Plain People and the Refinement of America

by Steve Nolt

 

Two Old German Baptist Brethren couples from near Delphi in Carroll County, Indiana were visiting in Daviess County. They were in town, poking around in stores much as any other tourist or visitor would do, when an "English" man approached them. “Are you Amish?” he asked. "No,” they replied politely, “We're Brethren.” Before they could explain more, the man furrowed his brow, turned and walked away toward his wife who had waited at a distance. In a voice easily heard by those around and tinged with annoyance, the man announced, “They say they're not Amish—but they are!”

Let us admit that the inquiring tourist had good reason to be confused. There are a host of different “Plain groups” today—and more being formed all the time. A conservative Mennonite reader joked to author Steve Scott that Scott’s 1996 book, An Introduction to Old Order and Conservative Mennonite Groups1, should have been published as a loose-leaf binder so that pages could be added and taken out with the same rapidity and regularity that its contents change.

“The Plain People” is in many ways a loose label, and one that is often batted about without much specificity or care. What do we mean by “plainness”? I think there is a very general sense among latter-day Anabaptists of what this means, but what is the larger historical and religious context out of which people came to be called "plain"? We might also ask, who are we talking about when we use the term “plain”? How might we make sense of the various groups that such a heading assumes, and how can we think about their relationships with one another? I will suggest some ways to begin thinking about these questions.

How do we understand “plainness”?
There are a variety of Anabaptist groups that are termed “plain.” Numerous books include the term “plain people” in their titles without explanation. An Amish-affiliated commercial paper published in Pennsylvania is called Plain Communities Business Exchange. A Beachy Amish congregation in Newport, Maine calls itself Plain Christian Fellowship. An Indiana Old Order Mennonite in conversation refers to “other plain people” without being very specific about whom he has in mind. Perhaps there is a belief that we know “plain” when we see it—at least in terms of dress, and many people assume that dress suggests other things about its wearer’s lifestyle.

But what is the historical context out of which we have come to call some people “plain”? Some of the roots are obviously biblical or stem from aspects of European Anabaptist tradition. There are passages in the New Testament—from Jesus, Paul, Peter, and James—to avoid costly ornament in favor of a spirit of contentment. Certain streams of sixteenth-century Anabaptism, from both the Swiss and the Dutch, picked up on the idea of self-denial in ways that promoted simplicity of life. For example, the 1591 “Concept of Cologne” condemned “the fashions of dress [that] resemble more the ways of the world than they do the way of Christian humility.” Without establishing exact guidelines, the document enjoined “everyone to be content with . . . simple clothing.”2

Without diminishing these biblical and specifically Anabaptist roots and impulses, we must acknowledge that the situation here in America was, at least at first, more complex. Non-ostentation was a broadly-shared value in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Plainness was actually something of a virtue among political republicans in the American colonies and the young United States.

Despite their establishment of race-based, hereditary slavery, colonial European Americans held a remarkably common bias against aristocracy and old-style social class distinctions. In a literal sense the aristocracy did not replicate itself in America. On the eve of the Revolution there was only one titled person among the permanent residents of the colonies—Virginia’s Lord Fairfax. The Revolution itself gave new impetus to the idea of simplicity and the glorification of common things. American republicans showed their patriotism by rejecting the showiness and superfluous waste of Old World princes and nobles. A practical, frontier-style impulse animated their desire to strip away excess, as well as an ideological desire to show that America could do more with less.

John Adams (1735-1826), for example, as a leader in the Continental Congress, first Vice President, and second President of the United States, thought it frivolous to paint one’s barn. It was a waste of money, not to mention a poor example to his neighbors. As a leader Adams needed to model restraint and simplicity, and so cautioned his wife Abigail (1744-1818), who managed the home and farm business, against paint and “all expensive ornaments” on farm buildings.3

In early American society there were, of course, people of “the better sort.” But they were clergy or people with more education or status derived from well-regarded ancestry, not people who had more money or more things, or who lived on a scale much different from their neighbors. Indeed, having an assortment of worldly accoutrements or frittering away one’s time with dances and card-playing was often a sure sign that one was not among “the better sort.”

