Keeping the Faith:
Dynamics Of The Amish Movement
Since The Division Of The 1690s

by Roy Kline

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Time has a way of clarifying the motivating forces behind a person's words and deeds. To be sensitive in relation to right and wrong motivates one to action. The validity of that motive and action may be measured by its results and the continuity of those results.

We have such an example about 2400 years ago by the river Ahava. The issues of right and wrong are what motivated Ezra to take serious measures "to afflict ourselves before God, to seek of Him a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance" (Ezra 8:21).

Throughout history we find persons who were motivated to similar action at different times over different issues. Time commends history in regards to the Swiss Brethren conflict of the 17th century in that Amish beliefs and practices are well intact even after 300 years. The issues over which the Amish Brethren contended at the time of the division are articles that the Amish church is practicing today. A number of divisions have occurred since that time within the Amish church over issues that today seem to be no longer significant. One may use the example of the issue of baptizing in a stream which was cause for national conflict. Today there are no Amish churches who adhere to that practice. The practice of this issue had no continuity. This we cannot say of Amish beginnings.

Amish roots run deep due to the nature of the seed sown--the Word of God. I would like to suggest that these roots find their origin in the apostolic church, and have continued through men and women whose minds have been sanctified and influenced by the truth of the Word of God. There is continuity of thought throughout different periods of church history. It is as the Amish have retained this pattern that has distinguished them from the world. It is this thought pattern that we want to consider in regards to Amish society versus their contemporaries.

Perhaps the quality the Amish are recognized for most by the world is that of making no significant change in a society of change and progress.

The Amish-Mennonite mentality is unique to society in general due to their roots. There is probably no group of people who is so incapable of wisely handling change. Our background has been one of regarding Truth in concrete terms and not only as relative. While not all change may have been negative it does seem once the Amish-Mennonite mind drops its guard against change there are hardly any limits as to what one is inclined to allow.

In 1399, 130 Waldenses were found in Bernese territory, the homeland of the Swiss Brethren, from where Amish come. In their statement of faith, one of the articles states, "We aim to keep the same faith regardless of growth in numbers." We are not clear on details how they accomplished this, but one thing the Waldenses are known for is their memorization of the scriptures. This practice may have had a significant effect on the church throughout history, and is a characteristic of Amish dynamics. There are probably few people who have committed the Bible to memory as a group, as have the Amish, even today.

The concern of the New Testament and of such people as the Waldenses, the martyrs of the reformation, and all God-fearing people since has been to "keep the faith". What it took to realize this concern is what is expressed throughout the history of the church in various aspects. Keeping the faith for the Amish has historically meant resisting moderation of principle.

Commitment to conviction versus compromise has been a typical Amish concern for centuries. The 10 commandments in Exodus 20 for example, were not given as 10 suggestions. So too, men like Jacob Ammann could be very specific.

Considering conditions at the time of the Swiss Brethren controversy we see this truth in effect. Jacob Ammann and other were intent to relate to the Schleitheim confession of faith as a reference point in concrete ways as well as the more recent Dortrecht Confession. Hans Reist regarded the articles as irrelevant, or perhaps, not at all. This has been a dynamic for the Amish throughout their history, to consider the scriptures and church standards as concrete and binding. Ammann in principle did not introduce anything new- he merely sought to enact the old, already established truth. This mentality was expressed in earlier Bernese Anabaptists. Delbert Gratz, in "Bernese Anabaptists" states how one state authority wrote to another. "The Anabaptist leaders impress us as being more obstinate and headstrong than learned and meek..." Considering this, Jacob Ammann may have been a "chip off the old block".

To some of the Swiss Brethren the conditions of the church indicated that the respect for the past and the well-being of the future was at stake. Robert Friedmann in Mennonite Piety Throughout the Centuries writes, "Anabaptism was essentially a movement which insisted upon an earnest life of a true discipleship of Christ, that is to give expression in fellowship and love to the deepest Christian faith, with full readiness to suffer in conflict with the evil world order. So long as this willingness to suffer as an expression of deepest faith, and this readiness to enter into a non-resistant struggle for salvation, was a reality, just so long was Anabaptism a great and powerful movement." It was this concern that was at the heart of the Swiss Brethren conflict.

