Does being Amish work?

Lessons from an historic Protestant group that may have lost its way

Why does the cover of this book show a horse and buggy going straight ahead while a sports car turns off? See below for the explanation.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. —Romans 3:23-24

If you travel around certain communities of the United States where the Amish live (especially in the US states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana), you can’t miss them. After all, any group that drives horse-drawn buggies instead of cars is bound to stand out.

The Amish are part of the Anabaptist stream of the Protestant Reformation. They are named for Jakob Ammann, who was involved in a split among Swiss Mennonites in 1693. Shortly after that, they emigrated to North America. Today, nearly all of the world’s 400,000 Amish, often referred to as “Plain” people for their simple lifestyle, reside in the United States.

The Amish are well respected for many things. They are famous for showing public forgiveness, such as after a tragic attack on an Amish schoolhouse in 2006. They do excellent and profitable work for non-Amish, especially in carpentry and furniture making. When an Amish family needs a new barn or home, the community comes together and builds it, sometimes in just a few days.

However, they also offer a vivid contemporary example of how adherence to tradition can undermine the gospel of Christ over time.

Much like the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, Amish communities have developed their own ordnung, or set of rules, to define who’s obeying and who isn’t. A community’s ordnung often contains detailed prescriptions about how to dress, the length of beards, what technology is permissible (the Amish use generators for electricity as they do not want to become dependent on the outside world’s electric grid), and many other things. Amish communities generally hold their worship services in German, even though many Amish do not speak that language. Reading the Bible independently is often discouraged. Failure to follow the ordnung can result in shunning or exclusion from the community. The Amish still take church discipline as seriously as Jakob Ammann did, often causing permanent family ruptures.

Each Amish community is different, so we must not generalize about their spirituality. But many have told stories like that of Joseph Graber, whose father experienced Amish life as a religion of works and who was excommunicated when he discovered the grace of Christ and tried to share it with others.

When David Servant, a pastor and founder of a Christian relief organization, moved to an area with Amish living nearby, several of them did remodeling work on his home. Servant tried to engage the Amish carpenters in spiritual conversation and got nowhere. “They had no desire to discuss spiritual matters or the Bible,” he explained. “They had no desire to share their faith, because they really had no faith worth sharing. They had no assurance of salvation, but only hopes to be good enough to be accepted by God.”

A very determined evangelist, Servant proposed paying the Amish carpenters their regular hourly wage to study the Bible with him. He studied the 1632 Dordrecht Confession, a classic statement of Anabaptist beliefs, so that he could explain to the Amish how they had drifted away from their spiritual heritage. He offered to attend one of their services (at which guests are generally not welcome). Not only did the carpenters decline, but they said they would have to stop working for him.

After months of prayer, Servant discovered an Amish couple in a nearby community who had developed a personal relationship with Christ through reading the Bible on their own. With Servant’s support, they brought about 30 others to a saving relationship with Christ before getting kicked out. Servant calls them the “Ahamish”—or people who exclaimed “Aha!” upon discovering the biblical truths that were affirmed by the early Anabaptists but that he believes most modern Amish are missing.

To encourage spiritual revival in Amish communities, Servant tracked down mailing lists and began sending messages and newsletters to over 60,000 Amish households, generating several thousand responses—some defensive, others deeply appreciative. He learned of others who have been quietly sharing the gospel within their own networks or even gently leading whole Amish communities to trust in Christ rather than ordnung obedience for their salvation.

Now the debate has spawned two colorful books. Why Be Plain? by Larry Weaver and Terry Zimmerman defends the practices of Amish and similar “Old Older” Mennonite groups. The image on the front cover shows a horse and buggy traveling a straight and narrow path while an automobile veers off, presumably into worldliness. Servant has composed a response in which he acknowledges the Plain communities’ concerns for holiness while decrying their collection of extrabiblical rules and their lack of interest in mission as symptoms that the Plain people have themselves gone off track.

The Amish story resembles similar tales all over the world. When a Christian group separates itself from other Christians, asserts a higher level of revelation (which can be its own rules, teachings, or prophetic messages) with equal force as the Bible, refuses to listen to constructive criticism, and excommunicates anyone who questions the group’s claims to superiority, soon that group will no longer be Christian.

Few outside observers would have guessed that the Amish needed a revival. But Servant says, “We are greatly encouraged by the beginnings of an awakening among North America’s Amish, and I expect that the trend will continue.”