The Amish and Discipleship

Many scholars have described the Anabaptist tradition, from which the Amish descend, as a discipleship tradition. From their beginning in the sixteenth century, Anabaptists have emphasized “following Jesus” as an essential mark of the Christian life. Of course, other Christian traditions value Jesus’ life and example, but they find the essence of the Christian faith in something other than discipleship. Roman Catholics, for instance, give priority to the Eucharist, and Pentecostals stress the work of the Holy Spirit. For Anabaptists, the primary expression of faith is following—even imitating—Jesus.

It’s not surprising, then, that Amish churches focus their attention on the words and actions of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. The New Testament clearly takes precedence over the Old Testament in the biblical texts that preachers use in their sermons. For example, although Amish preachers recite Old Testament stories in their sermons, all the biblical texts read in Amish church services come from the New Testament. Moreover, the Gospels take priority over the other New Testament books. Out of the sixty chapters in the Lancaster Amish lectionary,⁴ forty come from the four Gospels, with nineteen from Matthew’s Gospel alone. During the first twelve weeks of each calendar year, the Amish lectionary directs every member’s attention to Matthew 1-12, which includes Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), a passage that receives much attention in Amish theology.

Do the Amish emphasize discipleship because they focus on the Gospels, or does their interest in the Gospels flow from their commitment to discipleship? This chicken-and-egg question may be impossible to answer. Clearly, however, Anabaptists generally and the Amish in particular see Jesus as worthy not just of worship but also of emulation. One early Anabaptist leader put it this way: “Whoever boasts that he is a Christian, the same must walk as Christ walked.” The Amish would admit that traveling this spiritual road is not always easy, but in their view following Jesus is the way that leads to eternal life. A hymn in the Ausbund, the Amish songbook that includes dozens of sixteenth-century texts, offers these words of encouragement: “Who now would follow Christ in life / Must scorn the world’s insult and strife / And bear the cross each day. / For this alone leads to the throne / Christ is the only way.”

Reading Matthew and Practicing Forgiveness

In keeping with their emphasis on following Jesus, the Amish people we interviewed focused much of their attention on his teachings, especially those in the Gospel of Matthew. One bishop explained that Matthew 5-7, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, is considered among the most important texts in the scriptures. A minister, speaking in his cabinet shop, echoed the bishop: “Forgiveness is all about Matthew 5 and the Sermon on the Mount and loving our enemies.” For these leaders, forgiveness is rooted in the teachings of Jesus, which infuse the preaching, reading, and liturgy of their churches.

Even Amish persons who talked more generally about forgiveness as a “biblical” theme eventually spoke of the Sermon on the Mount. When we talked to Amos, a young minister who runs a painting business, he told us, “When you start looking in the New Testament, forgiveness is everywhere. When you open up the New Testament, it’s the first thing that’s there. That’s what the Bible is all about: forgiveness. It says we are to take up our cross and follow Jesus. No matter what happens, we must follow him.” As Amos continued, he focused directly on the Gospels: “Just look at Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They’re all about forgiveness. You don’t have to go far in the New Testament and you find it all over the place. Look at the Sermon on the Mount. It’s filled with forgiveness.”

In fact, Jesus’ instructions about forgiveness can be found in many parts of Matthew’s Gospel. An Amish carpenter referred to Matthew 18:21-22 as his basis for understanding forgiveness. In this short passage, the Apostle Peter asks Jesus whether forgiving an offense seven times is sufficient, to which Jesus responds that seventy times seven would be closer to the mark. In the carpenter’s mind, “Seventy times seven means that we could have 490 tragedies [school shootings] and we’d still have to forgive.” Many others also cited this verse as a reason for Amish forgiveness.

The rationale for Amish forgiveness does not stem entirely from the Gospel of Matthew, however. Several Amish people mentioned the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, whose execution is recorded in Acts 7:54-60. As he was dying, Stephen “cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge,” a testimony that an Amish man summed up neatly: “That’s forgiveness!” An Amish grandfather pointed to another story, this one in the Gospel of John. “When Jesus caught a prostitute [the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery to Jesus], he asked who could throw the first stone at her. No one could do it.” Another model of forgiveness that many Amish people cited was Jesus’ prayer from the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Perhaps because of their martyr history, this image of forgiveness in the face of torture and death looms large in the Amish mind.

Several of our Amish contacts also reiterated the advice of Paul: “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Colossians 3:13). “When I think of forgiveness,” said Mary, a thirty-five-year-old seamstress, “the first verse I think of is ‘Be ye kind to one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you’” (Ephesians 4:32). A few Amish people also referred to Old Testament stories, such as Esau’s forgiveness of Jacob (Genesis 33:1-17) and Hosea’s grace toward his wife, Gomer, and her infidelities (Hosea 1-3).

