The Nebraska Amish, also called Old Schoolers, are a relatively small affiliation of the Amish. They are the most conservative subgroup of Amish, indicated not only by their use of technology but also by their particular style of dress. They emerged in 1881 as a conservative split from the Byler Amish, who themselves emerged as the first conservative splinter group from the Amish mainstream in 1849.
Wisconsin v. Jonas Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972), is the case in which the United States Supreme Court found that Amish children could not be placed under compulsory education past 8th grade. The parents' fundamental right to freedom of religion was determined to outweigh the state's interest in educating their children. The case is often cited as a basis for parents' right to educate their children outside of traditional private or public schools.
Moses M. Beachy was the founding bishop of the Beachy Amish Mennonite churches in 1927 and a former bishop in the Old Order Amish churches.
Weavertown Amish Mennonite Church is a Beachy Amish Mennonite congregation located in the village of Weavertown, between the somewhat larger villages of Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Amish Mennonites came into existence through reform movements among North American Amish mainly between 1862 and 1878. These Amish moved away from the old Amish traditions and drew near to the Mennonites, becoming Mennonites of Amish origin. Over the decades, most Amish Mennonites groups removed the word "Amish" from the name of their congregations or merged with Mennonite groups.
Located in Smithville, Ohio, Oak Grove Mennonite Church is an historical church that has made a significant contribution to the larger Mennonite denomination, currently pastored by Doug Zehr. Oak Grove started as an Amish church in 1818, as many Amish started settling in Wayne County, Ohio. From humble beginnings the church grew and built a meetinghouse in 1862, one of the earliest of such meetinghouses the Amish have built.
Julia Mae Spicher Kasdorf is an American poet.
The Northkill Amish Settlement was established in 1740 in Berks County, Pennsylvania. As the first identifiable Amish community in the new world, it was the foundation of Amish settlement in the Americas. By the 1780s it had become the largest Amish settlement, but declined as families moved elsewhere.
John A. Hostetler was an American author, educator, and scholar of Amish and Hutterite societies. Some of his works are still in print.
The Beachy Amish Mennonites, also known as the Beachy Amish or Beachy Mennonites, are a Conservative Anabaptist tradition of Christianity.
The Amish, formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss and Alsatian origins. As they maintain a degree of separation from surrounding populations, and hold their faith in common, the Amish have been described by certain scholars as an ethnoreligious group, combining features of an ethnicity and a Christian denomination. The Amish are closely related to Old Order Mennonites and Conservative Mennonites—denominations that are also a part of Anabaptist Christianity. The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, Christian pacifism, and slowness to adopt many conveniences of modern technology, with a view neither to interrupt family time, nor replace face-to-face conversations whenever possible, and a view to maintain self-sufficiency. The Amish value rural life, manual labor, humility and Gelassenheit.
Amish religious practices are reflective of traditional Anabaptist Christian theology. The Old Order Amish typically have worship services every second Sunday in private homes. The typical district has 80 adults and 90 children under age 19. Worship begins with a short sermon by one of several preachers or the bishop of the church district, followed by scripture reading and prayer, then another, longer sermon. The service is interspersed with hymns sung without instrumental accompaniment or harmony. This is meant to put the emphasis on what is said, not how it is being said. Many communities use an ancient hymnal known as the Ausbund. The hymns contained in the Ausbund were generally written in what is referred to as Early New High German, a predecessor to modern Standard German.
Over the years, as Amish churches have divided many times over doctrinal disputes, subgroups have developed. The "Old Order Amish", a conservative faction that withdrew in the 1860s from fellowship with the wider body of Amish, are those that have most emphasized traditional practices and beliefs. There are many different subgroups of Amish with most belonging, in ascending order of conservatism, to the Beachy Amish, New Order, Old Order, or Swartzentruber Amish groups.
Heinrich Funck was a mill operator, religious author and a Mennonite bishop in America.
The Old Beachy Amish or Old Beachy Amish Mennonites, also called Midwest Beachy Amish Mennonites, are a Plain, car-driving Beachy Amish group, that preserves the old ways of the Beachy Amish including the German language. They live in Kentucky and Illinois. They are part of the Amish Mennonite movement in a broader sense, but they are not an organized denomination.
The Kauffman Amish Mennonites, also called Sleeping Preacher Churches or Tampico Amish Mennonite Churches, are a plain, car-driving branch of the Amish Mennonites whose tradition goes back to John D. Kauffman (1847–1913) and Noah Troyer (1831–1886) who preached while being in a state of trance and who were seen as "sleeping preachers".
The Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia and parts of West Virginia is home to a long-established German-American community dating to the 17th century. The earliest German settlers to Shenandoah, sometimes known as the Shenandoah Deitsch or the Valley Dutch, were Pennsylvania Dutch migrants who traveled from southeastern Pennsylvania. These German settlers traveled southward along what became known as the Great Wagon Road. They were descendants of German, Swiss, and Alsatian Protestants who began settling in Pennsylvania during the late 1600s. Among them were German Palatines who had fled the Rhineland-Palatinate region of southwestern Germany due to religious and political persecution during repeated invasions by French troops.
Anabaptists and Jews have had interactions for several centuries, since the origins of Anabaptism in the Radical Reformation in early modern Europe. Due to the insularity of many Anabaptist and Jewish communities, Anabaptist–Jewish relations have historically been limited but there are notable examples of interactions between Anabaptists and Jews. Due to some similarities in dress, culture, and language, Amish and Mennonite communities in particular have often been compared and contrasted to Haredi and Hasidic Jewish communities.