Issues concerning discipline, church purity, separation, and brotherhood came into the limelight as Swiss Brethren were compromising by taking the oath, baptizing infants, attending state churches and on occasion sharing communion with them.

To maintain the purity of the church required stricter discipline. Communion held twice a year would give more frequent occasion to realize this goal. There was a need to distinguish more clearly between the church and the world. The ban and shunning would help clarify what belongs to the world and what is of the church. The united commitment as a brotherhood to the Truth and the past was threatened. Feet washing according to the example of Christ in John 13 would revive this sense of responsibility and commitment one to another as well as to God.

We have here three basic articles that the Amish have sought to maintain through the centuries- discipline or church purity, separation and brotherhood. Paton Yoder writes in Tradition and Transitions, "Confidence in the spiritual purity and doctrinal integrity of their forefathers accounts, to a considerable extent, for the respect given to this day to religious customs and traditions by the Amish."

One can further understand some of Ammann's motives and concerns as we consider the statements he made in his letters during this time of conflict. In Letters of the Amish Division - A Source Book, by John Roth, we have the following statements that reflect a thought pattern providing the dynamics for the Amish movement:

We also believe in our heart and confess with our mouth that apart from the Word of God no one should be regarded as saved. For then there is no longer only one path that leads to life. There is only one faith that is valid before God, there is only one people who are the bride of Christ. We know well that God saves no one apart form His Word. Without the true saving faith it is impossible for one to please God. If someone believes from the heart but still does not want to confess with the mouth, then he wants to serve two masters and no one can serve two masters at the same time who are opposed to each other. Our opponents, however want to lead the truehearted people into the heavenly sheepfold by another path without this Christian discipline, without the cross, and without suffering with which the Holy Scriptures are filled. ...We pay no regard to human councils, to longstanding practice and the custom of time if they are not established according to God's Word. For our faith should be loudly, clearly, firmly and solely grounded upon God's Word. ...My highest desire is to maintain order according to the Word of God and Christian discipline. ...Faith is no respecter of persons. God's Word demands obedience from all people, from the leader as much as from the follower, from the teacher as much as from the listener."

Throughout Amish history the differences with their contemporaries was often not on the doctrines themselves, but where the emphasis was put on those doctrines.

The conflict the Bernese Anabaptists had with the state church was not so much in their lifestyle and conduct but on their theology. Delbert Gratz in Bernese Anabaptists writes how one state church minister advised his people "to follow the good example of the Anabaptists in their own life but not to follow their doctrine."

The following discussion will revolve around this concept -- how the Amish have differed traditionally on doctrinal emphasis in relation to pietism.

The Amish church through the years has been affected by pietism. One might say the strength of the Amish has also been their weakness. The effort to maintain practice, form and structure has periodically been done at the expenses of retaining the spirit and principle behind the practice. Formalism and spiritual staleness has historically proven to be a seedbed for pietism.

In Mennonite Piety Throughout the Centuries, Robert Friedmann states that the Bernese Oberland, the homeland of the Amish after the 1711 immigration, became a leading pietistic center. This is of interest because we see that after the Amish influence left, pietism took over.

Pietism has been classified as the grandchild of Anabaptism. Historically this conflict of emphasis has been evident. Pietism may be described as being what Schwenkfeld was between Luther and Anabaptism. Pilgrim Marpeck in his writing against Schwenkfeld said, "He wants to look at Christianity only from the pleasant and friendly side." This appears to be a philosophy expressing toleration, or moderation of principle.

Following are more definitions of pietism as found in Mennonite Piety Throughout the Centuries:

"The pietist ceased to place the emphasis upon the outer life, but upon edification, enjoying or `tasting' of salvation which had already been achieved (p. 12). Pietism was the gradual disappearance of that concrete Christianity to an emotional one which caused less conflict with the world. Pietism stressed inherited natural wickedness more than the capacity for obedience, in order to make conversion more effective (p. 137). When religious interests shifted, to be focused mainly on the individual and his eternal destiny the general style of the Christian life also changed in many aspects (p. 102). The pietist was primarily concerned with inner experience of salvation from a personal position and only secondarily with expression of brotherhood and not at all on radical world transformation" (p. 11).

