Of Scripts and Scriptures: Why Plain People Perpetuate a Media Fast

During July 2004 many American viewers were exposed to the first televised adventures of Amish teenagers in Hollywood. The reality TV program Amish in the City strongly boosted the ratings of Viacom's lesser TV network, UPN. However, the program also aroused the ire of Amish leaders and many of their friends throughout America. Why did the Amish react? The Old Order Amish feel that electronic media are deceitful. To them electronic and photographic images do not fairly represent reality any more than the handful of relatively radical teens on Amish in the City represents Amish society. The Old Order Amish ban almost all electronic media from their communities and are equally offended by Hollywood feature films such as Witness (1985) and Kingpin (1996). To them such films are trashy deception imposing damaging stereotypes upon an honorable traditional American, and indeed global, religious society. The only reason any of them would ever screen media about the Amish is in self-defense. Such views may seem foreign to those who have never sought to understand the Amish with-in their own terms. This research will seek to bridge that gap by providing a first-hand exposure to the Old Order Amish of Pennsylvania and to scholarly research about their attitudes toward electronic media. Based upon Amish literature, interviews with Amish leaders, field research within their communities, and scholarly publications about Old Order societies, this report and analysis might be subtitled "Amish in the Country." The rural agricultural world is the reality in which almost all Amish reside. Amish in the Country For many varieties of Plain People, country living and abstinence from most media are deliberate practices. The most-widely publicized Plain People are the Old Order Amish, famous for their horse-and-buggy transportation, uniformly sober clothing, and beards. In Lancaster County alone, there are twenty-two distinct groups of Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren which abstain from virtually all electronic media (Kraybill and Scott 17; Scott, Interview 2000). Television, film, radio, VCRs, CDs, DVDs, and the Internet are forbidden, although some communities accept limited or full use of the computer and telephone. Although Kraybill, Hosteller, Scott, Umble, and others have provided substantial insights into specific subcategories (e.g., the telephone, the television, the radio, specific films, etc.) of such media abstinence, this research asked many Old Order Amish leaders this direct primary question-"Why do Plain People abstain from electronic media?" Unlike the brief media fasts sometimes taken by urban vacationers; the Amish, many Mennonites, and some Brethren have fully abstained from electronic media consumption for decades. Taking this substantial cultural lifestyle difference into account, six important subquestions associated with the primary one above will be considered here: (1) Who are the Plain People? (2) To what extent do the twenty-two selected groups use mass media? (3) What are their theological justifications for abstinence? (4) What are their sociocultural reasons for abstinence? (5) What if the Plain People are correct in their way? and (6) What may we learn from them? Methods Those who expect to use conventional methods when studying the Old Order Plain People are often surprised. Those Old Order leaders who will grant interviews (and many will not) usually do so only upon the condition of anonymity. Submitting survey requests to Old Order communities about their lives would be seen as an invasion of privacy. Outsiders are usually distrusted, so visiting and distant scholars must depend upon the research of those with Plain backgrounds or "next-of-kin" status who have obtained a positive reputation among the Old Orders. This research was sensitive to such methodological parameters and to the preferences of the Old Orders themselves. Interviews which were conducted with Old Order leaders promised to maintain anonymity in all areas and to provide confidentiality (i. …