Members Meetings and Pardon

In addition to their semiannual Council Meetings, Amish church districts periodically hold Members Meetings at the conclusion of regular Sunday services. These meetings also encourage forgiveness, but their primary focus is on pardoning wayward members. If someone confesses a sin and accepts the church’s discipline, the other members reinstate him or her into fellowship. Unlike unconditional forgiveness, pardon has conditions: confession and discipline. Members Meetings emphasize the church’s authority to restore a member to full communion within the church—if the member shows remorse. Drawing on Matthew 18:18-20, the Amish see the decision to pardon as one of the church’s key responsibilities. In some ways, this authority parallels that of a Roman Catholic priest, who can pardon, or absolve, a repentant parishioner of sin.

The Amish believe that in Matthew 18 Jesus authorizes the church to make binding decisions about religious matters, decisions that will be endorsed in heaven. To paraphrase verse 18, whatever the church decides about membership on earth will be ratified in heaven. The sacred nature of church decision making is also underscored in verse 20, when Jesus says, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Given the importance of verses 18-20 in Anabaptist beliefs, historian C. Arnold Snyder says that the gathered church, meeting in the presence of Christ, is the only real sacrament in the Anabaptist tradition. This view of the church, which for the Amish consists of the thirty or so families in their local district, infuses Members Meetings with moral gravity.

The moral order of Amish life has two dimensions. Some ethical understandings flow directly from scripture: prohibitions against lying, cheating, divorce, sexual immorality—even “beating a horse, which is forbidden in the Old Testament,” according to an Amish historian. Other moral guidelines, however, are derived from biblical principles that need to be interpreted and applied to daily life. For instance, Ordnung regulations on matters such as clothing, technology use, and leisure activity emerge from the church’s discernment of the principle of “separation from the world.” The church disciplines members both for violating direct biblical teaching, such as that against adultery, and for spurning guidelines such as those that forbid purchasing a car or wearing fashionable clothing.

Although the Amish view Members Meetings with solemn respect, most of them are also aware of the fallibility of their church. They realize it consists of people who are prone to sin yet sincerely seek to carry out the will of God on earth. Violations of the Ordnung are always seen as sinful, but not because the Ordnung is perfect or an exact replication of divine will. Transgressions of the Ordnung are considered sinful because, to the Amish, they indicate self-centeredness and rebelliousness—in short, a disobedient heart.

The Amish view of the Ordnung in some ways parallels athletes’ views of sports uniforms. Although athletes would never claim that the specific colors of their uniform make them better players or that wearing the uniform is a substitute for skillful play, they do believe that in order to avoid confusion it is absolutely necessary that team members wear their assigned uniforms and not those of the opposing team. Players cannot ignore the uniform requirement, even though they would not say that the uniform itself is necessary to win. What is important, in athletes’ minds, is that all sides respect the distinctions that the uniforms represent.

Similarly, the Amish do not equate the Ordnung with divine law. The sin in any given violation relates not to owning a prohibited item (a television, for example) but to the fact that only a self-centered person would flout the Ordnung. The self-centeredness, not the television itself, is seen as the sin. Minister Amos said, “I know it doesn’t make sense to outsiders; they think, ‘What’s the matter with a car?’ Well, nothing. It’s the giving up part. That’s what’s important.” A bishop explained, “A car is not immoral; the problem is, where will it lead the next generation?”

The Amish emphasis on giving up things not explicitly forbidden in the Bible might surprise many religious people. Indeed, many outsiders would see some violations of the Ordnung as signs of free thinking, not self-centeredness, of healthy individuality, not sinfulness. Such a difference simply points to the deep distinction between Amish culture and mainstream American values. For most Amish, it is not particularly important what the Ordnung prohibits, or even if the prohibitions were to change next year. The obedience or disobedience revealed by a person’s attitude is the issue, not the infallibility of the church.

The church demonstrates its authority at Members Meetings in a variety of ways. In some instances, a wayward member may confess a transgression of the Ordnung. In other instances, an out-of-order member who refuses to confess a wrong may be “subpoenaed,” in the words of one member, to give an account of his or her questionable behavior. After an individual confesses and submits to the church’s discipline, the congregation pardons the wayward person and restores him or her to full fellowship by a vote of all members. Offenders unwilling to express remorse, to give themselves up to God and the gathered community, may face excommunication.

