quote: "Amish in the City" is only the working title for the new reality series that's set to air this summer. It's based on the Amish community's coming-of-age experience known as rumspringa (the word means "running wild") in which Amish teens leave the fold and intentionally subject themselves to temptation to test their religious convictions, before deciding whether to join the Amish church. If they return to the flock, only then are they baptized into the Amish church.
Yeah, voyeurism is petty and CBS is making money off of moral turpitude.
My eye, however, was caught by the above paragraph. I'm not sure, but I think it(in a non-televised fashion) might be a good idea. The Amish are a cloistered community that asks members to renounce the world. Isn't it better that they have members that know what they are renouncing? Doesn't this make their community stronger? I think it does, but am curious to hear what other people have to say. Is it better to know temptation than to not know temptation?
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I was under the impression that the Amish did something like this anyway, that there was a period during which their teens were encouraged to experiment and make sure that the Amish life was really what they wanted. I'll ask C tonight; she's studied the Amish in a couple of "Althernate religious movement" type classes, and probably knows a lot more about it than I do.
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In central Illinois, there's actually quite a lot of drug-related crime caused by Amish kids on runabout getting involved in crystal meth gang wars. Seriously.
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I guess I wound up having a similar experience though it wasn't culturally sanctioned. My parents separated and I became the ward of my 25 year old sister. She wasn't living a wild life, but I was largely unsupervised.
I often think that if I had spent my minor years at home and gone straight into BYU and then marriage, I might have ended up much more rebellious like my sister. It only really worked out for my youngest sister (out of 9 kids) but she always was the more normal one. All the rest of us have gone through some kind of break either from the educational track or the religious track. (the youngest excepted because he is neither married nor done with college.)
Still, I don't think it's good for illegal behavior to be expected. They are choosing between American culture and Amish. I don't see how that entails illegal drug use, underage drinking, or (I'm presuming) statutory rape. I think a lot more of them would leave if they got a trip rich in cultural experience rather than orgies and jail time.
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I live near Amish and went to school with many of them. (most quit at 8th grade).
They were the best hosts of the huge beer bashes that we all snuck off to in high school....
But overall I really admire them -- on the whole, they take excellent care of their farms and are very community-oriented. They take care of each other.
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