When you pick up a copy of The Amish Way: Patient Faith in a Perilous World, you might think you’re getting a quaint travelogue. You're not. This isn’t some shallow collection of recipes or a guide to buying hand-quilted blankets in Lancaster County. It is, honestly, one of the most sobering looks at human forgiveness and community resilience ever put to paper. Written by Donald Kraybill, Steven Nolt, and David Weaver-Zercher, this book basically serves as the definitive follow-up to their previous work, Amish Grace.
It’s deep.
While Amish Grace focused specifically on the nickel mines school shooting—a tragedy that shocked the world not just for its violence, but for the immediate forgiveness the Amish offered the killer—The Amish Way zooms out. It asks the bigger question: How do you actually build a culture that makes that kind of forgiveness possible? You don’t just wake up one day and decide to forgive a monster. You have to be trained for it by a thousand small, daily habits.
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Most people see the Amish as a "frozen-in-time" curiosity. We see the buggies and the lack of zippers and we think "historical reenactment." But Kraybill and his colleagues argue that the Amish are actually quite modern in their own way—they are making conscious, difficult choices about which technologies and values to let into their lives. They aren’t stuck in the past; they are gatekeeping the present.
Why The Amish Way Matters More Than You Think
In a world where we are constantly tethered to our phones and outraged by the latest 24-hour news cycle, the "patient faith" described in The Amish Way feels almost alien. The authors break down the concept of Gelassenheit. It's a German word that doesn’t have a perfect English equivalent, but it basically means "yieldedness" or "surrender."
It is the opposite of the American Dream.
Instead of asserting the self, the Amish practice effacing the self. While we spend our lives building "personal brands" and seeking "self-actualization," the Amish are looking for ways to blend into the community. The book explains that this isn't just about being humble; it’s a survival strategy for a community that has been persecuted for centuries.
The authors are heavyweights in this field. Donald Kraybill, often called the "Dean of Amish Studies," has spent decades earning the trust of these closed communities. Because of that, the book doesn’t feel like an outsider peering through a window. It feels like an invited guest explaining the logic behind the "Plain" life. They tackle the misconceptions head-on. For instance, people often think the Amish are legalistic. But the authors argue that their rules (the Ordnung) are actually about protecting relationships. If everyone has a car, the community scatters. If everyone has a horse and buggy, you stay within a five-mile radius of your neighbors. You are forced to rely on each other.
The Myth of the Simple Life
Let's be real for a second: the Amish life is incredibly complicated.
The Amish Way does a great job of showing the mental gymnastics required to navigate the modern world. You have an Amish businessman who can't own a car but can hire a "Yoder Toter" (a non-Amish driver) to take him to a job site. You have a family that won't have a telephone in the house because it interrupts family life, but they’ll have a "phone shanty" at the end of the lane for business calls.
It seems hypocritical to us. To them, it's a deliberate compromise.
The book details how they negotiate these boundaries. They aren't against technology because they think it's "sinful" in a vacuum. They are against it because of what it does to the structure of the home. A telephone in the kitchen invites the outside world into the sanctuary of the family. A telephone in a shack 50 yards away keeps the outside world in its place. It's a nuanced distinction that most casual observers miss entirely.
Understanding the Amish Way Through Suffering
One of the most moving sections of the book deals with how the Amish handle grief. In our culture, we tend to professionalize grief. We go to therapy, we take leave from work, and eventually, people expect us to "get over it."
The Amish do it differently.
When a tragedy happens, the community moves in. They don't just send flowers. They show up and do the chores. They sit in silence. The Amish Way highlights that their faith isn’t necessarily about "feeling" happy or "feeling" close to God. It’s about the duty of presence. They believe that God is found in the community, not just in an individual's private prayer closet.
This brings us back to the Nickel Mines shooting. The book explains that the forgiveness the Amish showed wasn't an emotional feeling. Many of them were still heartbroken and angry. But they chose forgiveness as a religious obligation. They believe that if they do not forgive, God will not forgive them. It’s a terrifyingly literal interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer.
Faith Without the Frills
If you’re looking for a book on theology that’s all about complex debates over predestination or end-times prophecy, this isn't it. The Amish are notoriously uninterested in high theology. They don't have Sunday Schools. They don't have professional preachers with seminary degrees.
As Kraybill and his co-authors point out, the Amish way of faith is "lived" rather than "argued."
- They worship in homes, not cathedrals. This keeps the focus on the neighbors, not the architecture.
- They use a high-German Bible that many of them struggle to fully translate, emphasizing that the tradition of the Word is as important as the literal meaning.
