THE AMISH PEOPLE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 156, 30 December 1925, Page 9

THE AMISH PEOPLE

A STRANGE RELIGIOUS SECT

MEMBERS OF A PRIMITIVE

CHRISTIAN BODY,

There are in the United States several tens of thousands of tho Amish. people, a German religbus sect, writes Konrad Bercovici in '.he "Century.' They are members of a primitive Christian body, founded by Jacob Amman some seventy.or eighty years ago, and in this country they first settled in Pennsylvania, later going to Ohio, Wisconsin,, Utah, and California. Mr. Bercovici (describes his visit to an AV"h settlement in Paint Township, Ohio. "It would be quite impossible," he says, "to make that trip by automobile, the roads are so bad and muddy. Thero seems to be no effort to better road conditions. "What strikes one as soon as he reaches the heart of the Amish settlement," he continues, "is the contrast between the neatness of tho work in the fields of the Amish settlers and those of other neighbours who are of different nationalities. However, the second sharp contrast made is be-^ tw<%n the neatness and occasional display of decorativeness of the houses of the people of other nationalities and the plain and bare severity bordering, on ugliness, of the houses of the German settlers. Those people have been" there for many, many years. Many of the oldest men and. women were born in this country. And though their habits are 'queer' according ta the judgment of their neighbours, they are nevertheless high-, ly esteemed because of their being very good and prosperous farmers.

'' The Amish man cuts his hair square, shaves' ins upper lip, but wears a long beard without ever trimming it. They refuse to use any modern machinery, refuse to have a telephone or use an automobile, will not read newspapers, and have absolutely no respect for any of the modern conveniences. When an Amish farmer buys a ready-made house, he first tears out the lightning-rods. Lightning-rods are a denial of God's righteousness, is their argument.

"Like the Mennonites, they wear no' buttons on their coats. Their homes are extremely bare and simple, with no pictures on the walls, no carpets on the floor; no curtaiins on the windows. Outside, she appearance of their homes is one of the barest, for they suffer nothing that might decorate the house, even to an estra bit of coping of a sill at the bottom of the windows.

"Their clothing is of the simplest kind. ' Liko the Mennonites, their wives also wear the simplest clothes and are all illiterate—l-ittlti more than beasts of burden. '

■"The Amish have no church of their own, but conduct their silent services every. Sunday in . , someone's barn,- which happens to be larger than the others. . .

"Their minister, called bishop, is elected every year in a very: peculiar way., The names of the leigible males of the community, are put between the leaves of a German Bible. Then the Bible is opened at random and he whoso name happens to be between the leaves is tho bishop, It very fre^ quently happens that the religious leader isa most illiterate man. The present. one in one community can only look at the Gothic letters of the German printed Bible which he holds near him, and repeat a few phrasea; which, he has learned by heart, from hearing them from the lips of other' bishops. , "There are, eight hundred or a thousand people Hying in the Woost'er neighbourhood, anil' they are in a continual uproar • for it is against their religious principles that children should go to school and learn all those nichts, nothings, that are taught in schools. Although even the parents of most of them were born in this country, 70 per cent, of their English is German. It is because of the educational laws that a good many of the Amish people from that neighborhood and from othur neighbourhoods have left for Mexico, where they hope to be riven freedom. 'What is freedom,' asked one of the Amish men, 'if you are compelled Lu send your Kinder to school?' "