The charismatic televangelist industry and the upper echelons of the Amish Church are similar in their public relations apparatuses and financial hustling of others. Taking a look at these social institutions’ practices will give deep insight into Americans’ fallible infatuation with radical Christianity.
The Amish scholars who have so prominently featured throughout Wisconsin v. Yoder and related propaganda efforts by the Christian right are not insidious because they are activists, but because they cloak themselves in the familiar cloak of an impartial witness.
It is as if the documentary were looking at the Amish as a set of dolls, fitted with a dollhouse and toy carriages. This toy set exists for outer society to gaze at and admire, as they only feel nostalgia from children’s books and Biblical tales.
A practicing Amish woman suggested that it’s better for Amish children to be raped and molested than for them to know that they have the right under US law to be protected from such abuse.
“Pennsylvania Dutch” is a label that arose out of ignorance centuries ago and persists today to define us Amish, thanks to colonialist academics.