died for their faith were saints. I find it interesting that in mainstream American culture, there is a reverence for the Amish, sometimes to the point that they are perceived as saintly. This is exactly the opposite of the perception of our ancestors by the "outside" culture in Europe when the Anabaptists were being persecuted, at least on the part of the authorities. I think the Amish people often wish they deserved the sainthood status in the way their ancestors did, because they  could then rest assured that they would make it to Heaven. As it is, they believe that there is no way for them to know for sure whether or not they will make it to Heaven -- they can only hope. I think this is one difference between the Amish and most Mennnonites, who believe they will get to Heaven if they simply believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Even though the Amish believe in Salvation, they also believe in good works, in the sense that God keeps a tablet of the good and the bad -- and simply put, if the good outweighs the bad, one gets into Heaven, and if not, one is doomed to Hell.  Believing in Jesus Christ as their Savior  gets put on the "good" part of the tablet. In the Amish way of thinking, it is so difficult to make it to Heaven, that a person has to pretty much be a martyr and saint to make it. In this way, suffering and martyrdom are revered to the point of wishing they had the chance to prove their faith through persecution, because their salvation almost depends on it. I cannot think of a better example of a martyr culture than that.

For anyone interested, the Martyr's Mirror can be found online. Here is a link to it:
http://www.homecomers.org/mirror/contents.htm

This classic 1660 Dutch book memorializes the godly lives and glorious deaths of European Anabaptist martyrs between 1524 and 1660 and thousands of other early Christians. ~ The Martyr's Mirror

Changes, Continued

Upon my return to the Amish community after my initial leaving, I longed for more options for a career than what was available to me. At the time, there were two options -- that of teaching school or cleaning houses for a living. While I was in Vermont the first time, I had become a waitress. I liked being a waitress a lot more than cleaning houses, so I applied at a local restaurant and was offered a job. At the time I was really trying to adhere to the ways of the Amish, so I thought I should ask if it would be all right with the elders of the church. I asked the deacon, who discussed it with the bishop and the ministers and then reported back to me that they had decided "it would be better if you wouldn't." This was such the Amish way -- leaving the door open, but also letting you know they didn't approve. I turned down the job.

Today when I visit a local restaurant in the community, the place is teeming with Amish waitresses. This was true before the economy had gone on its decline, so I don't believe it was an economic decision. Most likely the first Amish woman to become a waitress did not ask if it would be okay. Once the ice was broken, other young women could say, "So-and-so is allowed to, so why can't I?" Even among the Amish I was too honest for my own good sometimes. The point is, though, that the Amish women have a few more choices for "careers" than they did then. I believe that being a cashier at a local store is also acceptable now, but it was not then.

Another change that has taken place is the use of cell phones. It seems strange to me that the Amish still don't allow phones to be installed in their homes, yet some are allowed to own cell phones. In one church district I know that if people owned their own businesses, they were allowed to own cell phones, but not anyone else. I think, though, that the biggest reason the cell phones are more or less "acceptable" to the Amish elders is because they know they cannot stop people from having them on the sly. I remember hearing of a bishop who visited someone in his community for having a cell phone. As he was admonishing the cell phone rang in the man's (who was being admonished) pocket. I told that story to my brother, who is still a member of the community. He thought about that for a moment and shook his head and said, "That would not be good!" I thought it was funny, but I had more than 25 years between me and the concern that I would be "found out" and get a visit by the elders of the church. My brother was still there, so his perspective was very different. This was not so funny to him.

For all the things that have changed, there are also many traditions and ways that have remained the same. When I went back for my parents' respective funerals, it was something to behold how people came together and took care of everything. Everyone knew their place in the community, and they all did their part. As far as I know, the women still gather for "quiltings" or visiting in general during the week, and families and friends visit one another on Sundays. They still hold Sundays as a day of rest or "Sabbath." They still have the community atmosphere that so many of us long for in the outside world. So, as far as I know, many of the Amish traditions are still very much in place, even as they made a transition from the farm to their own businesses, factory work, waitressing, or the like, and even as they allow more technology to became available in the community. Some day I would like to do research and compare the lifestyles of our ancestors in Europe with the Amish lifestyle of today in North America. I wonder what surprises I would discover? My guess is I would be amazed at what has endured.

I am ready to answer any other questions people may have. Please keep them coming.

Changes

I know you're mostly outside the culture now, but my question is in what ways do you think the Amish world has changed? Are there any traditions that have been lost or are disappearing?