By these statements one can better understand the difference in emphasis-- inward versus outward, individualism versus brotherhood, etc.

We will now consider a number of doctrines where a shift of emphasis is noted:

1. Salvation: It is not simply the certitude of being saved from damnation, but a walking in newness of life and where discipleship has precedence over the concern for experience.

2. Redemption: It is not only deliverance from sin and freedom from guilt and the restoration of fellowship with God, but also a commission to fulfill a task affecting a horizontal as well as a vertical relationship.

3. Grace: It was considered by the biblicist as not merely God's unmerited favor to man in regards to his salvation, but grace is the enabling power of God to do what we ought to and what is right. (endowment with responsibility.)

4. Justification: It is not only the enjoyment of knowing a right standing with God through faith in Christ, but also an acute awareness that justification cannot be separated form sanctification or holiness. Faith is not complete without works. Justification is the initiation to discipleship.

5. Knowing a right standing with God: Our forefathers believed one could know. In literature and in expression the emphasis was not so much on this knowledge as it was on the necessity of living and doing right according to the Word of God. This confidence of right relationship with God would be a result.

6. Love: It is not merely an emotional feeling of affection, which overlooks sin and tolerates carnality. Rather it is a mind set which requires expression in life and conduct according to Christ's words, "If ye love me keep my commandments."

7. Fellowship: It cannot only be a devotional gathering where each one feels himself distinct from the other due to diverse experience. Rather it is the disappearance of all things personal and selfish in the practice of brotherly reception, to be built up mutually for the building of the kingdom.

8. Communion: Communion is more than a memorial service of Christ's death and resurrection for the personal edification of each participant. It is also a showing of oneness -- finding identity by losing it as shown by the bread and wine, where each kernel and each grape was crushed to make one whole -- a unit, collectively expressing the will of God. For the Amish, council meetings or preparatory services for communion have always been important events involving due stress and concern. It is the time to reevaluate one's commitment to God and the standards of the church, the visible body of Christ, both individually and collectively. Not only is it an examination of oneself but also a yielding to one's brother for admonition and correction. It is a time to enforce discipline where violation of standard and principle exist. This has been the Amish approach for maintaining the church collectively and individually versus the more Protestant approach of revival meetings.

9. The church: The biblical concept of the church has been the very center of Amish dynamics. It has been the primary point for Anabaptist- Protestant distinction. Understanding the church to be a covenanted community has affected the degree of loyalty to the visible body of Christ. It is in a very real sense the kingdom of God on earth. The church -- God's people collectively express the will of God on earth in life and conduct. They are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

10. Eschatology: The emphasis is not focusing on outward world conditions as the determining factors for Christ's second return to earth, but an acute awareness that it is the church, the salt of the earth, that determines God's decision for the end. This in return is reason to be concerned about the danger of apostasy and drift away from truth. The Amish traditionally have understood that the return of Christ is imminent and that return will be the end of the world. There will be time no more. The final and last judgment will then take place when each one must reap what was sown and must give account of himself to God for the things done in the body, whether good or bad.

Whenever Amish brethren have deviated too far from the proper emphasis on the above doctrines they individually or as a group have ceased to be a congenial part of Amish society. Along with the shift of emphasis there has also been a shift of fellowship.

In summary, one might say the dynamics of the Amish movement are those matters that contribute to keeping the faith in not allowing moderation of principle as held forth in the Word of God, and as has been proven workable throughout the past, with a proper emphasis on right relationship with God and man as well as purity, separation and brotherhood.

--Roy Kline is an Amish minister in Holmes County, Ohio. This is the text of a talk he presented at the annual meeting of the Casselman River Amish and Mennonite Historians, September 3, 1994, Grantsville, Maryland.

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Mennonite Historical Bulletin April, 1997