Authors KRAYBILL, HOLT, WEAVER-ZERCHER
Publisher JOSSEY-BASS
ISBN 978-0-7879-9761-8
Co authored by three men, each of whom has written several books on Amish life, this is not an examination of the shooting of ten young eighth grade Amish girls (five of whom died) in Lancaster Pennsylvania in 2006. Instead we are introduced to the manifestation of the kingdom of God that took place as the Amish community reacted to the awful events that shattered their peaceful community in those fateful days. I put it this way to show that although there was forgiveness (which provoked reactions that shifted from amazement and wonder through to criticism) this forgiveness rose from the fact that the Amish community ‘live’ somewhere else in comparison to mainstream Christianity and certainly from the world.
Those who know something of where the Mennonite and Amish communities come from will know that they are fundamentally established on the basis of practicing the things that Jesus taught, especially in the Sermon on the Mount. Humility, yeildedness, forgiveness and grace towards each other are their common attitudes taught and received since infanthood. They daily and almost hourly pray the Lord’s Prayer that includes the petition concerning forgiveness. Their standard fare from childhood is the example of Jesus, and that of their original founders such as Menno Simons and the many who were martyred as they displayed the politics of Jesus’ Kingdom rather than the path of vengeance and unrelenting pursuit of justice. From the cradle the Amish (and to a lesser extent other Mennonite groups) read and hear “The Martyrs Mirror” a thousand page book detailing the passive response and suffering, multitudes of their forebears manifested. These authors do a good job of opening up the way in which the behavior of these old order Amish people is grounded in deep-rooted patterns of grace and mercy.
To many these people are a weird cult still trotting around in horse drawn buggies and shunning electricity (and those who sin repeatedly having been baptized into their community). This book will provide a tutorial in Amish culture and exactly where they derive their understanding of what life, death and forgiveness really is. The intention of these three authors is, not to provide a doctrine or theology of forgiveness although they do show the differences between forgiveness, pardon and reconciliation. Their book reveals the fundamental challenge that living in the truly Christ-like way as a community of people forgiven by God and walking in the grace of His kindnesses will be to the common self-loving individualistic values that under girds much of society in the Westernized world. There is plenty of food for thought in this book and it does not avoid consideration of the difficult interface between living in God’s grace and the kingdoms of this world where government is to wield the sword of judgment.
