This song, this amazing song, represents most of my late childhood.
I deeply remember listening to it on repeat day in and day out, wondering who exactly
were these Amish people?
And for the longest time, I never really looked into it, as I assume is the case for most
people who know this song.
Today, we change that.
If you’re new here, I’m Darius Cosden and this is Vlogs of Knowledge.
Make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell because I do upload every single Wednesday.
And today, we’re talking about the Amish and their history.
The history of the Amish is a very interesting one, involving religion and many differences
of opinions.
It all started in the 16th century.
Back then, the world was changing at a rapid pace.
New technologies were making life easier, people were getting smarter, and it seemed
like finally, something good was about to happen.
The Church, who was the central authority for the last 1,000 years or so was starting
to lose its grip.
I mean, it had a millennium to rule and make the world a better place.
But what happened instead is that we got the “dark ages”.
A period of relatively little progress during the Medieval Era.
It’s important to understand that back then, most Church activity revolved around the Pope
deciding what was good and what wasn’t, who then passed passed on the information
to the bishops and clergy, who then passed it on to the peasants.
The reason for this was that pretty much nobody could read, nor did they have access to a
physical copy of the Bible.
So they were forced to believe and accept whatever came from the hierarchy of the Church.
I mean they had no other choice.
If you were poor in the Middle Ages, you weren’t able to read, and you certainly couldn’t
afford a bible.
But, that all changed when the printing press was invented.
The printing press allowed books to be printed at a rate that had never been thought possible
before.
Instead of having to hand-write a book page by page to make one single copy of that said
book, you now could use this new invention to copy automatically multiple pages at once.
This was huge.
Just think about it.
For the longest time, up until that point really, peasants had no books. They were reserved for the rich and the educated.
Now, all of a sudden, anybody, regardless of income bracket, had access to a book.
This changed the world. It was something that had never been seen before.
You can sorta think of it like the internet.
Because it really is. I mean look what the internet did.
It changed the world.
Having the printing press was like having internet in 1515.
For the first time in history, the average peasant was finally able to get a book and
start learning how to read it.
Within the next few decades, there were hundreds of millions of books being copied every century.
With this vast new world of knowledge opened to them, the peasants wanted to start reading
the Bible for themselves.
Which is not something the Church necessarily wanted.
And they had reason to.
People realized that what the Catholic Church was preaching wasn’t totally saying the
same thing that they thought the Bible was trying to say.
In fact, this was one of the main problems that led to the Protestant Reformation.
Now the Protestant Reformation took a very long time to finish.
Over a century to be precise.
And not everybody was willing to wait that long for a change.
Some people wanted to take action right now, and to bring the change themselves.
In Zurich, Switzerland, we find such a group.
They are called the “Anabaptists”.
When they got their hands on the Bible, they, like everyone else, formed some opinions of
their own.
Most notably, they were arguing that Church doctrine should be more reliant on the scriptures rather
than traditions, that baptism should happen once an individual is able to consciously
recognize sin and not while still an infant, and that there should be more separation between
the Church and the government.
They tried to petition their local church for recognition of their opinions, but it
never happened.
So instead, they formed their own religious affiliation, and baptized each other.
Which is how they got their name.
“Anabaptist” means to be re-baptized.
The reason for them not agreeing with infant baptism was that they argued that a baby is
not conscious about sin when he is baptized.
So it shouldn’t count.
Instead, the baptism should take place in adulthood, when the brain is more mature and
is able to consciously recognize and repent from sin.
The Catholic church saw them as a threat, and began persecuting them on grounds of heresy.
The Church was very firm about people going against their beliefs.
They wanted to retain as much power as possible, so having ideas like these about baptism wasn’t
acceptable.
It could influence others, and the Church could lose followers.
The Anabaptists, fearing for their lives, left Zurich and moved to parts of Germany
and Switzerland, to build their own communities there.
But apart from Europe, a large group also went to the United States, in the state of
Pennsylvania. They grew in numbers, spread to neighbouring states and even up
north to Canada.
This group of people, the Anabaptists in the United States, are the foundation of what
was to later become the Amish.
Although, we still need to go through a little more history.
They continued to develop their own beliefs, ideas, and values, based on their interpretation
of the Bible.
They became pacifists, not resorting to violence in any way, they viewed the modern-world as
evil and actively separated from it, and they began to shun people who were not of their
own way of life.
Shunning means to ignore, avoid, or outright reject people that are not of your own affiliation.
Now just like any movement that gets more and more followers, you're putting yourself at risk for
different opinions.
The more people you get, the more opinions you have,
And the more risk you have of friction. Which is not good I mean for
for something like this to work, you need some sort of unity with the people.
And unity is not what the Anabaptists had.
In fact in the 17th century, a division was starting to happen within the group.
One side thought the current rules were too lenient, that people were not completely separated
from the modern-world, and that the shunning practices were too easy-going on non-believers.
To them, they wanted to be completely separated from the modern-world, they wanted absolutely
no affiliation with it, they wanted to be stricter with their rules, and they wanted
to be able to really shun people who went against them.
Both groups tried to resolve their differences by calling multiple meetings, but ultimately
none of them worked.
The movement was then split into two, one was called the Mennonites, coming from Menno
Simons, the man who started the Anabaptist movement, while the other camp was eventually
called the Amish.
The Amish, if that wasn’t obvious, was the group pushing for harsher restrictions.
It’s important to know that both of these groups are still technically called Anabaptists.
Both the Amish and the Mennonites subscribe to the ideology that baptism should occur
later on in life, not at infancy.
The only difference is in their specific views on certain topics, as we’ve just seen.
I think this would be best illustrated with a concrete example, and perhaps the most obvious
example is technology.
