During this time, children are given the opportunity to experiment with non-traditional Amish life. For instance, they may visit a neighboring town, wear everyday clothing, use modern technology such as cars and cell phones, and even drink or party with non-Amish individuals.
The Amish are a very tight-knit community, which puts strict limitations on the use of technology and where individuals can and cannot go. Life among the Amish is focused around worshiping God, maintaining the family and serving the community. Parents and the elders oftentimes overlook the behavior that children engage in during Rumspringa. They believe that everyone should experience the outside life before making decisions as to whether or not they want to live an Amish lifestyle.
Technically, this is part of the reason they are given a pass on experimenting with activities that are typically shunned in the Amish community. What kinds of behaviors can occur during Rumspringa? They include everything from drinking and using drugs to driving vehicles.
In the Amish community, of course, only horse drawn carriages are permissible. Some groups even go to bars and nightclubs in the area. Ethics, the study of what is right and what is wrong action, goes way beyond religion. The key to a liberal, secular education is not content, but process: learning to think independently and to find and evaluate evidence of what is true.
And this requires constantly re-examining ones beliefs and assumptions. Independent thinkers are pretty much immune to dogma and propaganda, right or left wing, red, green or pink.
Believe it or not, there are actually some Absolutes in this universe, and they NEVER change, no matter how much secularists want them to. Ignoring them invariably ultimately creates Bed-of-Procrustes monstrosities cf. I salute the Amish in their wisdom, their ways and their courage! It is their constitutional right to rear their offspring as they see fit, not to mention that the Amish ways are a whole lot more wholesome and healthy than those of secular society.
They take care of their own from birth to the end of life. They are self sufficent. I will go out on the limb and say that Erik knows more about the Amish than the Amish themselves, it is his connection to all the different communities that make a big difference. Most people respond to what is in front of their eyes, or community and there are definitely huge differences between areas even within the same community.
Lance — Talking about schools, right on there, the Amish have a responsibility of operating their School System so they are not a burden to Society. Paul — Dead on in your middle paragraph, of course the Pedophile issue is sickening and truly has happened under the Amish, however there has been on going awareness assistance in the communities. Darryl and Lance thanks for all the information. After my visit I start looking for information about the Amish and I thank you both because you answered a lot of my questions and now I do understand where you come from.
I have always had a love and respect of the Amish. How sad shunning is. Not even close. Not only would they NOT allow someone to join that is divorced they would put a member out of the church if they got a divorce. Hello Melissa, Since you are divorced single mom and I am a divorced single God fearing and following father of four, maybe we can sit, chat, and become friends through social media. What do you think? Do not the Amish and Mennonite peoples believe in the bible, the old and the new testament?
I believe that the 10 commandments cover behavior. I know that in the Pagan religion they have a time that is similar to Rumspringa although it is not practiced by Christians. God preserve the Amish. You folks are a bright city on a hill. Keep on fighting the good fight! Hi i am Jessica and i am doin a school project about the amish in texas. I am doing a work cited page and i was needing to know an editors name first and last for the what is rumspringa article article.
If you could get back to me on that as soon as possible that would be great. He presents a very balanced and reasonable assessment of Rumspringa in this post. Some of the posts preceding yours are made by people with knowledge of one specific group of Amish young people. Eric is presenting a view that looks at many Amish groups. The posts by Daryl and Lance are based on personal experience and as such are of course factual for one particular group but still do represent what would have been experienced in many groups.
As Eric points out in the beginning, there are many myths surrounding Rumspringa. I was talking to a guy a few years ago who lived near Kokomo, Indiana who was telling me about having friends tell him about Schwartzenruber I think youth gathering in the area from all over the midwest at least once a year to have a as much sex as they wanted, of whatever kind they thought about, with anyone they wanted to have sex with of either sex, and do anything else they wanted to do together.
It was to learn what to do and how to do it and to get experience before they got married later. He seemed very conflicted on thinking the youth were terrible hypocrites and crazy, and being jealous that they were encouraged to have sex with other youth they had never even met before and doing whatever else they felt like doing. Lance, I very nearly did that—however I figured people are going to find that sort of information online anyway, and I think I would rather have them find it here and see it refuted right off the bat.