Still, the Gospel of Matthew remained central in the reflections of the Amish people we interviewed. Indeed, the story that emerged most prominently in Amish explanations of forgiveness came from Matthew 18:23-35: Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant. This parable is well-known among the Amish, because their ministers read and preach about it during the Sunday service two weeks prior to each spring and fall communion service. For the Amish, the two weeks between that service and the Lord’s Supper on Communion Sunday constitute a period of serious spiritual reflection. This time of soul-searching stresses not so much one’s personal relationship with God but one’s relationship with other people as the key to a righteous life.

The parable immediately follows Peter’s question about how often he should forgive those who sin against him. After answering “seventy times seven,” Jesus launches into a story about a king and a servant who owes the king a huge sum of money. When the debt-ridden servant begs the king to forgive his massive debt, the king graciously agrees. Immediately, the forgiven servant collars one of his fellow servants, who owes him a small debt. When that man promises to pay the debt but asks for patience, the recently forgiven servant refuses to pass on the grace he has received and casts his fellow servant into prison. The king, hearing of the vindictive act, reneges on his earlier promise to forgive the indebted servant and now condemns him and delivers him “to the tormentors.” Jesus completes his parable with a pointed theological application: “So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses” (Matthew 18:35). The story serves to remind every Amish man and woman that only a forgiving heart is prepared to participate in communion.

The Lord ’s Prayer

As prominent as the parable of the unforgiving servant is in Amish minds, the Lord’s Prayer holds an even higher place. Recorded in Matthew 6:9-13, in the middle of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, it is the primary prayer of the Christian tradition. If the Gospel of Matthew serves as the root system for Amish forgiveness, the Lord’s Prayer is the taproot.

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

We first learned the importance of this prayer one evening while eating pizza and ice cream with Gid, a minister who is also a farmer. Gid invited us and some of his extended family for supper—if we would be satisfied with take-out pizza so that his wife, Sadie, wouldn’t have to cook after working all day. We offered to treat and drove Gid to the pizza place, where we were greeted by a waitress who knew him as a regular customer. On the way home we bought soda and ice cream at a convenience store.

Sitting around a metal folding table in the middle of Gid and Sadie’s living room, we talked about forgiveness. We expected to hear Bible stories or accounts of the Anabaptist martyrs who forgave their executioners, but Gid started elsewhere. “The Lord’s Prayer plays a big part in our forgiveness. If we can’t forgive, then we won’t be forgiven.” We had to think for a moment to make the connection, but we soon remembered the relevant phrase. Many Christians know it by heart: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

Gid continued by noting the prominence of this prayer in Amish church life. “The Lord’s Prayer is said in every church service.We don’t have a church service, a wedding, a funeral, or an ordination without the Lord’s Prayer.” Sadie added, “Our morning prayers [with our family] also have the Lord’s Prayer, and it’s also read by the father in our evening prayers.”

“It’s the first thing you learn as a child,” Gid continued. “Parents teach and drill children to say it. Preschoolers learn the Lord’s Prayer. They may memorize it in German when they are four years old. The Lord’s Prayer is one of the first things that children learn—after the little prayer about keeping the angels over my bed that’s sort of like the English prayer ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’ In our family, after they learn that, then they learn the Lord’s Prayer. In the morning at school, the scholars stand and recite the Lord’s Prayer.”

Mary also confirmed the prayer’s importance in the lives of Amish children. “The Lord’s Prayer was the first thing I learned at the age of five,” she told us. “I could quote it in German and our children do too. I got an award from my aunt for learning the Lord’s Prayer. My children learned it when they were four or five years old. My husband quotes it when he puts the children to bed, and they could quote it before they went to school.”

Another Amish woman spoke of the significance of the Lord’s Prayer in the lives of Amish adults as well. “The Lord’s Prayer is in our minds all the time,” said a seventy-year-old grandmother. “It’s not just in the evening when we think of it.” She then recounted a conversation with an outsider she met at an Amish wedding who told her that the Lord’s Prayer is not often used in English weddings. “That was a real eye-opener to me to hear her say that.”

As we continued exploring the roots of Amish forgiveness, we found the Lord’s Prayer almost everywhere we looked—in every interview we conducted as well as in sections of Amish books, newspapers, and magazines. But why does the Lord’s Prayer carry so much weight for the Amish? True, they use it in every church service, and their children memorize it early in life, but that is also the case in some other Christian traditions. What is it about Amish life and culture that gives this prayer such authority?

