Amish Tourism Developing Sustainable Models

Amish Tourism

Developing Sustainable Models for Amish Tourism

Although members of the Mennonite Church have established communities all over the world, a large percentage of them have made their home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The idyllic setting of Lancaster County combined with the pastoral lifestyle of the Amish have made this county an increasingly popular tourist destination, but this trend carries with it some profound risks of diminishing the Amish's ability to remain faithful to their religion while balancing the needs of this growing industry. To determine how the Amish can reap the benefits of this industry without sacrificing their religious integrity, this paper provides a discussion concerning Amish tourism and identifies ways that it can meet the needs of the present residents without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. A summary of the research and salient findings are presented in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Present day Mennonites and Amish can trace their lineage to the Anabaptists of 16th-century Europe (Kraybill, 1998). The main Amish groups living in the United States today are the Old Order Amish (this group does not use churches but worships in member homes and conducts their services in German), and the Conservative Amish (this group conforms to the Dordrecht Confession of Faith that established the precepts of the faith and conduct their services in English as well as German and accept such innovations as the Sunday school) (Mennonites, 2004). In addition, the terms "House Amish" and "Church Amish" have also been used to differentiate the two groups of Amish (Mennonites, 2004). As noted above, Amish in the United States have settled primarily in Pennsylvania and Ohio, particularly in the so-called "Amish Country" located in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (Mennonites, 2004). According to Walbert (2002), the Amish who settled in Lancaster County chose their location wisely: "Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the 'Garden Spot of America,' is a place of contradictions. Since 1950 it has grown faster than almost any county in Pennsylvania, yet it retains a reputation as a rural oasis in a sprawling desert of modern cities and suburbs. Its population has doubled in the past forty years, making the Garden Spot a metropolitan area unto itself" (p. 3).

While the Amish people in Lancaster County are widely respected and admired for their piety and faith, the fact remains that they are, well, different. Moreover, they are so different in so many ways that they have attracted a great deal of attention over the years, but it has not always been this way. The role played by the Amish in Lancaster County has changed significantly over the years, and the Amish people have become more reclusive and less active in community affairs. This shift in roles was based in large part on their desire to educate their children according to their particular religious and morals views (and argued the public schools were not up to the task), and the Amish continued to educate their children in rural schools with no electricity while their counterparts rode to school in "shiny new buses" and attended well-equipped classrooms (Walbert, 2002). As this author notes, "In the long run, the greatest division created by the controversy in Lancaster County was the further isolation of the Amish from their fellow Lancaster Countians. After the establishment of parochial schools, Amishmen no longer served on school boards with their non-Amish neighbors; Amish children no longer played with non-Amish children at recess" (Walbert, 2002, p. 57).

Therefore, the history of Amish tourism is a colorful one and involved these "little red schoolhouses" situated in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In this regard, Walbert reports that, "The battle over consolidated schools had another consequence for Lancaster County, one that would reinforce the growing separation between the Amish and the non-Amish -- not by isolating the Plain people but by drawing attention to them" (2002, p. 57). Much of the original national attention generated concerning the Amish took place when they filed suit in U.S. federal court to compel the state to allow them to educate their children in the manner they saw fit. In response, the national media became interested and the beginning of the Amish tourism industry was underway. "The school strike provided enough controversy to spark serious attention," Walbert advises, "and by the end of 1937 major eastern newspapers were actively covering the case. The New York Times, in fact, assigned a reporter to the story even before Lancaster's own newspapers did" (2002, p. 58).

A number of prominent articles covering the event provided avid readers with descriptions of the Amish's "quaint" way of life to urban readers, replete with evocative photographs of various Amish one-room schoolhouses, features that this author suggests were certain to draw attention to this region of the country (Walbert, 2002). For instance, the travel section of the Sunday Times featured a lengthy article entitled, "Lancaster's 'Plain Folk," that highlighted their "picturesqueness," their dress, customs, and daily implements of life (Walbert, 2002). Moreover, the newspaper also reported the times and locations of Amish farmers' markets: "The best times for observing the 'plain people' in large numbers -- and pointed out historic sites that visitors to Lancaster might also want to see. Almost overnight, Amish tourism was born" (emphasis added) (Walbert, 2002, p. 58).

The high-profile lawsuit and resulting national press covered fueled an increasing interest in the Amish; however, this interest was not based on their religion or dress, but rather their ruralness. For instance, Walbert reports that, "Newspaper coverage cited the Amish and Mennonites' religious values and their appeals to religious freedom but only rarely mentioned nonresistance. The religious principle that received the most attention was the desire to remain 'close to the soil and to God'" (2002, p. 58). A number of prominent articles reported on the ability of the Amish people to coerce the best crops out of the soil and the newspaper coverage of the Amish farmers' markets in Lancaster County made them highly popular destinations (New York Times, 15 August 1937, II, p. 2, and 7 November 1937, XII, p. 9 quoted in Walbert, 2004 at p. 58).

Subsequent popular press coverage of the Amish contributed to their mystique and sparked further interest in Lancaster County as a tourism destination. For instance, in late 1938, when the first Amish school opened in Lancaster County, an Associated Press reporter was assigned to provide eager readers with news of the event, which was as follows: "Thirty children with Amish bowl-shaped haircuts rode in horse-drawn sleds and typical Amish wagons through a deep snow to the opening of the one-room country school.... The youngsters, arriving shortly after the cold dawn, piled from beneath blankets and straw in the sleds and wagons and went to work with a will carrying in coal from the shed beside the school, bringing drinking water and performing other chores. (New York Times, 29 November 1938, p. 25 quoted in Walbert, 2004 at p. 58). The iconographic potential of the Amish and their lifestyle were not lost on the popular press - or the American public at the time: "In case words alone failed to summon in readers' minds the appropriate Currier and Ives print, the story was accompanied by a photograph of Amish children climbing out of a horse-drawn buggy parked by the door of a one-room schoolhouse. Snow, horse, and schoolhouse were all prominently displayed" (Walbert, 2002, p. 58).