- Their hymns (from the Ausbund) date back to the 16th-century martyrs. They sing them slowly—so slowly that a single song can take twenty minutes.
This slowness is a protest against the "fast" world. It’s a way of saying that the community’s time belongs to God, not to the clock. Honestly, it's a bit exhausting to even read about, but you can't help but respect the discipline.
The Struggle of the Modern Amish Individual
It's not all sunshine and barn-raisings. The Amish Way doesn't shy away from the friction points. What happens when someone doesn't want to follow the Ordnung?
The book covers the "shunning" (the Meidung) with a lot of sensitivity. To an outsider, shunning looks like a cruel, cult-like practice. The authors explain that from the Amish perspective, it's a "tough love" measure meant to bring a straying member back to the fold and protect the purity of the church.
However, they also acknowledge the deep pain this causes. Families are split. Parents can't eat at the same table as their children. It’s a high price to pay for community cohesion. The book subtly explores this tension: how much individual freedom are you willing to trade for a sense of belonging?
In the 21st century, this trade-off is becoming harder. With the rise of the internet and the need for Amish youth to interact with "English" (non-Amish) people for work, the walls are thinning. The authors note that while the Amish population is actually exploding due to high birth rates, the pressure from the outside world is at an all-time high.
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Rumspringa: Not Like the Movies
You've probably seen the "reality" TV shows about Rumspringa. They make it look like a wild, drug-fueled party where Amish kids go crazy before deciding to join the church.
The Amish Way corrects this narrative.
For most Amish youth, Rumspringa is pretty mundane. It’s just a period where they aren't under the strict authority of the church because they haven't been baptized yet. Sure, some might buy a car or wear "English" clothes, but the vast majority stay close to home. The book points out that about 85-90% of Amish youth choose to be baptized and stay in the community. That’s a retention rate that any modern corporation or church would kill for.
Why do they stay?
It's not because they're brainwashed. It's because they realize that the outside world is lonely. The "English" world offers freedom, but the Amish world offers belonging. Most of them choose belonging.
Putting the Lessons into Practice
You don't have to sell your car and buy a buggy to learn something from The Amish Way. The book offers some pretty radical insights for anyone feeling burnt out by modern life.
The first takeaway is the power of the "No." The Amish are world champions at saying no to things that might hurt their community. We often say "yes" to every new app, every new social commitment, and every new piece of tech without asking what it will cost us in terms of time and attention.
Secondly, there's the concept of "smallness." The Amish purposely keep their church districts small. When a group gets too big to fit in a neighbor’s house for worship, they split the district. They believe that if you don't know everyone's name, you can't truly be a community.
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Finally, there’s the practice of forgiveness. The book suggests that forgiveness is a muscle. You build it by forgiving the person who cut you off in traffic or the neighbor who let their dog bark all night. If you don't practice on the small stuff, you'll never be able to handle the big stuff.
Actionable Insights from the Amish Perspective
If you want to incorporate a bit of this philosophy into your own life without moving to a farm in Ohio, here are a few ways to start:
- Audit your "Ordnung": What are the unwritten rules of your household? Do you allow phones at the dinner table? Why or why not? Make your boundaries intentional rather than accidental.
- Practice Slowing: Find one activity this week—whether it’s drinking your coffee or walking to the mailbox—and do it at half-speed. Notice the urge to rush and just sit with it.
- The Five-Mile Radius: Try to support businesses and people within five miles of your house for one week. It’s a small way to realize how much we rely on a globalized system and how little we know our actual neighbors.
- Pre-decide Forgiveness: Decide now that you will be a person who forgives. When a conflict arises, remember that the relationship is usually more important than being "right."
The Amish Way is a challenging read because it holds up a mirror to our own chaotic lives. It doesn't suggest that the Amish are perfect—they have their own share of scandals and internal strife—but it does show that a different way of living is possible. It’s a way that prioritizes the "we" over the "me," and in 2026, that feels like a revolutionary act.
Whether you're a student of sociology, a person of faith, or just someone tired of the digital grind, there is a lot of wisdom to be mined from these pages. The authors have done a massive service by documenting a culture that is so often caricatured and rarely understood.
To truly understand the Amish, you have to look past the beards and the bonnets. You have to look at their hearts. This book gives you the tools to do exactly that. It's not just about a group of people in Pennsylvania; it's about the universal human need for peace, purpose, and a place to call home.
If you are looking to purchase the book, ensure you are getting the updated editions that include the expanded research on the post-Nickel Mines era, as the authors added significant context in later printings regarding the long-term effects of their communal forgiveness. Reading it alongside Amish Grace provides the most complete picture of this unique subculture.