Sometimes You Can Go Home Again
I've been reading memoirs lately, and I finally got around to Mennonite in a Little Black 
Dress, which had a most unexpected run atop the New York Times best-sellers list a couple of years ago. Rhoda Janzen, its author, created a fresh and original voice: funny but not cruel, irreverent but not hostile to faith, poignant but not maudlin, risqué but not indecent.
She came from solid Mennonite stock (her father once headed the Mennonite Conference for Canada and the United States) and, like many before her, rebelled against her strict upbringing. Standing six-foot-two as a teenager, her height amplified by high heels and a bouffant dyed-blond hairdo, she must have seemed like a creature from another planet to her Mennonite classmates with their long skirts and clunky shoes and their hair tucked into neat buns covered with lace doilies.
A week before I read Janzen's book I visited the largest settlement of 
Mennonite and Amish, in Ohio. I spoke at a few events, the first time that I can recall anyone in my audience arriving in a horse and buggy. I have known and worked with Mennonites over the years and have also had some contact with the Amish, commissioning them to build a few pieces of furniture when I lived in Chicago and sharing a meal in an Amish home in the oddly named town of Intercourse, Pennsylvania.
Mennonites trace their roots to Menno Simons, a 16th-century Dutch pastor who opposed infant baptism and believed strictly in nonviolence, forbidding his followers to join the army. European churches and governments responded with vicious persecution, causing the Mennonites and other Anabaptist groups to flee to other countries. Later a man named Jacob Amman led a group of reformers who broke off from other Mennonites and became known as Amish Mennonites.
Schism has often occurred among the Mennonites and Amish. There are Old Order and New Order Amish, Beachy Amish, Swartzentruber Amish, Kaufman Amish Mennonites, Conservative Mennonites, Reformed Mennonites, Holdeman Mennonites, Stauffer Mennonites, Progressive Mennonites, and Wisler Mennonites, a mere sampling of the scores of groups who can now be found in more than sixty countries. Most of these branches have their own distinctive list of do's and don't's, with the Amish generally being the stricter.
The most conservative Amish will not use motors, paint, or compressed air though some factions allow machinery that runs on compressed air but not electricity. The carpenter who made my furniture used tools powered by compressed air generators but had no telephone; once a week he would travel on horseback into town to use the telephone and report on progress. As if to defy all stereotypes, in Ohio I met an Amish shopkeeper in traditional button-only black clothing who was operating two laser wood-carving machines. Go figure.
Some Amish men wear only one suspender, considering two a mark of pride. Some allow a tub and toilet inside the house but keep the sink outside. Not wanting to be ostentatious, some use only reflective tape, not a triangular warning sign, on the backs of their horse-drawn buggies, and stain their leather harnesses black. Their more lenient brethren, the Old Order Mennonites, began permitting automobiles in 1927, but only plain cars painted black, thus earning the name "Black Bumper Mennonites."
It is easy to caricature such minority groups, as cartoonists and comedians do. Americans have a fascination with nonconformists, and a genre of "Amish fiction" has recently emerged, as well as several Hollywood movies and television shows centering on this subculture. In one controversial reality-TV program, Amish in the City, Amish teens were exposed to the broader culture by living together with non-Amish, which they call "English." In the Midwest, and especially Pennsylvania, Amish settlements attract hordes of tourists with their intrusive cameras.
In my travels I have gained great respect for the quiet, simple way that Mennonites and Amish practice their faith. In Africa and Asia when I have asked, "Which relief and development organization does the best, most efficient work here?" inevitably the answer comes back "Mennonite Central Committee." And the whole world took notice of the Amish spirit of forgiveness after the Nickel Mines massacre of schoolchildren in 2006. All Anabaptist groups have a long tradition of martyrdom, which no longer takes them by surprise. "We sin too," explained one spokesman with eloquent simplicity, and more than half of those who attended the murderer's funeral were Amish.
A visit to Amish and conservative Mennonite country shows it is possible to resist the materialistic, sex-saturated, celebrity-obsessed culture of modern America. It seems like a time-travel trip back to the 1950s, which is not all bad. Few of the people I talked to have radio, television, or Internet. The women wear little or no makeup and both sexes dress plainly. I spoke at a mostly-Mennonite high school chapel service where no student used the time to text friends or read magazines; they paid rapt attention. Mennonite children are more likely to aspire to the viola than the guitar.
In contrast to the Mennonites, most Amish do not even go to high school, much less college. They have a mandatory eight grades of education, usually in one-room schoolhouses, after which they assume their roles on the family farm or shop. Clean living results in a cancer rate among the Amish only 56 percent of the national average. Though crime rates are low in Amish and Mennonite communities, not all is peaceful. Some groups practice a harsh shunning of anyone who breaks the rules. Divorce is rare, but rumors of physical and sexual abuse persist. In a case that has shocked the peaceful Amish, this year several Amish are standing trial for forcibly cutting off the beards of members of a different sect.
Despite their strict rules on behavior, the Amish and conservative Mennonites have a tradition called rumspringa, or "running around," in which their teenagers indulge in normally forbidden activities (partying, drinking, movies) for a year or so before deciding whether to join the order as an adult—sort of a prolonged Mardi Gras before Lent. A large majority of them, as many as 90 percent, return to the fold even after tasting the broader culture.
I have written about Mennonites and Amish together when they can be quite different depending on the branch. Amish retain their distinctive dress unless they "jump the fence" to join the Mennonites. The more progressive Mennonites wear modern dress, use modern technology, and on the outside seem virtually indistinguishable from their neighbors. They would probably offer the rejoinder, "Yes, but it's what's inside that counts."
Rhoda Janzen, author of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, would surely agree. Her own rumspringa lasted far longer than a year and she is still sorting out her faith while teaching writing at Hope College in Michigan. She wrote the memoir at age 43, a year that turned her whole life upside down. Her husband announced he was leaving her, after fifteen years of marriage, for Bob, whom he had met on Gay.com. That same week a car accident left her with serious injuries. And a short time later Rhoda faced breast cancer and a double mastectomy. What does a person do in the midst of a personal hurricane?
If you're a Mennonite you return home, and that's what Rhoda did, making her way back to the land of Borscht, fattening cookies, and corduroy-covered Bibles. She is blessed with parents who, though quirky in ways that give her rich material, welcomed her with open arms and provided a safe place for recovery.
Many Mennonite readers don't like the book, judging it shrill, overstated, and unfair to their heritage. Most non-Mennonites love it, perhaps because it taps into a wistful longing we all have. It's both tempting to cast off the shackles of childhood and fun to mock the foibles of whatever insular group we grew up in. And let's face it, groups like the Mennonites don't have the bright lights and sex appeal of the rest of society. (A local retail store in Ohio sells hand-cranked radios and blenders but no smart phones.)
When you really need comfort, though, when your world crashes in around you, you want a community that will welcome you back. Rhoda Janzen found just that.