The frank discussions and binding decisions in Members Meetings are strictly confidential. Ministers urge church members to fuhgevva und fuhgessa (forgive and forget—or more precisely, pardon and forget). Members are forbidden from talking about others’ confessions or circulating them as gossip. “This ‘forgive and forget’ really means to let back what is back, to not bring it up again,” explained one church member. In the words of an Amish historian, “A confessed sin may never be held against a person again—it is dead and buried.” In fact, if a member does leak information from the meeting, he or she could be censured for breaking the silence.

The pardon in Members Meetings is quite different from the forgiveness that happens when an individual erases a personal grudge or bitterness from his or her heart. The forgive-and-forget policy focuses on the confidentiality following Members Meetings but does not mean that Amish people are expected to forget painful events of victimization or repress all feelings about them. Everyone we spoke with agreed that no one would forget—or be expected to forget—the shooting at the West Nickel Mines School. Of course, the fact that the shooting was perpetrated by an outsider also makes it quite different from offenses discussed in a Members Meeting. Even if Charles Roberts had not taken his own life that day, the fact that he was not Amish meant that the Amish would have had no authority to punish or pardon him.

Excommunication

The Anabaptist view of the church emphasizes the accountability of members to one another and to the collective authority of the church. The tie between pardon and church discipline rests on several key assumptions. First, Amish members emphasize that forgiving an offender does not mean releasing that person from disciplinary action. “Just because there’s forgiveness doesn’t mean there’s no consequences,” said Minister Gid.

Second, the Amish see a spiritual difference between church members and outsiders. Members of the church have made a voluntary pledge on their knees at baptism to support the church’s Ordnung for the rest of their lives. This vow before God and the gathered community is viewed very seriously, because the Amish believe it was uttered in the presence of Christ and ratified in heaven. Thus, baptized members fall under the authority of the church; outsiders do not.

Third, the Amish hold to a two-kingdom theology in which the church, a manifestation of the kingdom of God, operates under a different ethical standard than “the world.” Based on their reading of Romans 13, the Amish believe that God ordained the state with authority to reward those who do good and to punish troublemakers. Thus, the Amish assume that the government will use coercion and even lethal force if necessary to impose its will. At the same time, the church, as a part of the kingdom of God, espouses nonresistance and nonviolence. For this reason, activities such as participating in the military, serving jury duty for capital offenses, holding political office, and filing legal suits are forbidden for members. Although the Amish respect the state and pray for its leaders, they will not participate in state-sponsored activities that involve the use or threat of force.

When an outsider (such as Charles Roberts) wrongs an Amish person, the Amish consider themselves responsible to forgive but not to punish or pardon, for that is the state’s responsibility. However, when a member wrongs another member or affronts the church as a whole, both forgiveness and pardon fall within the jurisdiction of the church. For minor and interpersonal offenses, this distinction between the church and the world works quite simply: the church alone handles the disciplinary process. But if a member breaks the law, then he or she will face not only discipline from the church but also punishment from the public system of justice.

If Amish church members break their baptismal pledges, they are confronted and invited to confess their sins and mend their ways. As a minister explained, “If a person makes an error, according to Matthew 18 we go to them three times before they are excommunicated.” At any one of these three encounters the offending party may repent, at which point the church pardons the member and commits itself not to talk about the matter again. Indeed, almost all transgressions are absolved with this sort of simple confession, discipline, and promise to change behavior.

Occasionally, however, church members may balk and refuse to confess their errors. Those who refuse to confess face excommunication. This happens, for instance, if a member who buys a car refuses to sell it, shows no remorse, and refuses to respond to the church’s “subpoena.”

Excommunication, a long-standing practice of the Catholic Church and many Protestant churches, is similar in some ways to firing an employee who violates company policy. Among the Amish, excommunication is affirmed by a vote of church members, but it is done only after many attempts by leaders to invite the wayward member to repent and uphold his or her baptismal vow. Restoration is always the goal, but because repentance by the wayward person is the key to restoration, the goal is not always achieved.

The Amish church makes a sharp distinction between baptized members and those who choose not to join the church. (Baptism and joining the church occur simultaneously.) Only members of the Amish church can be excommunicated and shunned. Amish youth typically make a decision about baptism in their late teens or early twenties. Those who leave the community before joining the church are not disciplined by excommunication and shunning.

