When I think about my childhood and what I appreciated most about the culture, I automatically think of the closeness I got to experience with my family and the hearty Amish meals I got to enjoy on a daily basis.
The Amish church started as a breakaway from the Annabaptists (adult baptizers) in Switzerland in 1693, led by Jakob Ammann.
They are very distinctive due to their simplicity of dress and lifestyle and their shunning of modern technology – preferring to drive in horse-drawn buggies than cars.
I also appreciated the culture’s stress on the importance of forgiveness.
I had a good relationship with my parents as long as I “walked the line” and obeyed all of the rules and guidelines. I had an issue with the Amish rules and therefore wanted to leave the Amish.
I have noticed that many young people grow up in rough and unpleasant home situations.
As a result, they leave their homes and start a new life with hearts filled with bitterness toward their parents, and in some cases, also towards other Amish that they grew up with just because they feel that everyone wronged them in some way.
Emma Gingerich doesn’t have anything against the Amish romance novels that have become such a popular subset of Christian fiction.
Gingerich just hopes readers realize those novels romanticize the Amish lifestyle – something she knows about first-hand. “Some novels are all about feeling good, and that’s the way the Amish (ones) are too.
The practice has died out in most of the world (it was practiced by some non-Amish too) but in the Pennsylvania Amish communities it is still to be found.
In some cases in the past (though perhaps not now) the girl was tied into a sack and her potential husband would lie in bed with her.