Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [20]
He gazed past me into the distance, as though trying to keep his mind on the lofty ideal to which he aspired while minimizing a kind of embarrassment.
He, after all, had never officially resigned his Pennsylvania church affiliation, a requirement for joining the present enclave. He did not even subscribe to all the tenets of the local theology, but he made the effort to attend services and to participate where he could in other aspects of community life. Without being too obtrusive, he even occasionally discussed points of doctrine with church leaders in hopes to win them to his positions. Though not a member here, he had cannily placed himself near it so as to partake of its benefits, and even to subvert its doctrines.
Miller bowed his head after these disclosures as if in partial atonement for what he had done. But I couldn’t very well hold against him a crime so similar to the one I was committing myself.
If Mr. Miller was doing it, if Nate Jones was doing it, and if I was doing it, this raised a whole new question: was anybody else? After spending a little more time in the area and meeting a few more of the neighbors, my head began to spin. The real question was, who wasn’t? What I had taken to be a homogenous Amish collective was actually an aggregation of Amish, Mennonites, and mainstream Americans from all corners of the country, bearing a variety of religious viewpoints, joined by one converging aim: to reclaim their lives from machines. At last it came home to me why the man on the Greyhound bus had been so evasive about the group’s identity. It wasn’t really Amish at all. It was still partly up for grabs. It meant different things to different people. Certain core members maintained doctrinaire Amish positions, but even they gave sermons in both German and English—a rare concession among Amish communities. The real identity of the community was still in formation. Although they didn’t correct people who called them Amish, they themselves preferred another name that, however, was also somewhat misleading; and I cannot repeat it without giving them away.
Amish people sometimes referred to motley associations like this as “chowchow” groups, after a pickle relish made from a variety of odd vegetable bits. Let me suggest a more flattering and descriptive substitute. The name “Minimites” comes to mind, in honor of both the history of Mennonite nonconformity and their current predilection to gain a maximum of ends with a minimum of technological means. Like Amish people, the Minimites were selective about technology. But unlike many Amish people, they understood well the point of being selective and were less prone to clutch at old-fashioned practices for form’s sake. To them, minimation was a principle of fuller living that anyone could put into practice, not a license to withdraw into a closed circle of the chosen or the inbred. Yet in this college of amateur economists, you couldn’t tell who was who by looking at them. They spoke both English and Pennsylvania Dutch in the presence of outsiders. And the former appliance salesmen’s beards were no shorter than those of tenth-generation descendants of Alsatian Anabaptists.
The Minimites’ general store sat in the center of the community. Mary and I had found it a treasure-house of useful homesteading merchandise, attended by a friendly farmer with seven daughters. And with its location and homey front porch, shaded by a couple of overhanging trees, it made a natural site for informal meetings.
One afternoon I came upon a group of men huddled near the store who to all appearances were Amish. Each wore a straw hat and had a beard.
I paused to overhear what the men were discussing: beards. It seemed as though a report had come to them about an Amish man from Lancaster with a red beard so long it separated into two branches that tapered only at his knees. The news aroused a murmur of disbelief. Finally someone harrumphed, “Beards may rightly be trimmed.”
“But God put them there for a reason!” cried