Craftsmanship and Work Ethic (continued)
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Another group of Amish from Palatinate, along with others from Alsace and Lorraine, moved to Bavaria near towns of Ingolstadt, Regensburg, and Munich. Descendants of the Amish still live at Regensburg. The Amish who settled in Bavaria overcame many of the prejudices against them through diligent work and agricultural inventiveness. Because they were excluded from village life, they became tenants on large estates. Here they had more opportunity to experiment with farming methods than did the peasants with their few plots of ground and their deeply regimented economic routine. Their marginal nonconformity and marginal acceptance motivated them to work harder and produce more than non-Amish tenants, and this gave them the incentive to adopt new methods. Some of the descendants of the Bavarian Amish are today superior farm managers. Their district Amish organization was lost before the advent of the present century, but a few practices, such as foot washing, the wearing of the cap by women, and congregation autonomy, persisted longer.

The Amish make no effort to evangelize or proselyte the outsider. It is their primary concern to keep their own baptized members from slipping into the outer world, or into other religious groups. With greater mobility and ease of travel and communication, Amish solidarity is threatened. Members who wish to have automobiles, radios, or the usual comforts of modern living face the threat of being excommunicated and shunned. Thus the ban is used as an instrument of discipline not only for the drunkard or the adulterer but for the person who transgresses the Ordnung. It is powerful instrument for preventing involvement in outside loyalties.

The Amish have a strong affinity for the soil and for nature. Working with the soil was not one of the original issues that gave rise to the Anabaptist movement or the Amish group, but was a basic value acquired during the process of survival. As persecuted people, the Amish found it possible to survive in highlands, and there they developed unique skills for crop production and livestock-raising. In America the Amish perpetuated the skills they had acquired in the valleys of Switzerland, France, and Germany.

The physical world is considered good, and itself is not corrupting or evil. Its beauty is apparent in the universe, in the orderliness of the seasons, the heavens, in the world of living plants as well as in the many species of animals, and in the forces of living and dying. It is not uncommon to see an Amish family visiting a zoo in a large metropolitan area. Animals are considered part of the creation, and those not found on Amish farms are of great interest.

The charter of Amish life requires members to limit their occupation to farming or closely associated activities such as operating a saw mill, carpentry, or masonry. The Amishman feels contact with the material world through the working of his muscles and the aching of his limbs. In the little Amish community, toil is proper and good, religion provides meaning, and the bonds of family and church provide human satisfaction and love. In Europe the Amish lived in rural areas, always in close association with the soil, so their communities were largely agrarian in character. It is in America that they found it necessary to make occupational regulations for protection from the influence of urbanism.

The preference for rural living is reflected in attitudes and in informal interactions rather than in an explicit dogma. For the Amish, God is manifest more in closeness to nature, in the soil and weather, and among plants and animals than in the man-made city. Hard work, thrift, and mutual aid find sanction in the bible. The city, by contrast, is held to be the center of leisure, nonproductive spending, and often of wickedness. The Christian life is best maintained away from the cities. God created Adam and Eve to “replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen. 1:28). In the same way, man’s highest calling in the universe today is to care for the things of creation. One Amish man said, “The Lord told Adam to replenish the earth and to rule over the animals and the land- you can’t do that in cities.” Another said, “While the Lord’s blessings were given to the people who remained in the country, sickness and ruination befell Sodom.

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