When "The Amish: Shunned" airs Tuesday (Feb. 4) on public television's American Experience series, Donald Kraybill will be seeing it for the first time. That may sound strange, because the Amish scholar is listed as a source in the credits and helped produce the show's precursor, "The Amish," for public TV two years ago.
“Shunned” is a big reveal, examining the separatist sect’s sometimes severe method of disowning those who leave their church.
Kraybill has faith it will be good.
“I just trust the filmmakers,” he said last week by phone from his office at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, where he is a professor and senior fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. “I trust their judgment and credibility.”
Kraybill and two other researchers published "The Amish" in 2013 (Johns Hopkins University Press), and it was used as the main reference for both shows. Kraybill also secured for the first show Amish individuals who agreed to be interviewed. That meant audio, not video, because their strong beliefs in humility prevent them from appearing on camera.
The Amish: Shunned
“Shunned” is different. It shows the faces of seven Amish, most of them young, as they struggle with a decision to leave their families for good, while seeking a life with more occupational, economical and spiritual choices.
Ohio has the largest concentration of Amish in the world, and some of the subjects in the two-hour show are from Akron, Ashland, Mansfield and Middlefield.
Kraybill talked last week about the show, his book and the painful policy of disowning those who leave the Amish faith.
“I know there’s hurt on both sides,” he said.
Almost a year after publication, how are you feeling about your book?
I’m very pleased with it. It was a complicated and difficult process of putting it together over 10 years, and what we ended up with was a comprehensive look at Amish communities across America. There hasn’t been anything like this since John Hostetler’s “Amish Society” in 1963, which was updated later. A key contribution of our book is the identification of more than 40 Amish tribes or groups. It’s a complex society, and hazardous to talk about “the Amish” as one people. They’re really a rainbow of many different types of practices.
How was it working with two other authors?
It was a real team effort. Karen M. Johnson-Weiner is an anthropologist with a focus on linguistics and an expert on Swartzentrubers, one of the most conservative tribes. Steven M. Nolt is a historian. I could not have written as good a book by myself, nor could they. It was a great example of collaboration. Even when I look at a page, I don’t know which one of us drafted each sentence. We wanted a unified voice for the reader. We all respected each other, took criticism without getting offended or annoyed. Our biggest battle was over commas. There were seven different cooks in the comma kitchen.
Paul Edwards joined the Amish church at 17 but was excommunicated after a falling out.
According to last year's public TV program "The Amish," which you co-produced, the Industrial Revolution drove a major wedge between the agrarian Amish and the rest of America. What are things like now with the more recent changes in technology?
It’s a big stressor and point of debate in all Amish communities. The biggest issues are cell phones and the Internet. Traditionally, Amish life could be divided into distinct areas: home, business, entertainment and the church experience. But on the Internet, all those dimensions are fused. On the one hand, they are anxious and fearful of the world as a moral cesspool. Now it’s a mouse click away, but they need it for business. They need it for shipments, filing taxes and to do inventory. Some groups use “neutered computers” that allow calculation but not a connection to the Internet. A lot of Amish businesses have a third-party provider that provides web services for them. There’s a difference between owning technology and having access to it, and it’s a pretty firm moral boundary. Smart phones are the last chapter. In the past, if a young Amish boy saw pornography, he’d have to go to Cleveland to see it. Now he can see it on a phone in a cornfield behind the house. There aren’t easy answers.
Are Amish benefitting from the local food movement?
Ninety-eight percent of Amish live in distinctly rural areas. A few live in very small towns and none in cities. But even in rural areas, two-thirds of them are earning an income in some sort of business. Maybe a family has a 60-acre farm with two or three families on it. Only one family can farm. The others might sell fabric, furniture or vegetables. The local food movement has been a big help over the last 10 years. You can raise enough produce on four or five acres to support a family. In Holmes County, a major cooperative like Green Field Farms has their products distributed nationally. A family can stay on the farm and work together on a small spot, as long as there’s a market.
Do you worry about a show that highlights shunning?
It’s something people are curious about. But my first point would be that excommunication was not invented by the Amish. Other conservative groups like the 17th century Dutch Mennonites, today’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, and some other groups practice it.
The second point I’d want to make is that the Amish believe in adult baptism, a cardinal belief. If you’re baptized, you’ve made a pledge to uphold the Christian faith and your local church for the rest of your life. And you must support their teaching. If, five years later, you clearly violate that, you’re not just violating the church but the community and the vows you made to God. In a sense, the church is a parent who disciplines the child who violates the rules. If you confess, you’re welcomed back easily. The back door is always open, but you must be contrite, willing to confess your sins and agree to the terms of the church. Some more moderate Amish groups will lift the ban if you go to a similar church, like a Mennonite church. Shunning is not lifelong in some groups. There’s not just one Amish way of practicing it.
Could you characterize for us the Geauga and Holmes county Amish communities?
Holmes County in Ohio has more than six different Amish tribes, with some of the most progressive and some of the most conservative. Holmes is a mosaic and runs across the spectrum. Geauga has two groups, the largest being more progressive, but not as progressive as some in Holmes. My impression is that 80 percent of the families in the Geauga area are with the progressive tribe.
How do we know that there's truth in the often-cited figure that 90 percent of the Amish don't leave the church?
Church records. In Geauga alone, there is a 600-page directory of families that includes members and those who left. The number that stays Amish fluctuates by group. In one group it could be 60 percent; in another, 95 percent. Ninety percent is the gross national average. The Swartzentrubers have the higher retention, and, ironically, they’re the most conservative. The “new order” in Holmes has a lower retention rate. The closer you are to the outside world, the easier it is to step over the line.