Ally, your question has really made me think about how little I know about this issue, given that I've been out of the community for nearly 30 years. Since my father died in 2004 and my mother in 2005, I don't often travel back to that area or have all that much to do with the Amish in that community. And here I have to say, that given I have not researched this question overall, I need to qualify what I am telling you by saying that I cannot speak for other Amish communities.

I think the most fundamental change has come from the move off the farm. In my home community, there was a great deal of resistance by the elders of the church for allowing modern refrigeration methods for cooling the milk. There is a large cheese manufacturing plant in the area, which had traditionally bought the raw milk from Amish farms. The farmers normally cooled (and then also shipped) their milk in fifty-gallon metal containers like those in a photo posted on Amish America on May 19, 2007 (http://amishamerica.com/2007/05). Then several years ago, the cheese factory stopped buying the milk from farms that did not have modern cooling equipment. This put the farmers in a no-win situation. Many of them had already sold their land and found a different way to make a living by the time the elders decided they would allow the farmers to modernize. By then it was too late.

Only a fraction of the Amish families in my home community were on farms when I left, but now there are virtually no Amish dairy farms left in that area. A small portion of the farmers changed over to growing vegetables and berries as a means of staying on the farm. But for the most part, farming life in that Amish community has come to end. The changes I will write about in my next post were largely brought about by this fundamental change in lifestyle.

Saloma's Website Launched

I have been working on a website lately. It is still a work in progress, but I've launched it. You can goggle my name (Saloma Furlong), and it should be one of the first things to come up, or else you can visit it directly: http://salomafurlong.com/Welcome.html.

I would welcome any suggestions or comments, especially if the pages don't display properly. (I've been experiencing problems with just that.)

Please tell your friends, and link to both my blog and my website as you wish.

Ally, I will answer your question to the best of my ability in my next post.

That Sticky Wicket

The idea that parents encourage the youth to sample the world with the hope that this inoculates them against the world is very much a myth. ~ Anonymous Amishman

In my quest for accurate information about "rum springa" in the Amish culture, I found two things that give me hope that the current view of it being perpetuated by the mainstream media will eventually be recognized for what it is -- inaccurate information.

A member of an Amish community anonymously describes rum springa from the Amish point of view. I am so glad it's no longer just those of us who have left who are setting the record straight, but also people within the Amish. The link to what this person said about the issue is here: http://amishamerica.com/2010/03/rumspringa-myths-and-reality.html.

Someone did a very accurate job of writing the description of rum springa for Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa. This is, in my opinion, the most accurate source I know about the subject in the mainstream media. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to be used for scholarly purposes. Bravo, whoever wrote it, for daring to say something different than what is widely accepted as the the truth about rum springa.

So there is hope. The myth that Amish youth get a choice in whether or not they stay or leave their faith, may just be dispelled -- someday.

Why I Left the Amish

What made you decide to leave the Amish faith?

Until one of my readers asked me this question, I didn't realize that I hadn't addressed my reasons, except in passing. Though it takes a whole book to really convey the nuances of what went into my decision, I will attempt to give at least a short answer to this question.

If the Amish way of life could be separated from the religion, I may still be living their lifestyle. But I found the religion to be a punitive one that embraces the pain of life more than it does the joy of life. Perhaps this is left over from the days when our ancestors endured persecution for their religious beliefs. The way this plays out in the religion is that there is more focus on wrongdoers than on the people who are upstanding members of the community. In fact, in my experience, every church district has it's "black sheep family." This family is watched closely and criticized for anything considered "not the Amish way" while the popular families, or those who are gut oh tzene (well looked at) can get away with doing some of these same things without notice. It is typical for there to be a pecking order in a closed community, and the Amish are no exception.

My family was one of the black sheep families. One of the reasons was that my father had a mental illness that the Amish had no idea how to handle. Instead of helping my family, they scapegoated us. I often felt, as I was growing up, that I had no advocates -- there was no one I could turn to when I needed someone to help me through a perilous childhood -- one in which I endured physical beatings, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and rejection. I had to rely on myself, or my inner resources, to get me through these hardships. When I was twenty, my life had became unbearable when my father became increasingly violent and unpredictable. After seeking help from outside the Amish, and having my mother refuse to allow that help, I knew it was up to me to change my situation.

Even if I had been born into a happier Amish family, I would have needed a different personality to adjust to the Amish culture. I seem to have been born to ask questions, which is not what you want to do among the Amish. To be a "good" Amish person, I would have needed to accept the rules without trying to understand them. It would have required that I accept that I could not get more formal education past the eighth grade, without questioning why. No matter how hard I tried, I could not put aside the questions that boiled up from within.