Shunning

Because the Amish believe that church membership is not just an individual spiritual matter, leaving the church or otherwise forfeiting church membership carries significant social implications. The stigma that accompanies excommunication is commonly known as shunning. Shunning follows excommunication and involves rituals of shaming designed to remind all sides of the broken relationship, and hopefully to win the wayward one back into full fellowship. It is precisely this practice that so many outsiders find judgmental and unforgiving.

Contrary to popular notions, shunning does not involve severing all social ties. Members may talk with ex-members, for example. But certain things are forbidden, such as accepting rides or money from ex-members, and eating at the same table with them. “Remember,” said a farmer, “we still help ex-members. If an ex-member’s barn burns down, we go and help to rebuild it. We will help them if their wife is sick. . . . [But] generally we don’t invite them to social events or to weddings or to things like school meetings.” Members are expected to shun ex-members even within their own household, and those who refuse to do so may jeopardize their own standing within the church. Although shunning is a widely accepted practice within the Amish faith, the strictness with which it is applied varies greatly from family to family and from church district to church district.

The Amish cite at least four reasons for the practice of shunning. First, shunning is supported by more than a half dozen New Testament passages. A key scripture passage read at every Council Meeting reminds participants of the church’s authority over each member. In 1 Corinthians 5, the Apostle Paul urges church members to clean out the “old leaven” of “malice and wickedness” before they eat the Lord’s Supper (v. 8). In a pointed admonition, Paul tells the Corinthian church to remove a wicked person from its midst and “deliver such an one unto Satan” so that his or her spirit will eventually be saved (v. 5).

Second, the practice finds support in Article 17 of the Dordrecht Confession of Faith, an early-seventeenth-century Anabaptist statement of belief that the Amish use in the instruction of baptismal candidates.

Third, the Amish believe that shunning is the most effective way to maintain the integrity of the church. In the words of Bishop Eli, “It helps to keep our church intact” by removing rebellious and disobedient people who would stir up dissension.

Last, and most important, shunning serves to admonish offenders and remind them of their broken vows in hopes that they will confess their errors and return to the church. Ex-members are not enemies of the church, Amish leaders are quick to say, but brothers and sisters who must be treated with love. They are always welcome to come back into fellowship upon confession of their sin. In the words of the Dordrecht Confession, “Such persons should not be considered enemies but should be admonished as brethren . . . to bring them to acknowledgment, contrition, and repentance of their sins . . . reconciled to God and again received into the church . . . [so that] love can have its way with them.”

In the Amish view, shunning is a form of tough love for back-sliders. An elderly bishop called it “the last dose of medicine that you can give to a sinner. It either works for life or death.” Another bishop explained that a church without shunning “is like a house without doors or walls, where the people just walk in and out as they please.”

An Amish woman drew from her experience as a mother to explain the basis for shunning. “Shunning and spanking go side by side,” she told us. “We love our children. When we spank them, it’s a discipline to help them control their minds. When spanking, we don’t get angry at them, and the same is true for shunning.” The comparison of spanking and shunning may not be a perfect analogy, but for the Amish, healthy churches, like good parents, should mete out discipline with love. Parents and churches both seek to protect those under their care from their own frailties. Because the Amish believe that each person’s eternal soul is at stake, they contend that communal discipline is the loving thing to do.

Although the church views shunning as a tough form of Christian love, Amish church leaders are as susceptible as leaders in other churches to abusing power. In some cases, bishops and ministers have wielded their authority in oppressive ways. A domineering leader may at times use excommunication and shunning as a tool of retaliation.

Some ex-members become bitter at the church and denounce shunning as an unloving practice. Ex-members can, however, return to the fold anytime and receive pardon—if they are willing to confess their deviance. “I have a brother who is excommunicated,” explained Mose. “We have forgiven [but not pardoned] him. But the back door is always open. He can come back if he wants to, but it’s up to him.” Although most ex-members never return, some do. One ex-member, touched by the grace at Nickel Mines, asked church leaders what she would have to do to return.

Shunning and Forgiveness

Some onlookers point to shunning and ask how the Amish can forgive people like Charles Roberts and yet be so unforgiving of their own members. Is grace extended only to outsiders who do horrific things? A carpenter summed up these sentiments when he told us bluntly, “Some outsiders think that shunning is barbaric.”

