NOT SO QUAINT
By Shea Oakley
I recently spent a weekend in Pennsylvania Dutch country. In the area around Lancaster the Amish live out their rural existence in strict separation from the surrounding culture. As a man raised in the shadow of New York City I’d expected to look on them with a certain amusement perhaps mixed with a general disdain for such a "backward" way of life.
It was disconcerting then, as the weekend unfolded, to find a deep part of myself longing for the kind of life these people have. Whatever might be said about the old order Amish one thing becomes apparent to the interested modern observer and that is the depth of common life among them. A good example is the practise of "barn raising" in which the entire town chips in to build a shelter for a family’s livestock. This mutual support even extends to catastrophes like house fires. If an Amish home burns down a new one rises in its place at the expense of the owner’s neighbors.
If there is a place where the spirit of the first century church lives today it is no more apparent then in these cradle to grave relationships that the Amish share. Some might protest that it is also a very "legalistic" life and it is certainly true that they hold one another accountable to a strict code of conduct. But from what I observed that code is, in large part, simply a reflection of a very literal interpretation of Scripture.
The contemporary American church has been co-opted by a spirit of personal independence that comes from the radical individualism of this age. We have, to too large a degree, followed the world in a religion of self-sufficiency that was never God’s intention for human beings. With it has come the scourges of modern life: isolation, depression and anxiety. Perhaps we can learn from the "quaint" Amish people. They know the value of community in a profound way, a way that we walk away from at our soul’s expense.