And then also provide some sources of better information for those people, as I did in my response to Jon see below. I hope and pray the anecdote is nothing but an urban legend. I -thought- he said he knew at least one person involved in it.
Pretty shocking. But also that it happened every year. You can delete my posts if you want. I just needed to tell someone about it is all. Hi Jon, as with everything in life, one must apply logic.
In our modern world, sex sells, if thousands of youth were gathering yearly for a sex-fest, the national news media would be all over it and it would be national headlines. Millions of other youth would flock to the area in the hope of joining in. Kokomo would look like Fort Lauderdale on summer break. The Amish are more narrow minded about sex than your great grandparents were.
Sex is only for procreation, the fact that there is some pleasure in it, is a gift from God to ensure that people will do it, as we are not regulated by hormonal scents like animals are. Because multiple sexual partners does not give one experience, it just gives one multiple ex-performances to judge the current partner by. A sure recipe for dissatisfaction, like when you try to get your current partner to do something because some ex did it once.
But for virgins, they learn together what each other likes and what they both like, no ex-partners are messing with their heads during sex.
They are truly united as one. Thus, logically — on a news front, a religious front and on a psychological front, that guy who told you this story, played you, and if he is on this site, he is most likely wetting himself with laughter that you actually believed him.
Remember Jon, Google is your friend, before you go public with something someone told you, check to see if it is true or not. But this guy seemed sincere, that is, that he thought it was true. I would like someone to speculate about this, and then have it deleted. I am all curiosity, I am not trying to make anyone sound bad. Would it make any more sense that another similar-sounding group could have been mistaken, like Schwarzenau Brethren rather than Swartzenruber Amish?
It says nothing much about their beliefs or practices. See, I am trying to find an explanation for what the guy sincerely seemed to believe. After this and you speculating then I will drop the whole subject. And you can delete all my posts that would be better deleted than posted here. Jon, no doubt you are an atheist with little if any insight into conservative and ultra conservative Christian religious groups.
If you had just a small insight, you would have laughed when being told this story, realizing then that you were being made a fool of, but instead you have now made public that you were the brunt of a joke.
Accept this and move on, stop digging an even deeper and more embarrassing hole by acting like a village idiot who cannot accept that the Moon is not made of cheese, or some such other make believe tale like that of ultra conservative Christian youth engaging in sex orgies like some ancient pagan nation with the consent of their parents and elders no less.
Although on a positive note, I see you did use Google and found some other similar groups, well done. And that dear Jon is the secret of not being taken for a fool, by considering the odds. The less likely something is true based on the odds of probability being against it, the more likely it is false.
Perhaps a self study correspondence module on the Theory of Probability from your local College would be of benefit to you? These parties also attract a lot of outsiders, who claim the Amish parties are the wildest. Amish youth come from all over the country to these parties and the word gets out. Local sheriffs are no longer turning a blind eye due to the enormous risk of injury, death and property damage these highly intoxicated youth present to the community around them.
In my first post, I mentioned that I thought the original post was nonsense, and as posted, I still think that. One has to understand the Swartzentrubers to understand why I write that. Other, higher Amish youth in Rumspringa with cell phones and computers, not so hard to see.
Go meet some Swartzentrubers and find out just how they think, act and behave, and you will see that this kind of organized event is not within their abilities. I think some people are under the impression that ruimspringa means no restrictions, that the youth can behave as if they were free from any religious constraints.
And I guess based on the unrestrained sexual actions of youth who leave ultra religious communities, it is not a far stretch to imagine how a whole bunch of them would behave without any restrictions. The reason that ex-religious youth from ultra conservative religious communities appear less inhibited about having sex, is that they have a different concept about sex compared to the secular world.
Secular people are under the impression that sex equals love and are thus more likely to have less casual hook ups with random people with whom they have no feelings of love or the possibility of love resulting.
Ultra religious youth have been brought up to believe that sex is merely there for procreation and that love is defined by charity, by giving and caring for another, and not sex. Thus for these ex-religious youth, sex for the most part once religious restrictions are removed, is just an act of pleasure and not of love. Their lust for this pleasure earns them the title of being wild or lose. Think of the rumors attributed to Catholic school girls.
