Utopian Studies

Quilts with "a black-and-white checked" pattern "for the NASCAR market" are stitched together by an Amish woman whose family uses an outdoor privy because church rules stipulate "no indoor plumbing"; an Amish man delivers cans of his milk to an Amish-owned neighborhood collection tank cooled by electricity because state laws require the refrigeration of milk. These are just a few of the images Karen Johnson-Weiner presents of the New York State Amish and their continuing effort to maintain a life disconnected from the surrounding society upon which they are, to varying degrees, economically dependent. The Amish's struggle to preserve separate-from-the world communities and the diversity among the various Amish subgroups are themes Johnson-Weiner examines along with her primary focus: the impetuses for Amish families' migration to New York.

The quilt-making woman and milk-delivering man above, despite their acquiescence to the buying public and to state laws, belong to "the ultra-conservative Swartzentruber Amish" (54). Johnson-Weiner explains the origin of this and other Amish groups in her first chapter, "Who Are the Amish?" which also outlines the European origins of the Amish, in particular focusing on the various schisms of the Anabaptists, who themselves had broken from the Catholic Church in the 1520s in Zurich: "By the end of the [End Page 198] sixteenth century, the Anabaptists were widely known as 'Mennonites' after Menno Simons (1496–1561), a Dutch priest turned Anabaptist preacher" (11). The birth of the Amish, a splinter group of these Anabaptists, took place about a century later, under the leadership of "an Alsatian preacher" who "lamented the apparent willingness of Mennonite church members to conform to fashions in dress and to interact with and even marry non-Mennonites" (14).

More than an interesting explanation of Amish origins—adherents to this Alsatian leader, Jacob Ammann (1644–1730), came to be known as "Amish Mennonites"—this preacher's break with the Mennonites explains the tendency of Amish groups to occasionally separate from each other, as Johnson-Weiner examines throughout her text. And this tendency to split instead of fight has helped propel the migration of many Amish families to New York State. Although all Amish groups "interpret literally biblical injunctions such as Romans 12:2 ('and be not conformed to this world')," disagreements have periodically arisen in the four centuries since Ammann's first objections over the definition of what does or does not constitute conformity (21). As Johnson-Weiner explains in chapter 1, which also presents a twentieth- and twenty-first-century overview of the sect, the many schisms among Amish groups all come down to each community's Ordnung, a German word meaning the rules of that particular community, or Gemeinde. The rules in an Ordnung, more often than not, focus on the degree of the community's separation from the surrounding world: the use of wooden or rubber tires on farm equipment, upholstered or unupholstered furniture, limited use of the telephone or no use whatsoever. These are just a few of the issues that have led to schisms. If a member of a community disagrees and violates a particular rule, she or he might be excommunicated (placed under Bann) and shunned (face Meidung) by the group's other members. If, however, a minister sides with parishioners, as one did against a tobacco-chewing bishop, then a schism is likely to occur (129). Families within one church district who side with the rebellious faction will decide not to dien, or fellowship, with the group from which they broke, and sometimes they will move physically away from the original group.

Such disagreements, along with the attraction of "affordable farmland" (32), serve as the impetus for many of the Amish migrations into New York. In the middle chapters of her study, chapters 2 through 7, Johnson-Weiner examines particular New York counties and regions...