In many popular religious settings, as well, simplicity was a mark of godliness. Adherents of the rapidly-rising Methodist movement looked to their founder John Wesley (1703-1791), who strenuously counseled plainness in all aspects of life. Protestant evangelicals from Methodists to Baptists to United Brethren all condemned ostentation, and many detailed in their discipline books how to stay within acceptable limits. In 1818 the Evangelical Association, for example, “resolved that none of our ministers be allowed to wear gloves during the Summer, nor to use silver-plated bridle bits or stirrups, or loaded whips, and in no case to adorn their person with large watch keys.”4

In addition to this general cultural tendency, most late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Mennonites, Amish, and Brethren also lived in a more immediate environment that further reinforced support for simplicity. Pennsylvania Germans of all stripes—of whom Anabaptist groups were one small piece—stood apart notably in their customs and seemingly old-fashioned dress. In 1797 the Polish nobleman Julian Niemcewicz (1758-1841) arrived in Frederick, Maryland, and observed that while even the oldest German inhabitant he met “was born in America, nevertheless by dress and way of life it is easy to recognize them as Germans and even to place them as Germans of the 16th century.” Instead of British-style bonnets, women wore “large white hats without crowns like huge flat plates” while men sported “long, wide linen trousers.”5

Pennsylvania German custom stressed simplicity and reflected the lingering memory of traditional German laws guarding against lavish clothing.6 Piety and plain dress were associated with the memory of saintly Pennsylvania Germans of all religious persuasions. One North German immigrant Lutheran pastor, John Uhlhorn (1794-1834), who arrived in the New World wearing earrings, quickly learned that such stylishness permitted in Hamburg would never be countenanced by Germans in Maryland.7 Simple clothing and humble demeanor was how people described the likes of Lutheran pastor John William Heim (1782-1849).8 Then, too, many Pennsylvania Germans were skeptical of higher education and church institutions, seeing them as examples of excess and pride. In such an environment, simplicity in church and home and personal life was a variation on an American theme.

Between 1790 and 1850, however, there was a remarkable cultural shift in the United States which affected not only how people lived, but how they thought about how they lived. Americans began to aspire to live in a style that they often called “refined.” In his book The Refinement of America historian Richard Bushman recounts how by about 1850 “gentility” had triumphed in America.9 Being “respectable” came to mean something other than plain and simple.

In an ironic way, the fact that white America was relatively free from social class and rank distinctions meant that suddenly, the possibility was open for anyone to be an aristocrat. In a society that prized both equality and liberty, the race was on to the top of the social ladder, now open to all comers. Unlike John Adams and others who saw America as a place where freedom demanded restraint, increasing numbers of people saw freedom as the means to fulfill aspirations of gentility unhindered.

Exacting guidebooks appeared (based on Renaissance-era Italian nobility manuals) which instructed one on how to talk, walk, eat, laugh, and write a letter like a gentleman or a lady—instruction on everything but how to work, which was not a genteel thing to do. Of course genteel activities demanded genteel surroundings, such as houses with carpets, mirrors, and display objects such as dishes which one did not use but had only “for show.” Ordinary people worked long and hard to give the appearance of not working at all. Refined people read novels, had more clothes than they could wear, and found creative ways to demonstrate that they possessed excess wealth.

The social experiment in refinement was in many ways a success. Refinement actually suppressed class. Vaudeville showmen began to refer to everyone in the audience as “Ladies and gentlemen . . . .” Anyone, it turned out, could be a lady or a gentleman—terms which a century before had been reserved for a select few.

It is hardly surprising, then, that we find Amishman David Beiler’s complaints about finery during this era. In 1862 Beiler (1786-1871) was writing in the wake of refinement’s triumph, and his complaints about fine shoes, new household gadgets, and the like spoke to its success.10 The world in which Beiler had been born had changed in the course of several decades, and left his interest in simple things suddenly on the defensive. It is also no surprise that the tensions which would eventually produce Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren Old Order movements emerged in the years following 1860.

It is here, in the aftermath of the refinement of America that we discover the emergence of “plainness.” Even though simplicity was an old element in the collective Mennonite, Brethren, and Amish resistance to “the world,” it emerged in a new way in the shadow of popular refinement. The whole idea of non-ostentation now seemed out-of-date and even out-of-place in America. Neighboring Pennsylvania Germans were slow to pick up on the message of refinement and gentility, but they, too, by the end of the nineteenth century had acquired at least a domesticated form of it.

If this were simply the story of economic wealth and opportunity gone to seed, it would be interesting enough, but the changes that refined gentility brought were much deeper, affecting even how people thought about religion—thinking which in turn cemented the triumph of refinement.

At one time Protestant evangelicals had been some of the strongest supporters of simplicity. They had also long insisted that conversion and the new birth resulted in new Christians tossing off the frivolities of the world as they devoted themselves to Christ. For example, converts might be expected to discard fancy jewelry, fine hats, or attendance at dances as a mark of their conversion. Not coincidentally, the things they abandoned were exactly the sorts of things associated with gentility, and many evangelicals disciplined or excommunicated members who slid back into such habits, often condemning gentility as an unscriptural class distinction.

