Travel Letter …

RESTORATIONISTS IN PENNSYLVANIA

In my last travel letter I indicated that I would tell of my pilgrimage to Princeton this time around, but I will delay that for one more issue so that I can relate to you something of my visit to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, known widely as Amish country. It is ironical that these simple people should become a tourist attraction. It is not generally known that they are restorationists, emanating from the Anabaptists who came into existence in an effort to restore primitive Christianity.

Sandwiched in between my visit to Toronto and Princeton was a weekend with the Church of Christ in Lancaster where I was the guest of Bert and Joan Travis who minister there. They are “low key” kind of folk who keep themselves busy serving, and even though I was with them but a short time I grew to love and appreciate them very much. I had tipped off Chaplain Talmage McNabb, retired, that I would be at this church on May 28, so he was able to join us from his home in New Jersey for the occasion. We have corresponded for many years as he made his way from one army camp to another, but had never been able to meet personally. I have always admired his vigorous interest in the Restoration Movement, especially his role as a gadfly in the letters and articles he has circulated among all our wings in an effort to get us to be honest.

That a.m. I spoke on The Eleventh Commandment, which is to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and in the p.m. spoke by request on the history of our Movement, dealing particularly with four slogans used by our pioneers. Everywhere I go I find our people interested in both the Bible and our history. Expository teaching, where the Scriptures themselves are projected and made relevant to our lives, is a crucial need in our churches, and the minister who seeks to fill this need will be appreciated. And our history, when properly approached, is something similar since our pioneers were engaged in an effort to rediscover the relevance of Scripture.

Chaplain McNabb, the Travis’, and I made a tour of Amish country. Being a Sunday afternoon, the plain folk were out in their jet-black buggies drawn by high-stepping horses, a display of anachronistic wealth. The Amish folk are successful farmers who amass considerable wealth in their efforts to have enough land for all the children to inherit and continue as farmers. Marriage is an essential step for the youth since one cannot inherit the family farm if he is single, and yet they must marry within the clan. So on Sundays they are out in force, dating in their immaculate buggies, the boys in dark pants and shirt and wide-brimmed black hats, the girls in long colorless dresses and gray bonnets. Nearly all of them work on farms as they move from farmhand to owner, the oldest son having the home place deeded to him when he marries. But they may also work for others as carpenters, cabinetmakers, or sawmill hands, but this is considered only as temporary. If one is physically handicapped he may become a watchmaker or some such craftsman and work in town.

The Anabaptists, of which the Amish are a sub-sect, began back in 1525 in an effort to restore the New Testament church out of Luther’s reformation. They agreed with Luther in tearing down the Roman Church, but they believed that a new order should take its place. Rather than be concerned with all the errors of Romanism, they sought to build a new fellowship after the example of the early Christians. Placing themselves under the demands of the Sermon on the Mount, they created a movement that resembled the church of the first century. as they saw it. They became strict pacificists. refusing to take up arms even for self defense. Some of them became communistic and rejected private property. They rejected infant baptism and emphasized discipline and commitment.

So the Anabaptists sought to reform the Reformers and have come to be known in history as part of “the Radical Reformation.” Their leaders, some of whom were former priests, debated both the Lutherans, the “rightists” who sought to retain some Catholic doctrine and ritual, and the Zwinglians, the “leftists” who were more liberal in doctrine but insisted on preserving the union of church and state. They also debated the Catholic theologians, calling for a return to primitive Christianity and the separation of church and state. They therefore had everyone against them, Protestants and Catholics alike, and since the established churches controlled the powers of the state they had no problem in persecuting the Anabaptists even unto death.

Though eager to restore ancient Christianity, the Anabaptist groups did not hesitate to adopt the names of their leaders. The Mennonites, who migrated from the Netherlands to the United States, were named for their pastor-leader, Menno Simons. and the Amish, who were the strictest sect of the Anabaptists, were called after their founder Jakob Ammann. They began in the 1690’s and came to Pennsylvania as early as 1727. The issues that divided the Amish and the Mennonites are not unheard of among our own people. The Mennonites, who have always been more liberal, believed that there were Christians outside their movement, while the Amish insisted that they were the only true church. They also differed on fellowship in that the Amish would not even eat with anyone who had left their ranks, as 1 Cor. 5:11 plainly says. Even when they had opportunity to migrate to America the Amish would not board the same ship with other Anabaptists!

