Discovering the Amish: Part 1

The Origins: How a 17th-Century Swiss Reformation Gave Birth to the Amish Church

Welcome back, friends.

Last week, we began this journey together with a simple invitation: to understand a people whose faith has shaped their every waking moment for nearly three centuries. Today, we’re stepping back in time—way back—to the rolling hills of Switzerland in the late 1600s. Because to understand the Amish, we have to understand where they came from.

And like all good stories, this one begins with a disagreement.

The Anabaptist Roots

To tell the story of the Amish, we first need to understand the Anabaptist movement from which they sprang. The early 1500s were a time of tremendous upheaval in Europe. The Protestant Reformation, sparked by Martin Luther in 1517, had shattered the thousand-year grip of the Catholic Church on Western Christianity. All across the continent, people were asking bold, dangerous questions about faith, Scripture, and the nature of the church.

In Switzerland, a group of radical reformers led by figures like Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz took the questions further than Luther or Zwingli were willing to go. They came to a startling conviction based on their reading of Scripture: baptism should not be administered to infants, who couldn’t consciously choose faith. Instead, baptism was for believing adults who could make a free, conscious decision to follow Jesus.

This may sound like a minor theological quibble to modern ears, but in the 16th century, it was explosive. Infant baptism was the glue that held church and state together. To reject it was to reject the very fabric of society. The authorities called them Wiedertäufer—”rebaptizers”—a crime punishable by death by drowning (a grimly ironic punishment they called “the third baptism”).

These early Anabaptists were hunted, imprisoned, and executed by the thousands. They were burned at the stake, beheaded, and drowned in rivers across Europe. Yet they refused to renounce their faith. They believed in a church that was voluntary, composed of committed believers who had chosen to follow Christ—not a state church where everyone belonged by birth.

Jakob Ammann and the Great Division

Fast forward to 1693. The Anabaptist movement had survived decades of persecution, but it had also evolved. Many Anabaptists, particularly those in the Netherlands and northern Germany, had become more settled, more comfortable with certain accommodations to the world around them. They were known as Mennonites, after the Dutch leader Menno Simons.

But in the mountainous regions of Switzerland and Alsace, a fiery leader named Jakob Ammann was troubled by what he saw. To Ammann and his followers, the Mennonites had grown lax. They were losing their distinctiveness, their separation from the world. They were, in his view, compromising with a culture that wanted to swallow them whole.

Ammann was a tailor by trade, but his true craft was conviction. He began calling for reform on several key points:

The Ban (Meidung): Ammann believed the practice of church discipline, or “shunning,” should be stricter. If a member was excommunicated for sin, the faithful should avoid eating with them, doing business with them, or even accepting a drink from them. This was the biblical practice of “not keeping company” with an unrepentant brother, and Ammann felt it had been abandoned.

Feet Washing: Ammann insisted that foot washing, based on Jesus’s example in John 13, should be practiced as an ordinance of the church—a literal, physical act of humility and service.

Salvation: There were also subtle differences in how they understood grace and salvation, with Ammann emphasizing a more personal, experiential faith.

The debates grew heated. Ammann and his followers exchanged letters and visits with Mennonite leaders, but no agreement could be reached. The division became formal, and Ammann’s followers became known as “Amish” (from Amisch, German for “of Ammann”).

It’s a profound thought, isn’t it? A whole way of life, a people who would eventually cross an ocean and build communities across North America, all traceable to one man’s conviction about faithfulness and separation from the world.

The Journey to America

The Amish, like their Mennonite cousins, continued to face persecution in Europe. They were tolerated in some regions, hounded in others. But across the Atlantic, a remarkable thing was happening. William Penn, an English Quaker, had established a colony in Pennsylvania based on principles of religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence with Native peoples. Penn actively recruited persecuted religious groups from Europe, promising them land and freedom to worship.

The first Amish immigrants arrived in Pennsylvania around 1737, settling in Berks County. They were drawn by the promise of rich farmland and the freedom to live according to their conscience. Over the next century, more waves of Amish immigrants followed, spreading into Lancaster County and beyond.

Here, in the dense forests and fertile valleys of a new world, they could finally practice their faith without fear. They cleared the land, built their farms, and established communities bound by the same convictions Jakob Ammann had preached decades earlier—separation from the world, simple living, and unwavering faithfulness to the Ordnung, the unwritten rules that governed their common life.

Why This History Matters

You might be wondering: Why does any of this matter for understanding the Amish today?

Because the convictions that drove Jakob Ammann—separation from the world, the importance of church discipline, the belief that faith must be a conscious adult choice—are still the bedrock of Amish life. When you see an Amish family in a horse-drawn buggy, choosing not to own a car, you’re witnessing a living connection to a 17th-century tailor who believed that some things were worth dividing over. When you learn that Amish communities practice shunning (a topic we’ll explore in depth another week), you’re seeing the echo of those fierce debates about faithfulness and accountability.

The Amish are not frozen in time, as some imagine. They have changed and adapted over the centuries. But their core identity remains rooted in the radical convictions of the Anabaptist martyrs and the fiery reforms of Jakob Ammann. They are, in a very real sense, living history.

A Personal Reflection

As I write this, I’m struck by something. The Amish chose separation—not out of fear or hatred of the world, but out of love for God and a desperate desire to remain faithful. They looked at a society they believed was pulling them away from true discipleship, and they made the difficult, costly choice to step apart.

In our own noisy, distracted age, I find something deeply compelling in that. I’m not suggesting we all sell our cars and join a horse-and-buggy community. But perhaps there’s something to learn from their intentionality. Perhaps the question they force us to ask ourselves is worth considering: What am I holding onto that might actually be holding me back?

Next week: The Ordnung—The Unwritten Rules That Guide Amish Life

We’ll explore the fascinating system of guidelines that shapes everything from dress to technology to relationships. What’s in it? Who decides? And how do communities handle disagreements?

Have questions about Amish origins or early history? Drop them in the comments! I love hearing from you.

With warmth and wonder,

Amy