This is what the world expects to happen based on the behavior of ex-religious youth. People need to bear in mind, that youth during their ruimspringa years are essentially still religious in their actions and outlook to life, they have not abandoned religion. The youth who abandon religion also abandon their family, they leave the community and therefore do not participate in ruimspringa. The ruimspringa youth gather for sing-a-longs, volleyball, komzits, etc.
The non-ruimspringa ex-youth, gather at nightclubs, bars and who knows where else. The few instances of ruimspringa youth going a bit too far with their freedoms, was generally kept in-house and did not involve non-Amish youth. This they thought made their actions ok and sadly too many parents thought so as well. Perhaps these actions are a sign of things to come, as Amish become more urbanized, the way ruimspringa is practiced is bound to change.
Where disco replaces sing-a-longs, permitted so long as only Amish youth attend and the words used in the disco songs are of a religious nature in Platedeitch.
I like to look at how the Chassidim live, they represent a possible example of what to expect in a future urban Amish lifestyle. On that point, at first I felt Jon was just trying to stir the pot, now I think he heard what seemed to him a believable story and is now more likely digging in where it may have been better to walk away or do a little research then return.
But Jon since you have come back a few times and say you are curious, I will take that at face value, and besides the reading recommendations I gave originally I will try to address it a little more. Also I think the formula you suggest Dirk comes into play here, a lot of casual observers think of Rumspringa as a no-holds barred free-for-all which must naturally only lead to the wildest of conclusions.
The juicier the story the easier it passes along. It also helps when the other group is mysterious to the teller. The Amish are especially attractive for this due to their perception as devoutly religious.
Has every group of Amish youth behaved perfectly since the dawn of time? Certainly not, however talking about it being a regularly occurring event where Amish learn about the birds and the bees firsthand in an anything-goes manner, based on hearsay of hearsay is where this goes off the rails.
If we are all wrong and your acquaintance has in fact stumbled upon an annual anything-goes Amish sex orgy then I suppose the TV networks will be happy to learn of this as fodder for their next series. All in all I am actually glad this issue was raised as hopefully others will find and read this information and perhaps be a bit more skeptical about what they hear. Personally I think atheism is our natural human state, if it were not for the Bible, what would any of us know about God, Jesus or religion?
It is not as if we are born with such knowledge about God and religion, if that were so, we would all have the same religion. While the easiest rumspringa comparison is spring break, there isn't actually a specific time of year when Amish teens let down their bonnets. Most Amish teens begin their rumpsringa at 16 years old , giving them enough life experience to function somewhat normally in society, while also providing enough time for them to lead a full life as a member of the community.
Believe it or not, even the Amish have moved into the 21st century. Thanks to Facebook and smartphones, teens are able to put together crazy rumspringa parties with a few keystrokes. They aren't just using social media to put together gnarly Amish hangs; the kids are also posting pictures of themselves partying and wearing "English," or worldly, clothes.
If you're Amish and you really want to rebel, you don't go off on a yearlong exploration of your faith - you just go wild while you're still on the farm. Some Amish teens sneak away after everyone goes to bed and have fun at "English" parties or even stash beer, cigarettes, or a radio in the family barn. In May , five Amish teenagers thought to be on rumspringa were pulled over when Indiana state troopers caught them driving mph in their minivan and tossing cans of beer out the window.
When the state troopers searched the vehicle, they found a handle of whiskey and multiple cases of beer. Some members of the Amish community aren't sure about what to do when they leave their farms, but not these music-loving guys.
They formed the band while on rumspringa in after deciding not to return to the Amish community. An NPR dissection of the Amish rite of passage continually notes how much beer the kids drink. Picture in your mind's eye: "A used-car-lot inventory of cars, trucks, buggies, bicycles, and motorcycles is already parked here.
During this time, many Amish youth adhere to traditional Amish behavior. Contrary in the media. Rumspringa-age youth typically live at home until after joining the church and then getting married and moving into their own homes.
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