But now everyone was a lady or a gentleman through a process that promised uplift and betterment, not a new class war. Clergy preached gentility as the opposite of rudeness and vulgarity; refinement was almost shorthand for the fruits of the Spirit. By mid-century, popular theology had subtly redefined conversion as a movement from coarse thoughts and behavior to proper and mannerly behavior. Instead of purging people of their genteel trapping, conversion eliminated roughness and elevated people’s spirits so that they could appreciate practical progress, betterment, and good taste.11 The way mainstream Americans talked and thought about religion and conversion was forever changed, and those in Anabaptist circles who picked up these cues could hardly help but absorb some of its effect.12

The story of plainness is, of course, more complicated than the attention given it here. The refinement of America was also linked to capitalism and the production of consumer goods by people working so hard to buy them and demonstrate their gentility that they never had time to use or enjoy them.

But whatever we think about the sort of paradoxical class system that America has created in which refinement and improving yourself relative to others promises equality, the makers of refined America and its consumer culture were right about at least one thing: we change ourselves by changing our environment. The genteel-to-be believed that wall mirrors and carpets and novels and imported broad-clothes would make them into people their grandparents had been fundamentally unable to become. They were correct.

And at some level David Beiler knew that, too. He chose his habits by choosing a surrounding community that practiced them. If plainness continues to have meaning—even among those who have adopted elements of American evangelical conversion theology—it rests upon a commitment to being a church community together. Refinement is really a value and goal of those who are searching for a community in a fluid and undefined world.

Refinement and plainness have other dimensions, too. Our use of time and priorities suggest the depth of simplicity in anyone’s life. These are questions that even the historic “plain people” face as they move into new types of jobs and other settings, which consume significant amounts of their weeks. For modern mainline Anabaptists the value of individual self-determination limits the degree to which we can have a strong group identity to counter the lures of consumerism and individual achievement, which promise to tell us who we are in ways that mock simplicity.

Continue...




Notes

1. Stephen E. Scott, An Introduction to Old Order and Conservative Mennonite Groups (Intercourse, Pa.: Good Books, 1996).

2. Leonard Gross, trans., “The First Mennonite Merger: The Concept of Cologne,” Mennonite Yearbook, and Directory, 1990-1991 (Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Publishing House), 9.

3. Adams quoted in Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 246-47.

4. Sylvanus C. Breyfogel, ed., Landmarks of the Evangelical Association, Containing all the Official Records of the Annual General Conferences . . . to the Year 1840; . . . together with important Extracts from . . . the General Conference from 1840 to the Present Time (Reading, Pa.: Eagle Book Printers, 1888), 34.

5. Niemcewicz, Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree, 112. Although Niemcewicz was describing the Lutheran and Reformed Pennsylvania Germans who populated the area (there were no German sectarians there at the time), one can still see elements of the costume he described among the most traditional of Old Order Amish groups–the so-called “Nebraska” or “white top” Amish of Mifflin and nearby Counties, Pennsylvania–who have preserved several eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Pennsylvania German clothing styles. See Frederick S. Weiser, “The Clothing of the 'White Top' Amish of Central Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage 21 (July 1998): 2-10.

6. John M. Vincent, Costume and Conduct in the Laws of Basel, Bern, and Zurich, 1370-1800 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1935), 1, 19, 37-39, 74-95, 133. German Reformed clergy feared the individualism expressed through personal clothing choice, denouncing in 1786 “the sad consequences of display in dress” that threatened community order and opening the possibility that “a stranger on Sundays, or festival days, cannot possibly tell whom he meets.”–Minutes and Letters of the Coetus of the German Reformed Congregations in Pennsylvania, 1747-1792 . . . . (Philadelphia: Reformed Church Publication Board, 1903), 406.

7. John G. Morris, Fifty Years in the Lutheran Ministry (Baltimore: James Young, 1878), 95.

8. David H. Focht, Churches Between the Mountains: A History of the Lutheran Congregations in Perry County, Pennsylvania (Baltimore: T. Newton Kurtz, 1862), 342-61.

9. Bushman, The Refinement of America.

10. [David Beiler], “Memoirs of an Amish Bishop,” trans. and ed. by John Umble, Mennonite Quarterly Review 22 (April 1948), 94-115.

11. Bushman, Refinement of America, 313-52.

12. For Mennonites and Brethren who did not chose the Old Order way, but who retained an ideal of plainness nonetheless, the concept had to be redefined. Simplicity became in many ways a “refined plainness” that did not point one backwards, but in a practical and calculated way justified and enhanced one’s activist mission in the world. That sort of nonconformity, it seems to me, is always harder—though not impossible—to pass on. It is somehow linked to ideas of betterment and improvement, and it is connected to the idea of creating an identity more than retaining one. I wonder if the restless nineteenth-century Americans who created a new genteel identity in the name of equality have an echo among converted individuals who promote plainness as a way to church unity. In both cases, identities are assumed to be fluid. And where such fluidity runs is always anyone’s guess.

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Mennonite Historical Bulletin, October, 1999