Amish: livsstil, historie og kultur

The Amish movement started by Jakob Amman (on the picture above)

(c. 1656–1730), a Swiss Mennonite (Christian) leader was formed in the late 17’th century. Ammann believed that Mennonites, the peaceful Anabaptists of the Netherlands and Germany, were slowly drifting from the the Mennonite ways of living. Ammann Prefered churches with a more strict set of rules. He also believed that shunning had to be used in some cases, such as unfaithfulness etc. What you’ve just read may have sounded a bit offensive for me to say, but that was simply so i could get the chance to save the best for last. Let’s get going.

Amish farmers taking their time to farm.

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. That is where the first Amish settled down after the long travel to America. Since then, they have been spread all over the USA.

Lifestyle

Amish people believes in the ways of socalled “easy living.” Easy leaving means that you have to do your work as simple as possible, and as slow as possible. They don’t see the point of technology. If something ain’t simple enough it is what they call “Hochmut”, which means that it is too advanced or complicated to either use or figure out how to use. Take a zipper for example, they don’t use those. Why? Because they are Hochmut. They prefer farming, milking their cows, feeding their pigs, doing carpentry, tailoring and so on. Basically keeping themselves alive. Being in the nature is also very “popular” in the Amish communities. When the young members of the Amish families reaches the age of 15, they have one year to see the world from another perspective. On that one year they can do whatever they wanna do without getting trouble or shunned, as they would’ve been if they had not had that “off-year”. They can at any time choose whether or not they want to stay at the Amish and their family, or if they like the outside world better. If they do choose the outside over the Amish they will get shunned, so that they have no permission to speak to any Amish ever, and the Amish won’t talk to them either. That was another rather negative thing, though they of course have another oppinion than me.