Because the Ordnung doesn't translate completely into English I have a few quotes from The Riddle of Amish Culture. Which is an important book also to the Amish and to those who want to learn about them.
"The Amish blueprint for expected behavior, called the Ordnung, regulates private, public, and ceremonial life. Ordnung does not translate readily into English. Sometimes rendered as ordnance or discipline, the Ordnung is best thought of as an ordering of the whole way of life … a code of conduct which the church maintains by tradition rather than by systematic or explicit rules. A member noted: The order is not written down. The people just know it, that's all. Rather than a packet or rules to memorize, the Ordnung is the understood behavior by which the Amish are expected to live. In the same way that the rules of grammar are learned by children, so the Ordnung, the grammar of order, is learned by Amish youth. The Ordnung evolved gradually over the decades as the church sought to strike a delicate balance between tradition and change. Specific details of the Ordnung vary across church districts and settlements."
— Donald B. Kraybill , The Riddle of Amish Culture
This quote is about the Ordnung and it's important to the Amish because it helps a person understand what the Ordnung really is and how it helps the Amish stay on the right path.
A respected Ordnung generates peace, love, contentment, equality, and unity. It creates a desire for togetherness and fellowship. It binds marriages, it strengthens family ties to live together, to work together, to worship together and to commune secluded from the world.
— Donald B. Kraybill , The Riddle of Amish Culture, p.98
This is related because it helps us to understand what the people have to do to work together as a community.
Examples of Practices Prescribed by the Ordnung:
color and style of clothing
hat styles for men
order of worship service
kneeling for prayer in worship
marriage within the church
use of horses for fieldwork
use of Pennsylvania German
steel wheels on machinery
Examples of Practices Prohibited by the Ordnung:
air transportation
central heating in houses
divorce
electricity from public power lines
entering military service
filing a lawsuit
jewelry, including wedding rings and wrist watches
joining worldly (public) organizations
owning computers, televisions, radios
owning and operating an automobile
pipeline milking equipment
using tractors for fieldwork
wall-to-wall carpeting
— Donald B. Kraybill , The Riddle of Amish Culture, Revised Edition p.115
These are just a few of the rules that the Amish have to go through to not get shunned. There are many more which they must follow.
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