These restorationists make much of the Christian’s separation from the world, their oft-quoted Scriptures being “Be not conformed to this world” and “Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers.” The Old Order among them have interpreted these passages very radically, even to the point of renouncing such “worldly” things as automobiles, telephones, modern plumbing, and of course radio-TV. In fact they have no electricity in their homes at all. Tractors cannot even be used in farming, though some compromise to the extent that tractors without rubber tires can be used. And their clothing must be the simplest, drab and colorless and usually made at home, though some clothing manufacturers make garments that meet Amish standards.

Just as all pattern-restorationists have problems being consistent, the Amish have theirs. They will not use electricity but do have propane gas. Their kitchens sport the latest-style gas ranges and kerosene refrigerators. They even go to the trouble to have a gasoline water pump that supplies water for a gas water-heater and a fully-equipped bath with toilet, lavatory, and shower. Their homes are rather well lighted by gasoline mantle lanterns. They may have no automobile in the drive, but their Mennonite neighbor does, which is always available, with chauffeur. when one is needed. They also manage a little fellowship on such occasions!

If the Amish want to be primitive, they could learn from the way my parents did it in the old days. My mother cooked on a wood-burning stove much of her life and the water was carried in buckets from the well to the kitchen. When the family bathed, which wasn’t all that often, it was other than under a hot shower in a modern bathroom.

But I felt at home among these Amish restorationists, for they reminded me of the restorationists back in Texas among whom I was raised. You don’t have to have thirty-four electrical gadgets in your home and a Mercedes-Benz in the garage to be “modern”—just as you don’t have to have an organ and a choir in your church in order to be. Our Amish brethren can be just as proud riding behind a prize horse with its manicured tail tickling their faces and in a spotless buggy with its flashing red lights and turn signals as a west-Texas rancher wearing a ten-gallon hat, star-studded boots, and an Eisenhower jacket and zipping about in his pink Cadillac. In most places they would compete in attracting the most attention, but when it comes to holding up traffic on the highway there is no contest!

My restorationist brethren in Texas will draw the line of fellowship over instrumental music—or Sunday School—or communion cups—because the primitive church did not have these things. But such primitivism does not keep them from building multi-million dollar cathedral-like buildings with their padded pews, oaken pulpits that are fenced and carpeted, and all sorts of electronic gear. If the organ was once necessary for the display of wealth and modernity, it is no longer. Like the Amish in Pennsylvania, my Texas brethren can be very selective in “restoring the New Testament Church.”

But the Amish folk are changing in that they now have their New Order. Some 50,000 in number, they have not been able to shield their youth from the world, despite having their own school system, which is continually plagued by state accrediting agencies. The girls, reared in a traditional Germanic culture, often work in “English” homes where “the world” rubs off on them. Young men rent non-Amish farms with their modern farm equipment, which they find hard to forget once they have their own land. A lot of kids simply walk away from it all, and there are too many of them to “withdraw” from.

Their churches are changing. Once they met only in barns but now they have neat meetinghouses. Traditionally the preachers would mumble their sermons in sing-song fashion, hiding their eyes as they spoke, and never giving an illustration unless it was from the Bible. But the New Order preachers are a lot like the rest of us, even to the point of moving about on the platform, giving illustrations from farm and city life, and looking folk right in the eye! It just shows how far astray good folk can go.

They have their reformers that tell them that they have abused the idea of restoring primitive Christianity, and that they do not have to believe that Jesus was an Amish man who spoke German. Some of them are getting a good education and they have begun to associate more with “the denominations.” They have their self-hate group who are down on their Amishness and want to scrap the whole thing. They have their traditionists who can hardly entertain a new idea and who want to excommunicate anyone who veers from the party line. And they have their constructive critics who want to hold to what is valid in their traditions and yet effect the changes that will make them more Christian.

And amidst all this, their Mennonite neighbors, who are closest to them and know them best, hesitate to take them into their churches, fearing that the Amish are so legalistic that they are not truly Christian, or, if not that, they distrust them, supposing that they have come to divide and conquer.

Sound familiar? —the Editor