Legalism, the Amish and Homeschooling 

The Amish as a Case Study in Reformation History and Plain Living

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. Putting different emphases on different parts of the sentence. You can write me, mike, at nocompromiseradio .com. Gotten a couple emails lately. Not too many.

It makes me think,.

Hey, have we run our course? 15 years of daily radio. You never know. It's kind of like those athletes, you know, they don't know when to retire.

So we'll see.

What is up for today? Today, I'm going to talk about the Amish. I live in Lancaster, Massachusetts. Lancaster. And I always have to tell people, if I'm giving them my address, it's Lancaster, Lancaster, Massachusetts, not Pennsylvania.

So maybe you've been to Amish country in Pennsylvania. Maybe you have been to the Amana colonies in Iowa. Maybe you've been to some Mennonite thing. D. Edmund Hebert was a professor. Written some commentaries that I really liked.

He's with the Lord now. He was at Fresno something Mennonite seminary. I think he was the only guy there who believed in inerrancy and stuff like that. But let me just tell you a little bit about the Amish.

And I'm reading from a paper here. The Amish comprise a sect of the original Mennonite movement, a part of the Reformation. That's the first sentence of this paper. I'm laughing because it should say during the time of the Reformation.

The movement started in 1525 in Switzerland and later took the name of a one-time Roman Catholic priest, Menno Simons, who joined the group in 1636. The Amish trace their spiritual heritage to Jacob Amani, a Mennonite bishop of Bern, Switzerland, who separated from the parent church in 1693 after a controversy over the Maidung, his severe form of shunning excommunicated people.

Interesting. He insisted on strict interpretation of the Mennonite Anabaptist principles. Settlements were made in Switzerland, Holland, and Bavaria, but the Amish were often persecuted. And as early as 1728, they began to migrate to the New World.

They came seeking freedom to worship as they pleased and to preserve their own way of life. Primarily an aggregarian community, they were led by their search for fertile farmland once they got to America.

They settled in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and several other Midwestern states and Canadian provinces. So that's a little background. And by the way, I'm reading a U .S. History Report, Room 221, 3rd Hour, by Mike Ebendroth, December 28th, 1976, 16 years old.

I have not read this since 1976. I found it and thought it would make funny radio. The first sentence, the Mennonites are part of the Reformation. You could send that to Scott Clarke and he can put it in his pipe, his heidel pipe.

I've been to Scott's house, the heidel house. I've met Scott's wife, the heidel frau. I've met his dog, the heidel dog. I've ridden in his jeep, the heidel jeep. I've been on the heidel cast. I've been on the heidel blog.

I got some heidel swag. New cup he just sent me, coffee cup.

What else is there?

Oh.

The Amish are a conservative, Protestant denomination that originated in Europe as a sect of the Mennonite church. They're Protestant, eh?

Wow.

I'd like to see that tree. You know, I have to have the trees where so-and-so is related and stems from. The Amish, or more properly, the Amish Mennonites are now located only in the U .S. and Canada.

They're probably the most famous, probably the most famous are the Pennsylvania Dutch groups. The primary tenet of the Amish creed is the supremacy of the Bible. Its major doctrines include adult baptism, separation from the world, extreme simplicity of life, following the New Testament, the Lord's Supper, and expressions of fellowship.

Okay?

Now, this is all leading somewhere, so hang in there with me. We're going somewhere with all this.

How long have you been on that medication?

Well, the Amish probably aren't on very much medication, but I don't know. The Amish church is highly decentralized. Each congregation has 250 members. It does. And they choose their own leaders, typically a bishop, preacher, and a deacon.

Didn't know about that. I don't know if I believe this or not. I do remember going to University of Nebraska at Omaha's library, and I think the only thing I had was a World Book encyclopedia. Somebody sold this door-to-door.

My mom had that. That's all I had was World Book. I do see the bibliography here. Books, The Amish People by Carolyn Meyer. Magazines, National Geographic, The Amish Folk, 1965. Encyclopedia Britannica, Collier's Encyclopedia, Compton's Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia International, Merit Student Encyclopedia.

I guess there's money to be made in encyclopedias. And now we just ask Siri.

All right.

Is there anything else that's interesting here before I get into the point of this whole show? The Amish meet for worship in the home of different family every two weeks. The service is conducted in high German and it lasts about four hours.

At the service, the oldest known Protestant hymnal is used, the Ausband. I don't even know if I... I can't even tell what I wrote there. It was first issued in 1561 and the hymnal contains words but no music.

