The Amish in the American Imagination

The Amish in the American Imagination
Author: David Weaver-Zercher
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2001
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780801866814

Enveloped in mystery, Amish culture has remained a captivating topic within mainstream American culture. In this volume, David Weaver-Zercher explores how Americans throughout the 20th century reacted to and interpreted the Amish. Through an examination of a variety of visual and textual sources, Weaver-Zercher explores how diverse groups - ranging from Mennonites to Hollywood producers - represented and understood the Amish.

Eastern Mennonite University

Eastern Mennonite University
Author: Donald B. Kraybill
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2017-09-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0271080604

In this unique educational history, Donald B. Kraybill traces the sociocultural transformation of Eastern Mennonite University from a fledgling separatist school founded by white, rural, Germanic Mennonites into a world-engaged institution populated by many faith traditions, cultures, and nationalities. The founding of Eastern Mennonite School, later Eastern Mennonite University, in 1917 came at a pivotal time for the Mennonite community. Industrialization and scientific discovery were rapidly changing the world, and the increasing availability of secular education offered tempting alternatives that threatened the Mennonite way of life. In response, the Eastern Mennonites founded a school that would “uphold the principles of plainness and simplicity,” where youth could learn the Bible and develop skills that would help advance the church. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the university’s identity evolved from separatism to social engagement in the face of churning moral tides and accelerating technology. EMU now defines its mission in terms of service, peacebuilding, and community. Comprehensive and well told by a leading scholar of Anabaptist and Pietist studies, this social history of Eastern Mennonite University reveals how the school has mediated modernity while remaining consistently Mennonite. A must-have for anyone affiliated with EMU, it will appeal especially to sociologists and historians of Anabaptist and Pietist studies and higher education.

Latino Mennonites

Latino Mennonites
Author: Felipe Hinojosa
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2014-04-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1421412837

The first historical analysis of the changing relationship between religion and ethnicity among Latino Mennonites. Winner, 2015 Américo Paredes Book Award, Center for Mexican American Studies and South Texas College. Felipe Hinojosa's parents first encountered Mennonite families as migrant workers in the tomato fields of northwestern Ohio. What started as mutual admiration quickly evolved into a relationship that strengthened over the years and eventually led to his parents founding a Mennonite Church in South Texas. Throughout his upbringing as a Mexican American evangélico, Hinojosa was faced with questions not only about his own religion but also about broader issues of Latino evangelicalism, identity, and civil rights politics. Latino Mennonites offers the first historical analysis of the changing relationship between religion and ethnicity among Latino Mennonites. Drawing heavily on primary sources in Spanish, such as newspapers and oral history interviews, Hinojosa traces the rise of the Latino presence within the Mennonite Church from the origins of Mennonite missions in Latino communities in Chicago, South Texas, Puerto Rico, and New York City, to the conflicted relationship between the Mennonite Church and the California farmworker movements, and finally to the rise of Latino evangelical politics. He also analyzes how the politics of the Chicano, Puerto Rican, and black freedom struggles of the 1960s and 1970s civil rights movements captured the imagination of Mennonite leaders who belonged to a church known more for rural and peaceful agrarian life than for social protest. Whether in terms of religious faith and identity, race, immigrant rights, or sexuality, the politics of belonging has historically presented both challenges and possibilities for Latino evangelicals in the religious landscapes of twentieth-century America. In Latino Mennonites, Hinojosa has interwoven church history with social history to explore dimensions of identity in Latino Mennonite communities and to create a new way of thinking about the history of American evangelicalism.

Train Up a Child

Train Up a Child
Author: Karen Johnson-Weiner
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2007
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780801884955

Train Up a Child explores how private schools in Old Order Amish communities reflect and perpetuate church-community values and identity. Here, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner asserts that the reinforcement of those values among children is imperative to the survival of these communities in the modern world. Surveying settlements in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, Johnson-Weiner finds that, although Old Order communities have certain similarities in their codes of conduct, there is no standard Old Order school. She examines the choices each community makes—about pedagogy, curriculum, textbooks, even school design—to strengthen religious ideology, preserve the social and linguistic markers of Old Order identity, and protect their own community's beliefs and values from the influence of the dominant society. In the most comprehensive study of Old Order schools to date, Johnson-Weiner provides valuable insight into how variables such as community size and relationship with other Old Order groups affect the role of these schools in maintaining behavioral norms and in shaping the Old Order's response to modernity.

Eastern Mennonite University

Eastern Mennonite University
Author: Donald B. Kraybill
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2017-09-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0271080582

In this unique educational history, Donald B. Kraybill traces the sociocultural transformation of Eastern Mennonite University from a fledgling separatist school founded by white, rural, Germanic Mennonites into a world-engaged institution populated by many faith traditions, cultures, and nationalities. The founding of Eastern Mennonite School, later Eastern Mennonite University, in 1917 came at a pivotal time for the Mennonite community. Industrialization and scientific discovery were rapidly changing the world, and the increasing availability of secular education offered tempting alternatives that threatened the Mennonite way of life. In response, the Eastern Mennonites founded a school that would “uphold the principles of plainness and simplicity,” where youth could learn the Bible and develop skills that would help advance the church. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the university’s identity evolved from separatism to social engagement in the face of churning moral tides and accelerating technology. EMU now defines its mission in terms of service, peacebuilding, and community. Comprehensive and well told by a leading scholar of Anabaptist and Pietist studies, this social history of Eastern Mennonite University reveals how the school has mediated modernity while remaining consistently Mennonite. A must-have for anyone affiliated with EMU, it will appeal especially to sociologists and historians of Anabaptist and Pietist studies and higher education.

Amish School

Amish School
Author: Sara Fisher
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 114
Release: 1997-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 168099221X

Revised Edition! Sold more than 50,000 copies in earlier editions! The Old Order Amish believe that school prepares children for the Amish way of life, for the responsibilities of adulthood, and for eternity. Most communities conduct their own schools, usually taught by Amish teachers. Sara E. Fisher, an Old Order Amish woman, taught a one-room school for seven years. This is her fascinating insider's view of a typical Amish school. Includes "Diary of an Amish Schoolgirl." This authoritative book on Amish education deals with many questions: Why do the Amish have their own schools? How are teachers chosen? How are the parents involved? What curriculum materials are used? What about children with special needs? Co-author Sara Fisher writes from her experience as an Amish schoolteacher; co-author Rachel Stahl writes from her years of extensive research.