Buggies and bonnets get the attention. Underneath them is a five hundred year old Christian tradition built on following Jesus with your whole life.
Are Amish Christians? Yes. They confess Jesus Christ as Lord, hold the historic Christian faith, and trace their roots to the Anabaptist movement that began in 1525.
What makes them look so different is how literally they try to live the Sermon on the Mount: adult baptism, refusing violence, and a deliberate separation from the wider culture.
The Young Center at Elizabethtown College, which has studied Amish life for decades, puts it plainly: they are a Christian church that accepts the basic tenets of the faith. So the real question is not whether they are Christians. It is what kind of Christians they are, and what the rest of us can learn from them.
The Amish did not start as a separate religion. They are one branch of a family tree, and the family is older than most American denominations.
A group of believers near Zurich insisted that baptism should be a voluntary adult decision to follow Jesus. Because they baptized people already baptized as infants, opponents called them Anabaptists, rebaptizers. In the movement's first century as many as 2,500 were executed.
Dutch Anabaptists wrote eighteen articles of faith. The Amish still affirm them today, and candidates for baptism study them.
Ammann, a Swiss Anabaptist leader, wanted communion twice a year instead of once, foot washing at communion, plain dress, and the shunning of excommunicated members. The shunning question split him from the Swiss Brethren. His followers became known as the Amish.
Amish and Mennonite families crossed to North America, often settling near one another, with Pennsylvania as the early center.
The Young Center estimates about 421,200 Amish in 33 states and three Canadian provinces, with 85 percent or more of their children joining the church as adults.
So the Amish and the Mennonites are cousins. Same Anabaptist roots, different answers to how strict the church should be about discipline and separation.
Strip away the buggies and you find a church that believes in the Trinity, the authority of Scripture, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the forgiveness of sins. On those things an Amish bishop and a Long Island pastor would nod along together. The distinctives sit on top of that shared foundation.
Baptism is a free choice made as an adult, usually between 18 and 21. It joins you to Christ and to the church in the same act. We walk through the meaning of the act itself in what baptism is.
They take Jesus at His word about enemies. No military service, no revenge, no lawsuits to settle scores. Our study of turning the other cheek covers the same teaching.
The church should be visibly different from the larger society. That principle sits behind the dress, the lack of grid electricity, and the ending of formal school after eighth grade.
German for order. It is each church district's set of rules, usually unwritten, covering dress, technology, and much of daily life. Members affirm it twice a year before communion.
Yieldedness. Surrendering self to God and to the community, the opposite of bold individualism. Pride is treated as a real spiritual danger.
Every other Sunday a district meets in a member's home, barn, or shop for a long service with unaccompanied German hymns from the Ausbund and sermons from lay ministers.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Romans 12:2 · NIVThat verse sits close to the center of the whole Amish project. They read it as a call to a different way of living together, and they built a whole culture to hold it. We explored the same instinct, with different conclusions, in in the world but not of the world.
Most of what people think they know about the Amish comes from reality shows. Those shows need drama, so they find it. The picture that results is mostly wrong, and it is worth correcting even for people who have no plans to visit Lancaster County.
At sixteen every Amish teenager is released into the world for a wild year of parties, cars and city life, then has to choose between the world and the church.
Rumspringa means running around. It is simply the stretch between childhood and baptism. The Young Center notes that practices vary greatly, and in some smaller settlements a wild, rebellious season is virtually unknown.
Most Amish young people spend those years living at home, working, and going to Sunday singings with friends. Some push boundaries. Most eventually ask for baptism, which is why the retention rate sits at 85 percent or more.
Here is the part that deserves respect. The Amish refuse to baptize a child into membership before they can choose it. Whatever you think of their rules, they will not make faith for you. That is a conviction many churches say they hold and fewer actually practice.
Who can be shunned in an Amish church?
Discipline applies to members only. A young person who leaves before baptism has made no vow to the church and is not shunned, though leaving can still bring real family grief. There is more on Christian veiling if you want to keep going.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Shunning, Meidung in German, is the practice people find hardest to understand, so start with how the Amish themselves describe it. A baptized member who breaks their vow and refuses correction can be excommunicated. The community then limits social contact in set ways: no sharing a meal table, no accepting rides or goods. Personal conversation does not necessarily stop, and the practice varies considerably between communities and families.
In their own words, the rituals remind the wayward of their sin and seek to bring them back. The door stays open. Anyone who confesses and returns is received again.
They read Paul's instructions about not associating with an unrepentant brother as binding, and they believe a church that never disciplines slowly stops being a church.
We do not practice shunning, and we do not believe Jesus asks it of anyone. In Matthew 18 the person who will not listen is treated like a tax collector, and Jesus spent His time eating with tax collectors. We worked through that passage in where two or more are gathered.
Both things are true at once. The Amish intention is restoration, and plenty of Amish families soften the practice in love. It is also true that people who left have described deep loneliness, cut off from parents and siblings. Pretending either side of that away is not honest.