When I left the Amish the first time, I went to Vermont. I had loved reading about the New England States in my geography book in school, so I had chosen Vermont when I left. I was only there for four months before the Amish organized a van load of community members (the bishop and his wife, my uncle, also a minister in the community, and his wife, my older brother, a sister, and a friend) and drove to Vermont to see me. The story goes that they just wanted to talk with me, but when I found out who was in the van, I decided I didn't want to find out if they would physically put me on the van to take me back. Either way, I knew I would not be able to hold up to the pressure from this many people, so I decided to keep my dignity intact and go back "willingly."

I gave the Amish way of life another chance. I no longer needed to live with my parents, which was an improvement to what my life had been like before I left, but I found that was still not enough. I just couldn't conform without question to the Amish religion and way of life. When I decided to leave the second time, David, who I had met in Vermont, came to Ohio with his pickup truck and helped me to move to Vermont. I married him a year and a half later and we have now been married for nearly 28 years.

To sum it up, I would say that the first time I left, I did so to get away from my father's violence. The second time I left I did so because I realized that the Amish religion (and way of life) did not fit who I am.

Fumes

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~ Melodie Beattie

We had a taste of spring in Western Massachusetts this past week. For me, spring and summer means ironing, considering I like wearing cotton clothing in the warmer weather. Wednesday, as I was ironing my first few items for the season, I was reminded of how I used to have to use a gas iron when I was growing up. There was literally a blue flame inside the iron, which I could turn up or down, depending on how hot I wanted the iron to be. I hated that gas iron -- besides it being hard to regulate, the fumes were constant. In the summer the heat coming out of the iron, along with the smell of the fumes were enough to make me want to wear wrinkled dresses.

The gas iron wasn't half as bad as the smell of the oil stove. Our house was constantly filled with fumes, either gas from the iron and lanterns, or else from the oil stove. And there was nothing so bad as when the oil stove would "burn out" when we weren't paying attention to how much kerosene was left in the tank. The pungent, smoky smell was enough to suffocate someone. In the winter we had to open windows to let the smell out, no matter how cold it was. Then someone would have to take the tank out and fill it. It was hard to keep it from spilling over, and cleaning up a kerosene spill is no fun. No wonder I prefer an electric range to a gas one -- I breathed in enough fumes when I was growing up for two lifetimes.

I finished ironing my skirt on Wednesday morning, then I got dressed and headed off to work, all the while thinking how different my current lifestyle is from that of my childhood. I find it's important for me to occasionally remember the details of my childhood, so that I don't take anything for granted. For me the opposite of taking something for granted is to be grateful. And that is exactly what I was feeling as I got dressed, took my (MY!) car keys, and drove to work, listening to Mozart's joyful music along the way. People say we should count our blessings, but sometimes there are too many to count. That's when I feel that my cup is brimming and running over.

Uprooting Myths -- Can it Be Done?

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This has been a busy week, so I have not had a chance to post. I finally did get my website launched a while ago, and I updated it this week. Here is a link to that: http://salomafurlong.com/Welcome.html. I hope you'll visit my website and send me comments.

I found something on the Internet this past week that makes me realize how much the rum springa misconceptions are being spread by the media and how many people now take this to be the truth. I believe it's human nature to fill in the blanks with our imagination when we have a lack of information. Because people are genuinely interested in the Amish culture, and when this is the information available, they are willing to believe it.

This NPR story was about Jim Cates, a counselor in Indiana, who works with Amish youth with drinking problems, and the "Amish Youth Vision Project" he founded. He perpetuates the notion that the Amish youth do get a choice about staying or leaving, yet he also talks about how he has to be careful not to lead the youth astray, lest it reflect on his counseling. I find this illogical: if the youth indeed get a choice, why wouldn't it be okay to discuss their options freely and not have any attachment to the outcome of whether they stay or leave?

Unfortunately, I cannot make a comment on the blog following the report, because it was aired on NPR in March of 2009. I feel rather like the "Amish detectives" on Saturday Night Live, when they arrive on the scene of the crime three months after it happened. It's a bit late to be setting Alix Spiegel straight on what rum springa is or isn't. If anyone out there hears of this kind of story, please let me know. I would like to respond to any blogs on such reports. Judging by the blog following this report, I wasn't the only person who had left the Amish who wanted to set the record straight. But we are like a lone voice in the wilderness...

Here is the link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102053475&sc=emaf

Please send me any comments or questions you have.