We believe the answer lies in the communal nature of Amish life. In the Amish faith, the authority of the community overshadows the freedom of the individual. In fact, a different understanding of the self is the deepest wedge between Amish life and mainstream American culture. “Individualism,” said a forty-year-old Amish father, “is the great divide between us and outsiders.”

Contemporary American culture tends to accent individual rights, freedoms, preferences, and creativity. From a young age, children are encouraged to distinguish themselves through personal pursuits and creative expression; later in life adults highlight their achievements with see-what-I-have-accomplished résumés. These individually oriented values have produced a society marked by great innovation, awe-inspiring creativity, and a remarkable array of choices. At the same time, some critics complain that these values have contributed to a “culture of narcissism,” a culture of self-love. In fact, in his book The Saturated Self, psychologist Kenneth J. Gergen argues that many modern people are practically obsessed with their personal desires.

In contrast, the core value of Amish culture is community. On bended knees at baptism, Amish individuals agree to follow Christ, to place themselves under the authority of the church, and to obey the Ordnung, the unwritten regulations of the church.⁵ Here the key words are self-denial, obedience, acceptance, and humility—all of which require yielding to the collective wisdom of the community. This doesn’t mean that individuality withers away, but it is constrained. Rather than making their own way alone, Amish people must yield to the authority of the church community and ultimately to God.

These sentiments pervade Amish religious life in ways that many outsiders find puzzling. For instance, verbal expressions of personal faith in public settings are seen as prideful, as if one were showing off one’s religious knowledge. Reciting Bible verses publicly signals a “proud heart,” and individual interpretations of the Bible and personal testimonies in a church service are seen as exemplifying haughtiness rather than genuine faith. For the Amish, genuine spirituality is quiet, reserved, and clothed in humility, expressing itself in actions rather than words. Wisdom is tested by the community, not by an individual’s feelings, eloquence, or persuasion.

Within this culture of restraint, prayer is also cloaked in humility. In an attempt to avoid using prayer as a means to impress others—a practice Jesus warns against in the verses right before the Lord’s Prayer—Amish individuals do not compose their own spoken prayers, as worshipers in many other religious traditions do. Even Amish ministers do not compose their own prayers for church services. In a typical Amish worship service, which includes two sermons and two prayers, the first prayer is a silent one. When we asked Amish people what they pray during the time of silent prayer, without exception they answered, “The Lord’s Prayer.” The second prayer is read by a minister from a centuries-old prayer book, Die ernsthafte Christenpflicht (Prayer Book for Earnest Christians), and always includes the Lord’s Prayer.

As we have noted, the Lord’s Prayer is also read during each family’s Scripture reading and prayer time, which many Amish families observe both morning and evening. At these times, the father typically reads a prayer from Die ernsthafte Christenpflicht as the family kneels. So the Lord’s Prayer is heard by many families twice each day, but they may “hear” it in other ways as well. For example, Amish people do not offer audible prayers at mealtime but rather pray silently before and after eating. “What are people praying?” we asked. One man spoke for many when he said, “The Lord’s Prayer. It says in there ‘give us this day our daily bread,’ so it’s a mealtime prayer.”

For the Amish, then, the Lord’s Prayer is the prayer. Many Amish people reflect on it several times a day, even more on church days. A young business owner summed it up like this: “We don’t think we can improve on Jesus’ prayer.Why would we need to? We think it’s a pretty good, well-rounded prayer. It has all the key points in it.” From an Amish perspective, trying to improve on the Lord’s Prayer would reflect a proud heart. This simple, ancient prayer is therefore the key to Amish spirituality.

Forgiving to Be Forgiven

To say that the Lord’s Prayer is a “good, well-rounded prayer” covers a lot of territory. But the prayer’s words about forgiveness—“forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”—ring loud in Amish ears. One elder explained emphatically, “Forgiveness is the only thing that Jesus underscored in the Lord’s Prayer. Do you know that Jesus speaks about forgiveness in the two verses right after the Lord’s Prayer? So you see, it’s really central to the Lord’s Prayer. It’s really intense.”

The fundamentals of Amish forgiveness are embedded in those two verses: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15).

The Amish believe if they don’t forgive, they won’t be forgiven. This forms the core of Amish spirituality and the core of their understanding of salvation: forgiveness from God hinges on a willingness to forgive others. The crucial phrase, repeated frequently by the Amish in conversations, sermons, and essays, is this: to be forgiven, we must forgive.

This notion was never clearer than in the aftermath of the Nickel Mines shooting. In response to a flood of inquiries about how the Amish could forgive, local leaders provided an explanation in an unsigned letter: “There has been some confusion about our community’s forgiving attitude, [but] if we do not forgive, how can we expect to be forgiven? By not forgiving, it will be more harmful to ourselves than to the one that did the evil deed.”