The slow involved solemn chants are sung from memory. I guess the tunes are from memory. If you've got a hymn book,.

Why would you need to do it from memory?

What was I doing at 16? I have no idea.

I was...

What was I doing at 16? I got a car at 16, a 1967 Nova II, two-door Chevy. First girlfriend maybe at 16. Sherry Collins was her name. I don't know where she is. I was just trying to figure out life at 16.

I didn't know about the Amish. The Amish teach separation of the world. Members are forbidden to go to war, swear oaths, or hold any public offices. They also oppose secular education as a threat to their way of life.

Some Amish communities still maintain their own schools, although there are not many of these around. The Amish have intentionally withdrawn themselves from the main flow of modern American life except to vote for Donald Trump.

That wasn't in there. And their devout communities, they keep sticking to the customs of their 17th century forefathers. All right, this part is interesting here. The traditional dress of the bearded Amish farmers consists of black wide-brimmed hats, collarless black coats that fasten with hooks instead of buttons, tight-fitting black trousers and skinny jeans, and black high-top shoes.

Converse All-Star or Chuck Purcells. They do not shave either. I think they're talking about the men here. The women wear high-necked solid-colored dresses, long black coats with capes extending to their waists.

They also wear full black bonnets over white prayer caps. And the women wear no ornamental jewelry and use no cosmetics. They're often called plain people and the Amish live very simple homes without mirrors, pictures, musical instruments, radios, TVs, telephones, or even electrical lights.

Forbidden to own automobiles, they travel by horse and buggy and work the soil with the horse-drawn implements. All right. One more paragraph to go. In many Pennsylvania countries, there are many traditions such as barn raisings, quilting parties.

I look like quilting parties. But that's here coming up on the show. Threshing bees.

Threshing?

Lees?

Threshing?

Can't read it. And country auctions, which have been popular tourist attractions. Their families are large, stable units in which divorce is not permitted and desertion and separation are unknown to them.

They provide for their old people and refuse all forms of governmental aid in the form of relief or old-age pensions. In the early 1970s, there was about 20 ,000 American Mennonites. The Old Order Amish Church has about 15 ,000 members and opposes to most of the church activity evangelism services and formal missionary work.

Don't know what I said there, but just repeated it.

Why Homeschooling Can Drift Toward Amish-Like Legalism

All right.

So, here's what I want to talk about in all truth. Took us 10 minutes to get there. Paper aside, there is an attraction, especially, I think, in the homeschool movement, the Christian homeschool movement.

There's an attraction to the Amish. Now, at our church, we have Mondays, the homeschool co-op. There are some families here that put their children in private Christian schools, which here in New England are very, very hard to find.

There's only two that I know of. Let's see, three schools, maybe two or three around here, Charismatic or King James Only. That's about your only choices. And then the rest, public school. This is not a show on public school, private school, homeschool.

I'd say most of the church people here with young families are homeschool families. When I first got to Bethlehem Bible Church in 1997, there weren't that many homeschoolers. There were a few, and they were very, very passionate, fine.

By the way, we've homeschooled, private schooled, and public schooled. So, we have equal opportunity. My main thing as a pastor is just everybody get along. There's probably going to be a day when it's impossible morally to put your children in public schools.

I don't know if that has happened yet. I mean, I think about my brother's wife, who I think now is back teaching again, Molly. And I think about my friend Wes's wife. He retired and his wife went back to teach Angela.

She's a Christian lady. And I would gladly let my grandchildren, or at the time, my children, if we could go back in time, to let them learn at that public school. So, there are exceptions, of course, and we just can't, in a blanket statement, say every public school teacher is awful.

Now, you might say with a blanket statement, every public school is awful, and I'll let you do that. That's fine by me. But not every public school teacher is awful. I think about our own deacon here, Spencer.

I would love to have our children or grandchildren learn under Spencer. Public schools, public education, education departments, you don't have to go very far to see these days crazy stuff that's being taught.

Now, I'm going to get back to the Amish here in a second, but I'm just building up to that. Our children, when they were in public schools, we were informed that we're going to have a certain class on sex education, and you can either have your child say no to that, or you can sign it and say, fine.

And at our family, I, along with my wife, we are the sex educators. We talk to our children about that in a God-centered way, in a biblical-centered way, in a love-gives way, in a design way, how God has created male body and female body, a design for pleasure in marriage, a design for godly offspring, all the things we wanted to talk about.