Are ex-members forgiven? To answer this question, it is important to note once again the distinction between forgiveness and pardon. Erasing feelings of resentment toward a wrongdoer is different from pardoning a culprit of his or her sins. Letting go of a grudge does not require remorse from an offender. Pardon, however, does require repentance. This is certainly the case in the Amish church, where pardon and restoration of fellowship are available to wayward souls who confess their wrongdoing.

These distinctions between forgiveness and pardon help to clarify Amish responses to the question, “Are ex-members forgiven?” Defining forgiveness as “not holding a grudge,” Gid answered the question with a carefully qualified yes. Ex-members can and should be forgiven, he said, though church members often fall short of that ideal. “Some people shun others and don’t forgive them,” he told us. “Many, however, forgive and also shun.” Another Amish person put it this way: “People who are shunned feel like they are not forgiven, but we do forgive them. But they need to be reminded of their sin until they repent.” Mose explained it by saying, “We do try to forgive those that leave. We don’t hold a grudge against them. When someone is shunned, it does not mean they are not forgiven. It’s just a reminder of where they stand [in their relationship to the church].”

An Amish leader explained the necessity of judgment—the reason for withholding pardon from unrepentant church members—in this way: “People don’t understand how we can seem to forgive outsiders so easily and not [forgive] among ourselves. . . . But really there is a difference. When we see wrong in the world, we can’t judge that. We leave it up to God to judge. But since God ordained the church to watch over Christians, we have to judge [our own members] out of concern for each other’s souls. That’s what it comes down to: with church discipline we’re concerned about their souls.”

The Amish believe that they have a divine responsibility to judge those who break their baptismal vows, to remind them of what the Amish believe to be the eternal consequences of their negligence, and to preserve the purity of the church. But their view that the church is distinct from the world also means that they can be remarkably non-judgmental toward outsiders who have not taken a vow of obedience before God and the Amish church. This two-kingdom view, when combined with clear definitions of forgiveness, helps unravel the paradox of Amish grace. In other words, it shows us how Amish people around Nickel Mines could forgive their children’s killer even as an Amish church elsewhere could not pardon an unrepentant member who left the community in search of romantic love.

Two Sides of Love

Like most people we know, the Amish place a high value on love. They draw their inspiration to love from Jesus’ command to love others and, more generally, from the idea that the God they worship is a loving and gracious Father. They do not love one another perfectly and, like many non-Amish people, they do not always know what the most loving response should be. Still, they value the ideal of love and, for the most part, they pursue that ideal in their families and their churches.

Love, like forgiveness, is a complicated concept. What does it mean to love another person? Endlessly debated by philosophers, poets, and heartsick college students, this question has no simple answer. We can say this, however: Amish views of love, like many of their beliefs, are not always the same as those of their English neighbors.

Is forgiveness always the loving thing to do? Most Amish people would probably say yes—if forgiveness means replacing bitterness in one’s heart with compassion for one’s offender. The Amish would point to God’s work in Jesus Christ as the clearest example of this link between love and forgiveness. “Herein is love,” notes one Amish writer on the topic of forgiveness, quoting 1 John 4:10, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent His Son . . . for our sins.”

But if forgiveness means pardoning an unrepentant member, then the Amish believe that forgiveness is not the loving thing to do. Because they consider the sinner’s eternal soul to be at stake, their understanding of love in this situation is akin to parents disciplining a child. To fail to discipline would not only neglect their God-given responsibility, it would, in fact, be the unloving thing to do. If, however, the sinner expresses remorse for his or her actions, pardon and restoration of fellowship would be the loving response.

This is not a common notion of love in twenty-first-century America, at least as it pertains to the church. From the outside, Amish-style discipline may appear harsh, judgmental, and even cruel. Those who have experienced shunning by their Amish churches often agree. Indeed, like the media critics who accused the Amish of hypocrisy when they forgave Charles Roberts, ex-Amish members may wonder how the Amish can forgive outsiders and still shun their own religious offspring.

The Amish answer to this question will never satisfy all the critics, but at least their answer is clear. It is also quite logical, at least from a perspective that considers life to be short, eternity to be long, and heaven and hell to be real. For a people who believe choices have eternal consequences, there are two sides of love, and to forgo one or the other would bring spiritual tragedy to everyone involved.