Amish Success—More or Less.

by Loren Seibold

The researches of the Third Reich into eugenics ended, perhaps permanently, any serious pursuit of creating a better human race by intentional breeding choices. At one time it was a favorite topic of Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, and John Harvey Kellogg, among others. Now, even researchers into disease inheritance have to be careful, particularly if said disease involves identifing a group racially. The link between biology and populations is impossible to deny, but it becomes dangerous when it is used in critiquing traits of specific populations.

One who has stepped up to that dangerous line  is Gregory Cochran, a physicist and adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Utah. He’s made arguments about selection for intelligence among Ashkenazi Jews, and advanced a theory that homosexuality is caused by a microorganism. One of his latest contributions, with Henry Harpending, is a draft paper suggesting that the Amish have been successful because their social system acts as a selective breeding program, choosing for the traits of subservience to authority, hard work, plain living, and in general, a personality that fits into the American Amish community, while rejecting for breeding those with tendencies toward dissent or innovation. 

Cochran and Harpending call it the Amish Quotient, (AQ) and posit that by marrying only within the faith, refusing converts, and “boiling off” at least 10% (some say more than 20%) of their less tractable offspring, they are increasing the AQ for plainness and cooperation. And it seems to be working: according to Ohio State University researchers and the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, there are around 200,000 Amish in the United States, and they’re set to double every 21 years. 

The Amish have been laughed at for their anti-technological lifestyle, and idealized for their clean, rural life. Neither is entirely merited. They’re not opposed to all modern innovations (they love plastic and polyester), and their rules for what is permissible are quite specific and suprisingly narrow. They accept rides from others, borrow phones, let their teenage children have cars, accept modern medicine, and have little hesitation about using themselves as tourist bait. Many use highly sophisticated machinery adapted to alternative forms of power, as long as an engine doesn’t drive rubber tires or use electricity off the grid. They may be “green”, but that’s not the principle that dictates their choices. In fact, in some communities, a majority are no longer farmers: there's not enough land to support their large families.

Nor is their world idyllic. They quash any desire for advanced education. They experience a host of genetic disorders (the community is almost entirely descended from 200 18th century founders). Sexual abuse and incest aren't uncommon and are handled privately (which means very, very badly). Congregations schism, and internecene fights have led to violence and shunning. And families' rejection of children who don’t remain in the community is brutal. (See the documentary "Shunned" shown on PBS and still excerpted on the internet.)

But they’re remarkably successful for a group that moves in opposition to so many vectors of American culture (some of which we'd admit they're better off without), and perhaps Cochran and Harpending are identifying the reason. All of us in some way breed with a purpose, simply by the mates we’re attracted to. Perhaps the success of the Amish is that they’ve done it purposefully within their very restricted human ecosystem.

Related articles

Cochran-Harpending paper on "Amish Quotient"

Comments

[Mackenzian]

Loren, what's the definition of success that you're proposing as you discuss Cochran & Harpending's research? Would you care to interrogate the merits of this definition in a future column?

For example, are you defining success only in terms of genetic continuance via endogamous breeding and strictly limited interactions with outsiders? If so, what do you think that implies for Adventists, who may still recommend endogamous breeding as a church manual ideal but don't strictly enforce the rule, and also frequently interact with non-Adventists and non-Adventist culture, ethics, and entertainment outside the context of the health and educational institutions? Where might non-heterosexual and infertile heterosexual Adventists fit into a genetic-success model of the church? How is our understanding of "the church" impacted by shifting measures of success from spiritual and religious measures to physio-genetic ones?

Might non-genetic definitions of success be more useful for us as onlookers? Adventism hasn't taken the LDS or Quiverfull approach to procreation-as-duty that a community's genetic success requires. Alternate success definitions might include ongoing impact on local, regional, national, or international society; or general adoption of a group's philosophy or beliefs—that is, culture-shaping.

Thoughts?

[Loren Seibold]

I reached for the simplest definition of success: they're growing, and seem like happy, content people, with lots of faith and optimism. (Many say they seem that way to us because they don't let us see inside the the family.) As for other kinds of success, I intended to qualify that with the "more or less". And it must be pointed out that the ecosystem they've been successful in is an ideal one, one they'll not find in many other parts of the world, where they're given wide latitude to do as they like, and lots of help from the communities they're part of. Enough privacy and still enough interaction. Many people depend on the Amish in Holmes County—not just the tourists and non-Amish tourism services—serving needs from medical to drivers to, well, anything they won't do for themselves and are willing to pay for. Fortunately, they're mostly nice people and good neighbors.

Still, imagine a modern church growth plan that said, "You'll succeed by rejecting your personal involvement in the modern world (but letting others use it for you), by sticking to a 19th century lifestyle, using an extinct language, refusing converts, making your strangeness a tourist draw, and refusing to ever talk to your children again if they leave the church."

Yet that's not entirely unlike what the Seventh-day Adventist church was in my childhood—my family had many elements of that parochial set of mind, especially marrying within the faith and rejecting those who left it. In my experience now, that way of thinking is almost entirely gone. And, I think the argument can be made that we did better when we were more sectarian. Our "liberalizing", such as it is, has been the death of us. When our colleges became accredited, when we sent people off to get Ph.D.s in other schools, when our hospitals became not just respectable but respected—we've never been the same, it seems to me.

So what have Seventh-day Adventists contributed? We'd say preventive health, but we're not credited for that. Nor for an eschatological world view, which we were among the first to popularize, but now belongs to many conservative churches. Our name identity in North America has never been lower.

What great questions! Wish we could talking person about them.

By the way, a few years ago I came at this question of success from a slightly different direction: what is the Seventh-day Adventist church, really? To whom does it belong? You can read the essay here.

[Loren Seibold]

Sorry, the link didn't show up. http://lorenseibold.com/Loren_Seibold/Essays/Entries/2009/11/4_Whose_Church_Is_It%2C_Anyway.html