The Advanced Modular Incoherent Scatter Radar
(AMISR)
Historical Perspectives
The Amish are a religious community founded in Switzerland in the sixteenth century and settled in the United States of America since the eighteenth century. Currently the largest Amish community is located in Ohio. The Amish go back to the Anabaptist movement and refer to the Dordrecht Confession of Faith of 1632. For some scholars of religion are treated as Conservative Protestants, and others as belonging to the wide family of free churches along with the Mennonites, the Brethren Quakers and others, as they have with several doctrinal points in common. The idea of free or professing church was born in Zurich, Switzerland, called radical wing of the Reformation Zwinglian. The Amish traditionally speak a German dialect called Pennsylvania German.
The origins: the Protestant Reformation and the Free Churches
The Protestant Reformation has its official start date, 1517, with the publication of Luther's theses in Wittenberg. But the ideas and hardships that led to the wide and varied phenomenon of the Protestant Reformation had been around for quite some time in Europe.
At the time of the Protestant Reformation were three thinkers who broke away from the Church of Rome: Luther in Germany, Calvin in Geneva and Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich. The theses were advocated, among other things: salvation through God's grace rather than through the sacraments, personal freedom of belief, the priesthood as believers, and not, as believers and ordained priests, the close union of Church and State the centrality of the Bible in relation to ecclesiastical tradition.
The three thinkers found support in the political authorities of the time and so they base their respective churches, despite the opposition of Rome. Within them, and especially in Switzerland Calvin, he originated the Anabaptist movement that later became Mennonite. The Anabaptists, violently persecuted, conceived of the church as a group of adults united by the profession of faith, absolutely pacifist and entirely separate from governments and temporal powers. Hence the term "Free Churches", which they subsequently found full expression in the American colonies.
The Mennonites
Within Protestantism, one of the highlights of many believers and many thinkers was the necessity to baptize only adults and only after the profession of faith. The Anabaptists, as they were called, they found themselves in the crosshairs of other Christian churches, and the object of persecution. From the point of view then current, in fact, do not baptize a child was tantamount to expose it to the risk of "eternal death" without baptism, in fact, could never enter Paradise and the Grace of God would have been precluded. The "scandal" is probably comparable to what you would feel if today, being able to easily do, we decide not to vaccinate a child against a deadly disease. Recall that, at that time, the infant mortality rate was very high and that the chances that a child came to ask for baptism reaching adulthood were objectively poor. In 1534, a group of radical Anabaptists founded by force a theocracy in Münster staining of violent crimes.
As a result there was a great persecution choral, either of the whole movement of the Catholic 3 Protestant churches. The Anabaptists were driven out, tortured and eliminated a little 'everywhere, to the point that some cities hired some real head-hunters to find them and kill them. The experience was a turning point in the history of the movement, which never had no chance to have a minimal influence on the politics of everyday life and to form political alliances, as happened to other Protestant churches.
In 1536, a young Catholic priest, Menno Simons, left the Catholic church believed that he had lost contact with the evangelical roots to get lost behind "stories, legends, holy palms, vespers, pilgrimages, relics, ...". Became Anabaptist Menno, and despite the persecutions to which they were subjected the members of the church, he managed to survive and to unify different groups, which, when the Netherlands embarked on a policy of religious tolerance, they could live in peace. The groups that had joined took inspiration from his name and called themselves, from then on, the Mennonites.
In 1632 he was drafted the Dordrecht Confession of Faith, which isprirarono and founded the Amish religious beliefs and practices, and that still guide them. Basically they are:
the "baptism of believers" to be administered only in adulthood, after repentance and confession of faith. The Amish are opposed to infant baptism because they do not believe they have consciousness of good and evil, then, can neither sin nor benefit of baptism.
The members of the church who sin must be admonished twice in private. If you steadfastly persevere, they are admonished during the assembly and then banned from the group. This practice was already in place from the remote origins, is strongly opposed to the typical violence with which the man and the churches of the Middle Ages imposed the faith or views, highlighting the principle of non-violence. Banish, however painful, was unquestionably better than torturing and killing.