Maybe you left a strict community, Amish or otherwise, and your family's table went quiet. That loss is real grief, and you are allowed to feel it.
Jesus does not deal with you by withdrawal. He comes after people. If you need someone to pray with you, reach out to us here. You will not be lectured.
On October 2, 2006, a gunman entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, and five girls were killed. We will not go further into the details. What the country remembers is what happened next.
Within days, Amish neighbors visited the gunman's family to express sorrow and forgiveness. At his funeral, about half the mourners were Amish, and they greeted his family as fellow sufferers. They set up a fund to help that family too.
“Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
Colossians 3:13 · NIVThis was not a denial of pain. Those families grieved deeply and for years. The book Amish Grace, by Donald Kraybill, Steven Nolt and David Weaver-Zercher, argues that the forgiveness came so quickly because it was already woven into daily Amish life. Practiced again and again until it was a habit, it was there on the worst day. Jesus taught His followers to pray forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, and they had meant it for a long time.
Forgiveness is not a feeling you wait for. It is a habit a community practices until it is ready for the worst day. We unpacked Jesus' math on this in forgive 70 times 7.
Respect does not mean pretending we agree on everything. We share the same Jesus. We differ in a few places that matter, and it is only fair to say so plainly, the same way we did in are Catholics Christian.
The Amish are our brothers and sisters in Christ. We will not question the faith of people who confess Jesus and live out His teaching at great personal cost.
We do believe you can know you are saved. Most Amish speak of a living hope of salvation rather than assurance, and in a culture that fears pride, confidence can sound like boasting. We think Scripture says otherwise. Assurance is not arrogance when it rests on what Jesus did instead of what you did.
We believe rules can guard a life but cannot give one. An Ordnung can protect a family's attention. It cannot make anyone right with God, and when it starts to feel like it can, grace has been quietly replaced.
And we believe every gift of the Spirit is active today, healing, prophecy, tongues and more, poured out on ordinary believers for the good of the whole body. That is a real difference in how church feels on a Sunday.
“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
1 John 5:13 · NIVJohn wrote so people could know. Not guess, not hope nervously. For more on that confidence, see these assurance of salvation verses, and for the gifts, our study of spiritual gifts.
The Amish ask a question the rest of American Christianity usually avoids: what if following Jesus changed everything about how you live, not just what you believe on Sunday? Their answer is not ours in every detail. But the question is a good one.
We are a Spirit-filled church in Deer Park, not a plain one. We drive to service and stream the sermon. Yet we want the same things at the center: Jesus confessed as Lord, faith chosen freely, enemies loved, and a community that looks after its own and forgives before it is asked.
If you want to go further, read what a Christian is, what non-denominational means, and what the model Christian church looks like. You can also read what we believe or plan a visit.
The Amish are Christians in the Anabaptist tradition who confess Jesus, baptize adults and refuse violence; we differ on assurance, rules and the gifts, and we can still learn from how they forgive.
Maybe you grew up in a strict church or are looking for one that fits. Send us your questions or a prayer request and someone at Sound of Heaven will answer.
Yes. The Amish are a Christian church in the Anabaptist tradition, which began in Switzerland in 1525. They believe in the Trinity, confess Jesus Christ as Lord, read the Bible as God's Word, and affirm the eighteen articles of the Dordrecht Confession of 1632. What sets them apart is not a different Jesus but a different way of living His teaching: adult baptism, refusing violence, separation from the wider culture, and a shared set of community rules called the Ordnung.
They share the same Anabaptist roots and both practice adult baptism and nonresistance. The split came in 1693, when Jakob Ammann pressed for stricter discipline, including the shunning of excommunicated members, communion twice a year, and foot washing. His followers became the Amish. Today most Mennonites drive cars, use electricity and dress like their neighbors, while the Amish keep a plainer, more separated life. Some conservative Mennonite groups look very similar to the Amish.
Yes. They believe salvation comes through Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection. The difference is in how they speak about it. Most Amish talk about a living hope of salvation rather than assurance, because a confident claim can sound like pride in a culture built on humility. Some newer Amish groups do speak of assurance. At Sound of Heaven we believe Scripture lets a believer know they have eternal life, resting on what Jesus did rather than on their own obedience.
It depends on when you leave. A young person who leaves before baptism has made no vow to the church and is not shunned, though families still grieve. A baptized member who breaks their vow and will not return may be excommunicated and shunned, which limits things like sharing a meal table or accepting rides. The practice varies widely between communities and families. The stated goal is restoration, and anyone who returns and confesses is welcomed back.
Rumspringa means running around, and it names the years between childhood and baptism, usually the late teens. Reality television made it look like a wild year in the city, but researchers say practice varies greatly and in some smaller settlements a rebellious season is virtually unknown. Most young people live at home, work, and spend weekends with friends at Sunday singings. Some test boundaries. Most eventually ask for baptism, and 85 percent or more of Amish children join the church.