Even before the school shooting, Amish people understood the close tie between forgiving others and receiving God’s forgiveness. In the Amish magazine Family Life, one writer told the story of a teenager who was hurt by his parents and who used this pain as an excuse for not becoming a Christian. He had “suffered verbal abuse from his father and his mother had expected too much from him. . . . His parents were not perfect, far from it. They had made mistakes, perhaps some major ones.” But then the writer added, “We come to the word FORGIVE. Henry could miss heaven altogether, because he has not learned the meaning of true forgiveness.”

Commenting on the story, the writer offered some additional words of explanation. “When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask the Father to forgive us as we FORGIVE others. Forgiving and being forgiven are inseparable. The person who does not forgive others will not be forgiven. . . . The person who refuses to forgive others has cut himself off from love and mercy. We must forgive, accept, and love, if we want God to FORGIVE us our daily trespasses.”

According to another Amish writer, “There is perhaps no other factor that is so far-reaching as forgiveness. In the Lord’s Prayer, we avow a profound responsibility upon ourselves—we ask the Lord for forgiveness on the condition that we forgive those who sinned against us. It [the Lord’s Prayer] should remind us daily that in a very real sense we are in control of our forgiveness. And hereby we perceive why so many people are miserable—they do not forgive those who have wronged them, and therefore they are not forgiven.”

The Amish formula of forgiveness is unfamiliar to many Christians. In fact, Amish assumptions about forgiveness flip the standard Protestant doctrine upside down. The more common understanding asserts that because God has forgiven sinners, they should forgive those who have wronged them. In the Amish view, however, people receive forgiveness from God only if they extend forgiveness to others. To those who are surprised that Amish forgiveness differs from other Christians’ views, the Amish response is simple: look at the Scriptures and see what they say. As Sadie told us, “It’s pretty plain, don’t you think?”

Of course, Christians have long debated the meaning of “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” In fact, many have rejected a literal interpretation of Matthew 6:12 not simply on the grounds that it is daunting, but on the grounds that it puts the cart before the horse. “Forgiveness is never dependent on our initiative,” one biblical scholar writes. “It begins with God’s grace first given to us while we are yet sinners.” Moreover, “God forgives us when we are hard-hearted and unforgiving, precisely so that our souls may become forgiving toward others.” In this writer’s mind, when a person experiences God’s grace, he or she is enabled to forgive others, and the gift of grace is humbly passed along. According to this view, a better reading of Matthew 6:12 is this: “Help us to forgive others as Jesus forgives us.”

Other Christians have said that it is not so easy to bypass a literal reading of Matthew 6:12. They cite the two verses following Jesus’ prayer that the Amish emphasize: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15). In his commentary on this section of Matthew, William Barclay observes that “Jesus says in the plainest possible language that . . . if we refuse to forgive others, God will refuse to forgive us.” It is quite clear, Barclay continues, that “if we pray this petition with an unhealed breach, an unsettled quarrel in our lives, we are asking God not to forgive us.”

Amish people’s understanding of the forgiveness petition mirrors Barclay’s interpretation. They know, of course, that God’s gracious activity in Jesus Christ came long before they were born—and long before Charles Roberts made forgiveness necessary at Nickel Mines. “The main ‘forgiveness’ was when Jesus gave his life for our sins,” wrote one correspondent in the Amish newspaper Die Botschaft shortly after the shooting. At the same time, the Amish see God’s forgiveness of human beings as both present and future, an offer of grace that can be secured only if one shows grace to others. This cross-stitch between divine and human forgiveness also appears in Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant, told earlier in this chapter. In the parable, the king’s forgiveness, representing divine forgiveness, comes first, before the servant’s actions. But although the king’s graciousness does not initially depend on the servant’s actions, the continuation of his graciousness does. When the servant is not willing to treat others with grace, the king withdraws his forgiveness.

This story clarifies the Amish view that God’s continuing forgiveness depends on their willingness to forgive. Even though they are aware of God’s gracious activity in the past—in the world, their churches, and their lives—they are clear that they continue to need God’s grace. They not only anticipate a judgment day when God will reward the faithful and punish the unfaithful, but they believe their actions will influence how they will be judged. To the Amish, granting forgiveness to one’s debtors is an act that God requires of those who seek divine forgiveness.

Before the shooting, Amish people would have heartily agreed that forgiveness was woven into the fabric of their faith. But many didn’t realize how tightly intertwined it was until the publicity on forgiveness stirred them to deeper reflection.