Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish - Tom Shachtman

The Old Order Amish practice of rumpsringa – a Pennsylvania Dutch term usually translated as “running around,” or more fully, “running around outside the bounds” – is a fascinating window through which one might wrestle with topics such as religion, adolescence, community, cultural change, and more. In spite of our deep cultural differences with the Amish, we do, as Americans, share their common heritage. This is what makes them fascinating to us: “This combination of shared heritage and deep cultural differences makes the Amish a particularly significant mirror for the rest of us” (12).

“Rumspringa is practiced mostly in the larger and older Amish settlements of LaGrange, Holmes, and Lancaster counties” (13). It is not practiced by some smaller groups of Amish or by their “liberal” brethren, the Mennonites.

The rumspringa period begins when an Amish youth turns sixteen; at that age, since the youth has not yet been baptized, he or she is not subject to the church’s rules about permitted and forbidden behaviors. During rumspringa, Amish youth—a large percentage of them for the first time in their lives go on their own in the outside world. Nearly all continue to live with their families, however, and many, maybe even a majority, do not go to the parties or otherwise engage in behaviors that Amish parents and church officials consider wild. Rather, they attend Sunday singings, occasionally go bowling, take part in structured activities supervised by church elders—tame stuff—but they have license to do things they have never done before. An individual’s rumspringa ends when he or she agrees to be baptized into the church and to take up the responsibilities attendant on being an adult member of the Amish community. (11)

Shachtman’s book chronicles the rumspringa experience of a number of young Amish people. Some of the young men and women descend deeply into a party lifestyle while others simply dabble. “The Amish count on the rumspringa process to inoculate youth against the strong pull of the forbidden by dosing them with the vaccine of a little worldly experience. Their gamble is also based on the notion that there is no firmer adhesive bond to a faith and way of life than a bond freely chosen, in this case chosen after rumspringa and having sampled some of the available alternative ways of living” (14).

Eventually the Amish teenagers will have to answer one simple decision – the “most important decision they will ever face: to be or not to be Amish” (32).

This decision is an irrevocable act having multiple weighty consequences. By being baptized into the church, they agree to live by Amish rules – the ordnung – for the remainder of their lives. Failure to do so will result in being banned from the community.

The ordnung is a lengthy set of rules defining the boundaries of Amish community life. In an attempt to follow Jesus and to keep from “whatever might unduly yoke believers together with unbelievers” the Amish “wear simple clothes and do not follow the dictates of fashion, and that is why they do not use electricity from a common grid also used by the non-Amish, or own motorized transports—such activities would link them too closely with the outside world” (31). There are “rules… to govern the precise size of hats, the colors permissible for buggies, when a man was to grow a beard, the procedures to be followed when a member was shunned, and so many other aspects of life that the provisions seem to regulate minutely every facet and moment of an Amish person’s existence” (31). Many of these rules are rooted in ancient history, for example, the reason that Amish men must not wear mustaches is “because in the seventeenth century mustaches were sported by military men who used swords” (31).

During rumspringa, the ordnung restrictions are lifted in order that the Amish youth may freely decide to be baptized into the church and embrace the Amish way. This allows Amish youth to participate in practices forbidden to their community – including, most importantly, restrictions on cell phones and motorized transport. It is these two items that seem to have the greatest pull on Amish youth. This is easily understood: these two things connect an individual to a wider world. A buggy only allows about 10 miles travel per day. A car can achieve this in minutes.

The need for Amish businesses to connect with the world through phone has increased pressure “for the Amish to be able to be more connected” (51). In the Amish community, rules change at a snail’s pace, but increasingly, exceptions are being made for phone contact in Amish businesses. Shachtman notes how the Amish ordnung does evolve over time: The ordnung

changes in response to the changing norms of the mainstream and pressure from within the community. The pioneer Amish drew water from a stream for all their needs, he wrote, but the following generations, taking their cue from non-Amish neighbors, judged that practice too backward and insisted on having wells. In another thirty years, wells were deemed too cumbersome; newer generations did not want to haul water up in buckets, they wanted pumps, so the ordnung began to permit windmill-driven pumps. “What one generation thought was so easy, the next found tiring.” When a more modern generation balked at having to work the pump every time they wanted water, they petitioned for the right to use holding tanks. (52)

Psychiatrist George H. Orvin in Understanding the Adolescent, writes, “What other period of life is more frightening and anxiety-ridden?” (43)

It is during the difficult and tumultuous adolescent period that the Amish youth are forced to make monumental decisions that will impact their entire life. The decision is clear: to be or not to be Amish. They know what awaits them if they are baptized: “they are likely to marry between the ages of twenty and twenty-two; that more than half will have their first child during their first year of marriage; and that by age thirty the men will have become factory workers, small shop owners, construction workers, or farmers, the women, housewives and mothers, and as couples they will have become the parents of four or five children” (31). They have no idea, however, what awaits them if they do not return to their Amish community, other than the fact that it will involve family and community rejection, and the real threat of hell.

This threat of hell is real for Amish youth. For the Amish, the church and community are practically identical. If one desires to be in the church, they must live in the community and according to the community’s rules. If one doesn’t, they are rejected, and consigned to hell. In short, heaven is found within – hell is found without. Although some Amish youth question this, it is a hard to escape this conclusion.

DeWayne is an example of someone who questions the rules of the Amish community and their relationship to God’s kingdom. As one who loves his Harley, he wonders how “his entry or nonentry into Heaven or Hell [can] be determined by whether or not he rides a motorcycle? ‘It’s just a form of transportation, like a horse and buggy,’ he insists. ‘It’s not like breaking a commandment or nothing’” (134). DeWayne “is [also] bothered by the contradiction of the Amish church permitting him in rumspringa to have a motorcycle though it was forbidden before he became sixteen and will again be forbidden if he joins the church. How can they both condemn and condone a behavior?” (134)

Stephen L. Yoder, a Beachy Amish bishop – a sect that does not practice rumspringa – is critical of the Old Order Amish. Though he “praises the [Old Order Amish] ministers’ ‘deep concern about the spiritual welfare of their people’ [he] takes issue with them for not being ‘evangelically minded enough to be the least bit concerned about the spiritual welfare of [the non-Amish] around them.’ Being a complete Christian, Yoder insists, means being concerned about all of humanity, and therefore bringing the Word of God, and good deeds done in God’s name, to the unbaptized” (137).

Some 80-90% of Old Order Amish return to the church after rumspringa. This is an unusually high retention rate. Some would argue that this occurs because of the attractive quality of the simple Amish life. However, this is a bit naïve. Some suggest that the retention rate is high because Amish teens are ill-equipped to enter and thrive in the modern world on their own (since they will be ostracized by their family). Shachtman suggests that one strong reason for the high retention rate may be that the decision to join the Amish church is a safe decision – a decision that seems to, at least initially, relief the fears of an unknown future.

Amish youth know very well that joining the church is an irrevocable act having multiple weighty consequences. They may actually join because they seek that irreversibility, because they want to end the stress and ambiguity that will otherwise continue for them in the outside world. By joining, they acquire and affirm an already existing set of values—a hierarchy of values, set by the church but with which they agree—that enables them to eliminate possible confusion about value choices, such as whom to marry, how to worship, where to live, and what degree of independence from parents to exercise. Making the one big decision of returning home and being baptized in the church releases Amish youth from the need to agonize over many other decisions. (268)

Quotes excerpted from Rumspringa: To Be or Not To Be Amish by Tom Shachtman
© Richard J. Vincent, 2007