The Amish (Old Order): beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

The Ordnung is not a costume — it is a fence, and the district votes on where it runs.

Swiss Anabaptists who followed the elder Jakob Ammann out of the Swiss Brethren in 1693, over how completely the excommunicated should be avoided. They worship in one another's houses rather than in church buildings, choose ministers by lot, school their children to the eighth grade, and settle twice a year by members' vote what the district will and will not carry. The rules differ from settlement to settlement; there is no bishop over the whole and no headquarters to write to.

DeitiesThe Trinity as stated in the Dordrecht Confession of 1632, preached in a High German nobody speaks at home and sung from a hymnal printed without notes.

Founded1693 CE · The Bernese Emmental and Alsace

FounderJakob Ammann

AfterlifeResurrection and judgment. To state that you are certainly saved is heard as pride; the word used instead is a living hope.

TextsThe Luther Bible · The Dordrecht Confession of Faith (1632) · The Ausbund

The map

The Amish (Old Order)’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1517 CE Protestantism 1525 CE Anabaptism 1693 CE The Amish (Old Order)

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

Gelassenheit — the whole ethic is yielding. The word means submission: to God, to the church, to the Ordnung, to the people you were born among. Its opposite is not disobedience but Hochmut, high-mindedness — which is why a chrome bumper and a graduate degree are refused for the same reason. Go deeper — context →

Nobody says out loud that they are saved. Assurance of salvation is heard as presumption about God's verdict. The Amish speak of a living hope instead, and an Amish-raised person who joins an evangelical church and announces they are saved is one of the most common causes of a family breach. held by most Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

J Jakob Ammann — the elder who would not bend, and then tried to. He split the Swiss Brethren in 1693 by demanding avoidance of the banned at the table as well as at communion, and by excommunicating the ministers who said no. In 1700 he put himself and his ministers under the ban and asked to be received back; the other side declined. Domain Discipline, the ban, the shape of the separated churchStanding The Amish are named after him and rarely speak of him Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

Church in the house. No steeple, no building, no committee: the benches arrive in a wagon and the service happens in whoever's turn it is. Singing runs about twenty seconds a syllable, so the first hymn can take fifteen minutes, and the meal afterwards is eaten in shifts because the house is not large enough for everyone at once. When Biweekly — every other Sunday, roughly three hours from mid-morningWho The whole district, twenty to forty households Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Christianity — 11 shared ideas, a different faith Hinduism — 10 shared ideas, a different faith Judaism — 10 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 10 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Amish (Old Order) — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Amish (Old Order) shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

2 cited texts

Thieleman J. van Braght, Martyrs Mirror (Dordrecht, 1660), on Dirk Willems, 1569 — English translation of 1886 where it is cited →
Dordrecht Confession of Faith (1632), Article XVII, Of the Shunning of Those Who are Expelled (rendered) where it is cited →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.