The Amish do not believe in technology.
They don’t use it and they live their life without it.
That means no phones, no cars, no electricity, no internet, no artificial light, nothing.
While they do occasionally use it for emergencies, such as driving somebody to a hospital in
critical condition, it doesn’t really happen too often.
The Amish believe that technology, which is often designed to ease our lives, is going
against God’s will.
According to them, God created humans to work and to earn their bread.
Having technology, which in the Amish situation would look like farming machines for example,
would not only give them tons of free time, but it would also be against what God has
created humans for.
But it wasn’t only that.
It was also a gateway to the modern-world, which the Amish are heavily against.
Especially nowadays with the internet and the mobile phone.
It could lead to temptation, and possibly to people leaving their community.
The Mennonites on the other hand are usually more lenient, often permitting electricity,
vehicles and even mobile phones.
And now you can see the friction between these beliefs.
Like there was absolutely no way that these two groups would end up staying together.
So now, that we got the history out of the way, let’s go back and look at these Amish people
and see what their life is all about.
Because although they have very strict rules about what they can and cannot do,
there’s something very beautiful about the way that they live their life.
First of all, they are organized by district.
Each district is separate, independent, and follows its own rules.
And most of these rules are similar, but some differ in the leniency of certain topics.
For example some districts might allow an electric fence to be built, a supposedly forbidden
technology, arguing that it is crucial in raising cattle.
When a district gets too big as the population increases, because the Amish often have more
than 6 kids, it is split into two and another district is created.
This helps keep the community relatively small, and helps with the local church meetings.
You see, the Amish don’t have a central church.
Instead, they meet at each other’s homes every Sunday and rotate the homes week by
week.
So yeah, you kinda don’t want 100+ people in your home on a Sunday, now do you?
They are most well-known for their plain clothing, representing a symbol of their non-conformity
to the modern world, the men wear trimmed hats, dark suits, and use buttons instead
of zippers, and the women wear bonnets, long full dresses covering them from neck to feet.
They are farmers, spending most of their day doing labour intensive chores to sustain their
lifestyle.
They usually wake up very early to get a good start on the day and work well into the evening.
Work is really important to the Amish.
It can almost be considered sacred.
Which is why they don’t use technology to help them.
They actually want to work hard each and every single day.
Which is something I respect.
Most of their income comes from the crops that they grow, or from the quilts that they
make, which are popular amongst tourists.
To them, this is an honest way to make money.
It is compensation for the hard work that they do on a daily basis.
They don’t use social security, nor do they use health insurance.
Which might make you wonder what their health looks like.
Well, it has its ups and downs.
For example, their simple way of life provides them with less stress, and less overall health
problems.
The food that they eat is organic and clean, which has numerous health benefits.
The fact that they are a closed society also makes them less susceptible to infectious
disease, but also puts them at a slightly higher risk for birth defects.
Simply put, the more closed off you are, the less diverse genes you have in the community,
and the more chances you have of getting birth defects as a result of those genes.
The Amish don’t believe in higher education, only educating their young until 8th grade.
They believe that that is the highest level of education needed for an Amish life, since
most of the stuff that you need to know is only related to farming and manual labor.
And actually, the supreme court of the United States has granted them that privilege.
And of course, the most important aspect of Amish life is the community.
That's the center of it all.
They live together, they help eachother out, they marry closely, they always look out for one another,
and they have harmony within the community. That's something that I really, really love about the Amish.
Since one of the main reasons for their existence is the fact that they believe baptism
should happen later on in life, you can expect the Amish to treat
their adolescents differently than they do their adult members.
They recognize that an teen is still not mature, and thus should be allowed time to grow and
develop.
This process, often called “Rumspringa” has a few aspects to it.
For one, if a teen makes choices that goes against the community, he is not punished
as harshly as if he were an adult.
Instead, he is allowed a little more freedom to make mistakes.
Not only that, but they are also allowed to taste the modern world, taste technology and
all the “bad” things according to the Amish ideology, as part of a rite of passage
ritual.
The basic idea is that you let these kids be free, taste the modern-world and make a
decision for themselves whether they want to remain with the Amish or not.
It goes hand in hand with the baptism ideology.
You want to wait until the child is old enough, and then let him make his own decision.
Now you’d think that giving these kids the freedom of choice would result in them leaving
the community, which is actually not the case.
85% to 90% of the youth end up choosing baptism and to be a part of the Amish church.
Which to me, was really surprising.
I actually did not expect that.
I personally would have thought that the strict rules and regulations would push people away.
I mean it is often said that the more you force someone onto something, the more they
resist.
But the Amish also adopt another popular belief: if you love someone, set them free.
And if they love you back, they will come back.
And that concludes a very brief history lesson on the Amish and their culture.
I really hope that you’ve enjoyed this video and if you did, please leave it a big thumbs
up, make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell, join #TeamKnowledge, and be notified
whenever I release a new video.
And now it’s time for questions.
What do you think about the Amish?
Would you like to try to live an Amish life?
Please do leave me a comment I would love to read and answer them all, and bonus points
for you if you do leave a comment you might get featured in next week’s video as a fan
of the week!
As you know and say at the end of every video, I haven’t talked about everything regarding
Amish and their culture.
That’s ok.
I actually do this on purpose because I want you guys to go out and research more on your
own.
Because I believe in research and I believe in getting you guys educated on a subject.
That's the whole reason why I do this show.
For those that want to learn more, as always, there will be some links in the description where
you can start!
With that being said, my name has been Darius Cosden, thank you so much for watching,
thank you for giving your time to this video,
it's been an absolute pleasure as always and I will see you all next Wednesday.