Knowledge leads to pride, says the Amish church, but my knowledge-base until last night about the Amish faith consisted of having watched Harrison Ford in Witness (1985) and having driven through Indiana last year.


Devil’s Playground (2002), a documentary brought to our DVD player by E and G (our neighbors, the New York artist transplants) opened eyes, ears, and the mind.

Every society has their rites of teenage passage more or less formalized. In America, it is mostly accepted that college-aged kids will sow their wild oats; likewise, rumspringa, Pennsylvania-dutch for "run around," is what the Amish community calls the no-rules period when 16 years olds leave the community and explore the outside world.
It’s what comes after the fun where the “English” (everybody who is not Amish) and the Amish part ways.

After rumspringa, which can last an indefinite amount of time, each member of the flock must decide whether or not to return to the fold. When one decides to return, he or she is baptized into the church, and to leave the community after baptism results in the bann, the shunning from the community.

The Amish way dictates that people must live their lives for God and leave modern technology behind because it tears apart the community. The Amish faith preaches that the evolution of the mind is a distraction which serves to emphasize the individual instead of the community. Amish parents encourage children to stop school after 8th grade, for they believe too much knowledge leads to pride.

The film depicted the question of belief for the ones who join; a struggle for the ones who stand on the outside. A person is either in or out, and that is precisely the question that each Amish teen has to figure out while in rumspringa.

In the "English" world, only priests and nuns and monks have to make such conscientious decisions about whether they are in or out of their religious society, as there is no such thing as being a part-time religious.

It’s not easy to be Amish; you actually have to choose it.