In her essay, "The Simplest Life: Why Americans Romanticize the Amish," Issenberg (2004) reports that the television series, "Amish in the City," represents the latest example of a long tradition of Amish-loving American cultural mythology: "We've long celebrated the 'simplicity' of the Amish, idealized their way of life as an archetype of uniquely American goodness" (p. 39). Likewise, Richards and Hall (2000) report that, "The Amish in North America found in many major cities are examples of such communities which have become tourist attractions in their own right" (p. 3). Part of the interest in the Amish appears to be related to their manner of dress and appearance: "Sure, we poke fun at them occasionally; cultural historian David Weaver-Zercher's the Amish in the American Imagination assembles a fine inventory, from a 1921 Travel magazine quip about 'beards that look as if they had been cropped from a moss-hung Florida tree!' To David Letterman's 'Top Ten Amish Pick-Up Lines'" (Issenberg, 2004, p. 40). Even "Weird Al Yankovik" has chimed in on the religion and its adherents with his parody, "Amish Paradise," which pokes major fun at the Amish and their manner of dress (pers. obs.).

Amish humor, though, pales in comparison to Amish tourism, which currently attracts four million visitors who want to see for themselves this strange group of people who forego modern conveniences to protect their faith and way of life. According to this author, these four millions tourists want to:

spend their vacations among the black-hatted, noodle-slurping barn-raisers of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the largest of several Amish communities in the country. (Most of the rest are in Ohio and Indiana.) They are, in the popular imagination, a peaceful people who spend their time going to church and making preserves, while the rest of us lost our spiritual way, got jobs moving paper around, became obsessed with buying stuff, and watched our families fall apart. (Issenberg, 2004, p. 40).

Today, tourism is second only to agriculture as Pennsylvania's leading industry and Lancaster County accounts for $1.6 billion of the state's $20.5 billion in annual tourism revenue (Goodno, 2004). While the tourism industry in Lancaster County is booming, many observers suggest that unless something is done soon, the Amish will have significant problems in being able to sustain their way of life - and the burgeoning tourism industry -- in the future. Although the Amish are not unique in being reclusive (Paige & Littrell, 2002), they remain the most important tourism element in this region of the country. For example, in his study, "Garden Spot: Lancaster County, the Old Order Amish, and the Selling of Rural America," Friesen (2003) emphasizes that, "The Amish are the primary drawing card in Lancaster County, since their way of life is so vividly represented as a sacred symbol of America's past. The lure of witnessing the rural America of the past in action draws millions of tourists to Lancaster County each year, causing no end of traffic problems as well as interfering with the daily lives of the Amish" (emphasis added) (p. 274).

In this environment, identifying sustainable models for current levels of tourism has assumed new relevance and importance, especially since all signs indicate that this industry is going to continue to grow in the future (Ivanko, 2001). To this end, Walbert (2002) maintains that if such rural communities are going to survive as a vital part of the nation's landscape, there are going to need to be some fundamental changes made that may be beyond the ability of the Amish because of their reclusive nature. For instance, Walbert recommends that people from rural and urban areas need to be brought into closer contact: "City folks should visit country folks and vice versa on a deeper level than tourism allows. Community residents should also buy locally-made goods so they can get to know their neighbors better. Evidently improved understanding between these groups will result in harmonious living and contribute towards the perpetuation of the rural way of life" (cited in Friesen, 2003 at p. 274). History has shown time and again, though, that increased contact between divergent peoples can also lead to trouble. For instance, according to Goodno (2004), "Tourism typically helps local economics, but the benefits come at a price. Construction may degrade the environment. Tourism jobs frequently pay less than disappearing jobs in mines or lumber mills, and housing costs rise as outsiders, particularly affluent outsiders, discover the beauty of place" (p. 16). Even the reclusive Amish are not exempt from these forces (Kemper, 2006). In this regard, Walle (1998) emphasizes that, "In situations where marketers want to generate public relations, people who are ill at ease with publicity may be underserved or hurt by aggressive marketing and promotional activities.... One only has to think of host cultures of tourism such as the Amish to see how important it can be to limit or tightly control the promotion that outside marketers use in order to attract tourists" (p. 117).

Even some of the ordinary and apparently innocuous things that other Americans simply take for granted represent threats to the Amish and their simple way of life. For example, in his essay, "Plain Reservations: Amish and Mennonite Views of Media and Computers," Kraybill emphasizes that, "The Plain People of North America worry that mass media and the internet will ruin their souls and lead to the demolition of their communities. Old Order Amish and Mennonite groups have consistently banned access to many forms of media, old and new, in the hopes of preserving their collective soul" (p. 99). Likewise, as Stodolska and Livengood (2006) note, "The Amish remain largely isolated from the mainstream American society. They seek to pass along their religious beliefs and a way of life to their children. The Amish have also denied the entrance of secularism, or the mainstream American way of life, into their communities. In order to do so, they follow a specific set of rules called the Ordnung, which regulates and restricts aspects of life such as dress, behavior, and modern technology" (p. 293).