Only believers baptized as adults sit at the Banquet of God
Commit to holding detached from the evil of the world. I am therefore pacifists and reject all forms of violence.
Church leaders are called pastors, must have good character and be competent in leading the congregation in prayer.
Support the separation of church and state. They retire, usually, from the world of which they feel a corrupt and corrupting influence. Do not assume public office, do not vote.
Do not swear: the word is sufficient.
The difficult beginnings of the church took up the habit, still present to officiate the worship in private homes and in public places such as churches. Such a habit passed such as the Amish.
The birth of the Amish
About 150 years later, in 1693, Jakob Ammann, a Swiss bishop, he broke with the Mennonite Church and gave rise to the Amish movement, which derived its name from that of Ecclesiastes, and while proceeding independently, kept several doctrinal points of the Mennonites.
William Penn and the "holy experiment"
William Penn was the noble heir of substantial restoration of the privileges of the aristocracy in England post-Cromwell. His family, in fact, had actively supported and economically King Charles in his regaining the throne. William had met in 1667 in Ireland, with the Quaker movement. The Quakerism was inscribed into the large vein of "Free Churches" and of the Anabaptists as he suffered persecution.
Returning to England he dedicated his whole self to an impressive thesis on the work of popular religious renewal. Starting from 1675 he began to mature and to promote the idea that there was need for England in general, and the Puritans in particular, to open up to the New World, America.
To escape persecution and looking for a different way of life, Penn sailed with a group of Quakers. Some of them settled in the country we now know as Pennsylvania and considers William as its founder. The British crown, in fact, assigned the state as the balance of the debt he had with his family.
Penn, consistent with similar experiments, he wanted to create a different way of life, based on respect and loving collaboration between different people, equalized from the creative act of God In this sense "the people" were not only other Christians, but also the Indian populations residents.
Around 1720 some groups of Amish followed the dream of the colony of Penn and joined her. They settled mostly in Pennsylvania, where he still have a greater presence. Others made their way in New York, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio.
From 1700 to the present
The survival of the Free Churches was not granted in a continent where there was the state and the law was often on the side of those who demanded it as non-violence aroused desires predators and / or lighted dislikes. In 1800, after the American Civil War, America had more than 1,000 Amish. War, persecution and famine drove other Amish to leave Europe to meet with groups Americans. Most settled in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, New York, Ohio, and Ontario in Canada. Only a few made their way in Pennsylvania. These Amish Europeans were more elastic, both as to daily habits, indulging in what their brethren Americans seemed unnecessary vanity (most beautiful clothes, musical instruments, and in general a vision of beauty as a value and not vanity). They also had a more confident attitude towards modernity and its products.
The contrasts were also doctrinal and deepened in the second half of the nineteenth century until arriving in 1880 to a Council which led to a division. The Amish found themselves divided into four groups: three liberals and one conservative. The latter took the name of "Old Order Amish" (about 5,000 people). The other is called Amish Mennonites. The Amish who tells us culturally, even for advertising that has made it the best known customs, for example, with the film "Witness - Witness" belong and call themselves the "Old Order".
In the twentieth century the Amish groups found themselves at the center of further contrasts with the United States and Canada. Primarily because, when they entered the war, anti-militarism of the young Amish caused a new wave of physical and psychological abuse. In addition the compulsory schooling collided with the desire of the Amish to educate their children in the light of the principles that were not intended to support. But at least you found a compromise on this and Amish boys were allowed to finish their studies to 16 years instead of 18.
At the beginning of World War II non-violent religious groups like the Amish and Quakers gained more respect from the United States and Canada. Those who declared themselves Conscientious Objectors (the vast majority) obtained non-military tasks, for example in the field hospitals or those of the city, which exposed them to violent culture shock due to contact with a society completely alien to them, and their moral principles.
Further problems are generated with regard to taxes (Social Security program) that the Amish do not want to pay for a government of which they did not feel part and from which they did not want any service. In subsequent years, however, the Amish found a dialogue with state governments, and there were the most serious incidents of confrontation. The differences, of course, remained. In 1967, some moved in some countries in Latin America, where a small group still resides.
