Morning Read: Amish beard cutting attacks plague Ohio
The North Country has a growing and robust Amish community, particularly in the St. Lawrence Valley, so this story — reported most recently by NPR — caught my eye.
In Amish country in Ohio, there has been an outbreak of a particular kind of violence: beard cutting.
On the night of Oct. 4, Myron and Arlene Miller were asleep in their home in Mechanicstown, Ohio, when they heard a knock on the door. According to their friend Bob Comer, when Myron came downstairs, he found five men standing on his doorstep.
“They pulled him out in the front yard, and they have scissors and a battery-powered shaver and everything,” Comer says. “They’re trying to hold him down and cut his beard off and cut his hair off.”
Miller yelled at his wife to call 911. Then the men let him go and ran back to the trailer and had the driver take off, Comer says.
Myron Miller, who declined an interview, was left with a ragged beard: a shameful state for an Amish man.
“The beard for Amish men is a symbol of their adult manhood,” says Donald Kraybill, a sociologist at Elizabethtown College and author of several books about the Amish, including Amish Grace and Concise Encyclopedia of Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites.
There have been no reports of similar incidents in the North Country.
Tags: religion
We are friends with two or three Amish neighbors. Our closest friend, Abe Stutzman, knew about this episode (which occurred in a slightly less traditional Amish community in Ohio) and was very disturbed by it. This is atypical behavior in any Amish community–I guess this is why it’s getting so much play from media. Nonetheless, the takeaway–for me–is that it is extraordinary behavior. Even the “victim” was forced to behave out of the norm: generally disputes and problems are solved within the community, without calling in “English” authorities.
There’s got to be more to this story….
The fact that he yelled to his wife to “call 911” indicates that it is a less traditional Amish group. The traditional Amish don’t have telephones.
There is a special kind of jealousy that happens when the Amish, with their hats and beards and buggies can make a better life for themselves than the average layabout neighbor. Since our economy is slow, and our lack of imagination keeps us from doing anything interesting, or productive, or progressive, we become barbarians, and attack our more successful neighbors. Boredom with the self mostly, rather than hatred.
Yes, phones are definitely forbidden among the sect of Amish living in the north country. The other detail of this story: the episode that made it into the news was not the first. Apparently there was a series of attacks over recent weeks and, finally, the victim(s) despaired of the situation changing without intervention from the police.
There is, in fact, more to the story and if you follow the link you can read some of it.
The irony I especially appreciate is that the man behind these attacks is named Mullet, that essential 80’s hair style.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullet_(haircut)
Strange. Another good reason to not live in Ohio.
Except for the northern border of Ohio, the state tends to think and act like the south.
I had cousins who used to live down near Columbus in Newark and after a few years they started to pick up the southern twang.
Just to clarify: the attack was Amish on Amish, albeit Amish who are a bit more integrated into modern society than the Amish who live in the north country.
Lions, tigers, bears, crazy beard cutters….
Ohio is one tough place these days!
yes Knuck-
read the story before i commented, still think there is more to the story than the individuals are letting the “english” know.
The mullet link is funny. I remember that cut being called a “shag” in the early seventies, David Cassidy being the prototype.
The perps mug shots are three reasons to drive completely around Ohio when heading west.
It is good that Ellen clarified that it was Amish on Amish. Some of the barn fires were not Amish on Amish. Every Amish congregation chooses its own guidelines. Often the groups that move to new regions move because they want to be different or need more land. Many have cell phones. Some balk at reflective material on their buggies let alone lights or brakes. I visit an Amish logger who has a steel tracked feller-buncher (tree cutting machine) and has a cell phone but his non-Amish employee drives them to work. It is the ignorance of the “English” that makes them quaint.
Basically to say Amish is like saying Presbyterian or Muslim. There are lots of branches to the tree. There are Amish gangs too. They have the same problems most of us have.
What this story made me realize for the first time is the startling fact that Hassidic Jews, orthodox Muslims and the Amish are all wearing beards and long hair for exactly the same reason! “People of the Book” indeed. Religion makes for even stranger bedfellows than does politics!
Walker, is that why so many of the old-fashioned Republicans around here wear Amish beards? I thought it was a Lincoln fetish.
Capt. Ahab-raham Lincoln.
KLH, as you well know, the Republicans have left Lincoln way back on the left, like every Republican president since GWB. Your average these days just wants to model him or herself after the very, very rich.
Heck, these days even Ronald Regan’s tax rates would be reckoned as Socialist Wealth Redistribution and Killing The Job Creators.
To your point Walker check out this video of Obama vs. Reagan on taxes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgbJ-Fs1ikA&feature=player_embedded