June 17, 2025 - Epoch Times
09:20
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Anabaptist is a Latin term that means to re-baptize. | |
| In German it's Vida, which means to baptize again. | |
| So what they began to do was to baptize adults upon their confession of faith. | |
| And that created a ruckus, actually, and heavy persecution. | |
| The founders of what became the Anapaptist movement, all three of them died a martyr's death within three years of their founding. | |
| So it came out of the Protestant Reformation and then emerged. | |
| There were basically two streams that fed into the Amish Mennonite movement. | |
| The Swiss stream was headed by a The Mennonites are actually named after a former Catholic priest named Mene Simons, and he was Dutch from the Netherlands. | |
| So today, if you look at this, you can see the impact of a particular ideology or philosophy as it emerged. | |
| So Mennonites, while Both Amish and Mennonites go back to the same confession of faith, Schleidheim or Dortmund confession of faith. | |
| They interpret it very differently. | |
| The Mennonites are more acculturated, where Amish dress differently, have had an aversion to technology. | |
| And if you look back, I mean, even today, the Dutch are known for being very liberal in their thinking, and Swiss. | |
| Obviously are notorious for being conservative and that followed down through the generations to the present day. | |
| So what happened with you? | |
| You clearly are not looking Mennonite to me, although I hear a little bit of it in your voice perhaps. | |
| You probably do because I was just in Germany for a week, so the accent re-emerges when I speak nothing but German for a week. | |
| That's a fair question. | |
| We live in the community. | |
| I am a Sabbatarian Christian, and that was the most difficult decision my wife and I ever made. | |
| It was now 40 years ago. | |
| We, after searching things out, came to the conviction that the Seventh-day Sabbath, which is Saturday as opposed to the traditional day of worship for Christians of Sunday, It was important. | |
| It was, as I would view it, holy time dedicated to God. | |
| And we came to that conviction and wanted to practice that. | |
| Leaving the homage was never something that was even a consideration. | |
| This conviction on that issue that drove the decision. | |
| Today, it's a bit different. | |
| In fact, there is a growing interest among the Amish in the Seventh-day Sabbath, and we have some relatives that are now practicing it. | |
| But back then, it resulted in a total estrangement. | |
| So for about 12 years, we were estranged from the community and lived outside the community before coming back. | |
| Why the limited interest in technology or the active interest of limiting technology among Amish? | |
| I mean, this is, I think, the question which a lot of people have because it's the obvious difference. | |
| But it doesn't mean a complete absence of technology, obviously. | |
| Yeah, that's a really interesting question. | |
| And I suppose you could answer it a number of different ways. | |
| And I suppose if you asked So I will give you mine because I'm interested in culture and organizational structure and what drives that. | |
| But let me just speak to the history of it for a moment. | |
| The aversion to technology is really a relatively recent phenomenon. | |
| So back in Europe, there were basically two migrations, one in the 18th century and one in the 19th century. | |
| But back in Europe, there was really no distinction from a technological standpoint. | |
| In fact, as I mentioned earlier, my forefathers in Europe were more advanced in their technology maybe than some of the others. | |
| Because they were able to buy a degree of religious freedom by being the most innovative farmers. | |
| Most notably, the fertilizer was burnt limestone, was an Anabaptist innovation. | |
| So the aversion to technology really is a post-World War II phenomenon. | |
| And I can say that even from personal experience, my grandfather The entirety of the area was German-speaking, so whether you were Amish or Mennonite or otherwise, most people spoke German because they were immigrants. | |
| He was the first to buy a tractor and a thresher and provide the threshing in the community, and that was 1938. | |
| Everybody was still farming with horses. | |
| Post-World War II, though, the decision was made, and they made decisions as a community, as a church. | |
| They vote, so they're democratic in that sense. | |
| They decided against using mechanized farming, in particular. | |
| They decided against electricity and the automobile. | |
| The mechanized farming, I don't really have a good answer on why that decision was made. | |
| The automobile, the decision was made because they believed that the ability to travel quickly would take people away from the community. | |
| And whether you agree with it or not, I think that decision has proven to be accurate. | |
| They've kept community alive when Because of high mobility, a lot of communities have died out. | |
| And then the decision to not be on the electrical grid had a lot to do with the fundamental desire to be separate and not dependent. | |
| Or maybe the better word is to be independent and not reliant upon others. | |
| So that drove those decisions. | |
| And of course, there's the mode of dress. | |
| Also, it's a differentiator. | |
| You come to our community and you wake up and horses and buggies trot down the road. | |
| But I would tell you there's a sea change happening. | |
| And a sea change is being driven by now the ability to generate your own electricity by putting a solar panel on the roof. | |
| So if you come to... | |
| You will find more solar panels per square mile in Amish country than probably anywhere in the United States. | |
| So most of the Amish homes in our community are not fully electrified. | |
| The women have the kitchen aid and all the appliances that they need because philosophically I can now generate my own electricity. | |
| I'm not dependent on someone else. | |
| That's changing, and the e-bike is fast replacing the iconic horse and buggy. | |
| I mean, that's fascinating, except I would argue that you are very much dependent on someone, and someone you really don't want to be dependent on, which is Communist China, which basically holds a monopoly in, I mean, the production of these batteries that are required, right? | |
| And certainly the solar panels. | |
| I mean, they dumped and basically took over the market. | |
| So how do you explain this? | |
| Well, I think probably most of the Amish aren't aware of that dynamic. | |
| They purchase this device that generates electricity. | |
| I'm certainly aware of that. | |
| The thing about it is it's really a national security issue at the ultimate level. | |
| If you can't manufacture the things that provide your basic needs. | |
| You think about energy. | |
| You think about hot water and all the conveniences that we take for granted. | |
| We've outsourced that. | |
| Like you said correctly, to someone that has not been very friendly to us. | |
| And they hold a monopoly over it now. |
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