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Do Amish and Mennonite girls get to pick their husbands?

 I grew up in a plain hybrid Amish/Mennonite community in Michigan that was part of a larger church in Pennsylvania called Charity Christian Fellowship. People did not date in these plain religious communities. Instead, they did something called courtship or courting.   My first personal interaction with this process was when my favorite big brother decided to marry when I was seven years old. The first thing he did was go to our Father and ask what he thought about the young lady from the church he’d been praying about getting to know better.  Our father gave his blessing and went to go visit the young lady’s father to inquire if he was open to marrying his daughter to my brother. Her father gave his blessing and said he’d ask her if she was open to entering a courtship with my brother with the goal of marriage within 6 months.  She said YES when her father asked and their courtship officially began.  My brother and now dear sister-in-law were made fo...
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Do Amish women and children have rights?

The term "Amish" is frequently used as a cute branding tool for rural areas and groceries ranging from chicken to baked goods. I grew up in one of these “plain” religious communities. Women and children were treated horrifically. As such, it is hard to see depictions in the media or newspapers that romanticize the “Amish” culture and ways. Below is a letter recently written to the editor of the local paper in response to featuring a section romanticizing the Amish for clickbait.  


To Whom It May Concern, 

I love reading the news and greatly appreciate the service you provide our local community. I was surprised, however, one day to see a Lifestyle Section titled “Amish Kitchen” as a regularly featured column on your social media pages. I found this greatly troubling. I grew up in a hybrid Amish/Mennonite Community in Copemish called Charity Christian Fellowship and knew many people who I frequently interacted with from Amish, Mennonite, and other communities. 

These were not places that advocated human rights, advocates of human rights would not choose to implicitly support what I saw, learned, and experienced growing up connected to these communities. The nostalgia in mainstream American culture borders on delusion in the context of these extremist religious communities. Is there truly a cognitively present person alive that believes no crimes happen in communities that operate outside of the scope of the law? What happens to an Amish or similarly conservative man who rapes children? Animals? Do women have any rights in these communities? What options exist to a woman only taught math and English to a 6th or 8th-grade level, never had a job or heard recorded music, passed from her father’s control to a husband he selected for her? Do authoritarian men taught they are the ultimate power since birth in an isolated sect just magically refrain from violence?

 It is sickening. They beat children. It is easily verifiable that many Amish literally interpret and practice the biblical verse Proverbs 23: 13 - 15 , “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol.”. Where else in American society is it considered “quaint” to beat your children to completely break their spirit as to present them as a vessel to be used for God, or rape, or the family farm. 

I grew up in this reality in Manistee county. I am aware that these practices are more prevalent in some communities than others; however, most of them occur to some degree in all of them. The idealization of this group in your articles bothers me. I don't expect you to demonize the community, but I have never met the Amish people with the Lifestyle you portray.

Sincerely, 

A Concerned Reader 

What do you think? Why do so many people glorify a culture at odds with equality and justice? 

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