Who are the Amish?

The latest shooting spree in a US school has once more sent shockwaves around the world, perhaps more so in the case of yesterday’s violent events where a peaceful Amish community was deliberately targeted.

The Amish are a Protestant group who fled Religious persecution in Europe in the 18th Century. They subsequently settled in the US and some 200,000 Amish people now live in around twenty states across America in self-sufficient farming communities. Each group is generally small and self contained but all share a common belief in living their lives strictly in accordance with the Bible.

The oldest division of the Amish community is the Old Order who tend to be the most conservative group, living by their own set of ideals, the Ordung. Very strict rules on behaviour and clothing are observed and modern technology is shunned in favour of traditional agricultural methods and practices which would not be out of place in the 19th Century.

Clothing worn by Amish people is very distinctive with an emphasis on modesty. Women wear dresses with long sleeves and an apron, wearing their hair in a bun on the back of the head. Men and boys wear suits and straw hats. It is traditional for them to grow a beard after marrying. In some more isolated communities, the Amish will even shun the use of buttons.

A refusal to accept and use modern technology is an ideal found across the disparate Amish communities, although in some instances, Amish homes will have electricity and telephones. More generally, Amish people will not drive cars, instead relying on horses and carriages for transportation. Their isolation from modern American society is completed by their refusal to join the military and their insistence on not accepting government help or benefits. While a small number of Amish households may own guns for use in hunting, the ownership of firearms is very rare.

Amish children are educated in small, single room schoolhouses, illustrated by the school at the centre of yesterday’s tragic events. Despite their best efforts to live outside of it, the violent forces of the Modern world have been visited upon the small Amish community of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.