And those were sweet times. Kim and I would sit down with the children, the child, Kim, and myself, and I would begin to talk, and Kim would chime in, and whether it was Luke, the son, or my three daughters, I would initiate it, talk about what the scriptures say, and we'd have the talk, sweet times of fellowship.

I remember the public school that we have here, it's called, the elementary school is Mary Rawlinson, which was a Calvinistic pastor's wife, who was captured by the Indians and then redeemed here locally at Redemption Rock.

You ought to read that story, Mary Rawlinson, lost some children due to the Indian raids. But anyway, you'd think at that school name that it would probably be Christian, but it's just, she's just famous around here, that's all.

Well, pull the kids out, and this particular one, it was Maddie pulled out, and so she had to unceremoniously sit in the library all day, kind of snickered at by the other kids, I think kind of looked down on by the, you know, the teachers, you know, we know better kind of thing, and now you're pulling your kid out.

But anyway, only one other child, young adult, was pulled out of that class, and so Maddie got to know this other young man, and his name's Noah, and so Maddie and Noah have kept in touch some over the years, because they were kind of thrown in that together, both Christians, Christian parents, and I don't think she talks to Noah now much, because he's married, but Noah is the reason we re-root for the Kansas City Chiefs.

And I moved to New England in 1997. Shortly thereafter, they got Tom Brady, and of course, it was quite a run here, and fun to root for the Patriots, even though I know most of you hate the Patriots. Well, of course, the Patriots haven't been playing well, but the Chiefs have, and there's a young man named Noah Gray, and he is from Lemonstrom, Mass., and he went to Duke, and then got drafted by Kansas City in plays often, scores once in a while, backs up Travis Kelsey, or plays opposite of Kelsey, and so we root for Noah Gray and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Pretty amazing, there we go. All right, Mike Ebenroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry, back to the Amish. So I got here when it comes to homeschool families, and there wasn't a whole lot in those days discernment in the homeschool community, even here at the church.

Essentially, it was, okay, if the curriculum's homeschool, that's all we need to know. It wasn't, well, is this Protestant? Is this Catholic? Is this evangelical? Is this liberal? Is this Methodist? Is this Presbyterian?

Is this Arminian? Is this Calvinistic? Is this Pelagian? Is this Lutheran? It's just homeschool, and we'll buy it, and then if it had Christian somewhere in it, Bible somewhere in it, it was even better, and some of the stuff was good, but it was hard to kind of decipher everything.

Add to that, we have near us, an hour away, Christian Book Discounter, CBD. I know, well, that was the nickname. We're gonna go to CBD, but then, of course, Amazon came and pretty much destroyed that whole business, but four times a year, you could go up to Peabody Mass.

Think of a Lancaster PA, Lancaster Mass, Peabody Mass, and you could go to the book sale, and they would have their books, scratch and dent, 10 cents on the dollar type of thing, and so we would get up at four, drive up there, stand in line, and just, we would buy thousands of dollars of books.

You wanna know why our library's great here at the church, and why so many libraries at the homes of church members are great? It's because of that book sale. We don't go anymore because they don't really have that many books, but people would go up there, and they would either be interested in commentaries, or probably homeschool stuff.

Probably the best homeschool stuff back in the day for parenting was probably by Ted Tripp. I'm not a big Paul Tripp fan, but the Ted Tripp book is decent, and it was the best they had. So now, let's go full circle back to the Amish thing.

Law, Gospel, and Union with Christ Versus a Covenant of Works

Obviously, there's the world system that is awful, that is invasive, it is pervasive, and now with the internet, it's just chaos, and there's something to be said for the tug toward simplicity, the tug toward normalcy, the tug toward separation, using your hands, community, barn raises, guilting fairs, quilting fairs.

I understand that, but it seems to come through, and you know what, the last 10 years, I don't know what's going on with homeschool curriculum, so I could be completely wrong. My goal here is not to offend homeschoolers.

I don't wanna do that at all. I will defend you. I mean, my goal is not here to condemn homeschoolers. I will defend you happily, but the discernment levels back in the day weren't very high. Now, fast forward, a congregation that's been taught for 25 years, hopefully the congregation knows a lot more, it's completely different.

I don't hear as much talk about, well, you know, some kind of homesteading would be good. If you wanna homestead and still be involved in a local evangelical church, great. Some people here live out farther away and they've got chickens and they've got this and they've got that, okay, fine.

Believe me, I'm not against any of that. What I'm against is for you to go be Amish. That's what I'm against. If you would like to summarize the Amish theology, of course they have the Bible. Of course they have their traditions.

Of course, you know, we can talk about, can you use electricity? And how do they, you know, what about horse and buggy and who fixes what? And all these other little, you know, can you use a generator instead?

And can you have a website?

I mean, I haven't even gotten into Amish stuff since 1976, haven't really cared. It's interesting to go visit, that's for certain. But deep down, if you wanna boil the Amish way of life into something, it's very, very simple.

And that word is law, law. It is legalism on steroids. It is gnomism, volume 11. It does not understand three uses of the law is an understatement. Remember, law guides. You should get a little book called Law and Gospel, a primer on sale at Amazon.

There is nothing wrong with the law. It reflects God's nature. There's nothing bad about the law. It's righteous and good. The law guides and it's from the hand of Christ, your Redeemer, your advocate.

It's a code, every family's got a code and the code for Christians, the family code for Christians is the law. And we understand that now our desire is to keep the law. And if you separate things like, well, you know what?

We're not gonna teach eternal security. We're not gonna teach preservation of the saints. We're not gonna teach perseverance of the saints, the pea and tulip, Amish will deny that. You're gonna lose your salvation, they'll teach.

There is no motivation for holy living apart from your security in Christ Jesus. Because why waste all the time on holy living? If you don't know you're going to heaven, you have bigger theologically, proverbially fish to fry.

That's what you're going to be thinking about. Walter Marshall is right. Gospel mystery of sanctification. You need to know for sure you're going to heaven. You need to know for sure that you have the ability to obey with the spirit of God dwelling in you.

There's some things that you have to know. And that's why Ephesians one, two and three. I think there's one imperative in chapter two, verse 11, but typically we're talking about union with Christ. If I had to summarize Ephesians one to three, union in Christ, in Christ, in Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus, our Lord, in Him.

I love justification. Here the stress is union, union with Christ. And then you walk in a manner worthy of your calling, chapter four, verse one. And so because of who you are, because of the sealing spirit, the redeeming son, the electing father, you are safe and secure.

To the praise of His glory, verse six of chapter one, to the praise of His glory, verse 12 of chapter one, to the praise of His glorious grace, chapter one, verse 14. Praise, praise, praise, glory, glory, glory.

Hallelujah.

And in light of that, live a godly life. You can't, you must not, don't ever, sever the person who gives the law and the law. The law giver gives the law. Keep those two together. Because if you realize then as an unbeliever, well, who's giving me the law?

The creator, and I'm breaking the law, I need a savior. Who's giving Christians the law now? The father is, for His glory. You wanna make my name great?

Obey me.

Obeying me will exalt my name. Obey me because other people will benefit. Obey me because it'll benefit you. That's the law. Now, the Amish, it's going to be law keeping for status. It's a covenant of works for the Christian,.

For the believer.

I don't know how many Amish people get saved. I'm sure some do, but when they do, they need to get out of there. They need to run. And whatever quiet life and simple life we might want, you wanna have less than a simple life than be a legalist.

I mean, you can live in the desert. You can live in the jungle. You can live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You can live out in a homestead. You can live out on a farm. And if you're in a legalistic system, you think there's rest?

You think there's quiet? Your conscience won't rest. Your conscience won't be quiet. There's nowhere we can go to run from ourselves. And we're bent on law. That's for certain. Law is written in our heart.

What's not written in our heart is the gospel. That's why you need a proclamation of the gospel every single Sunday. That's why we have the means of grace with the visible gospel or the heard gospel, sacraments, or the preaching.

If you want a simple life, you can't go to where nomists are. Nomist, N-O-M-O is for law. That's not where you go. So whatever you think you want in the Amish, if you want a quiet life and live on a barn, on a farm in a barn, go right ahead.

But go to a church that preaches law and gospel. Go to a church that gives the law for Christians as a family code, third use, guide, normy norm. You don't go become an Amish. Rumspringa is when the Amish people say, you know what, you're a teenager.

You can go live in the world. And if you come back, you're a real believer. We could talk about that another time, but I have a bigger fish to fry. And that fish is don't go to law systems seeking rest.

Don't go to law preachers seeking rest. Many evangelicals will just bash and bash and bash. Don't you want rest? Aren't you a bruised reed? I know you want that. Mike Cavendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry.