So I get home from the gym and sit down to kill my brain with a little TV. But on the magical box is a documentary called “The Devil’s Playground.” After ten minutes of watching, I screamed out my first “Oh, my sweet Lord Fucking Jesus!” of what would become many. Very many. Including derivatives thereof. And I’m an effing ATHEIST, for God’s sake.
The documentary was about rumspringa , which is the year between 16 and 17 when Amish kids are permitted to speak, dress, and act “English,” (i.e., like outsiders), in order to experience the life of the outside world before joining the Amish Church.
Sweet fuck. There were incidences of drunken debauchery at which this former college-bar worker and New Orleans resident could only GASP. Sex. Drugs. 1500-person parties of ALL AMISH KIDS ON RUMSPRINGA.
The documentary was (I believe), fairly even-handed, presenting the views of the elder members of the community, churchmembers of 5 and 10 years, recent joiners (teenagers freshly removed or one year removed from rumspringa), people who declined to join afterward, and people who joined and then left the church. But what stuck with me was the amount of hard-partying behavior exhibited by these kids, and the consequences that came along with it.
I was quite moved by the film. It depicted a world about which I knew nothing, and now I’m quite curious. Does anyone know more about this? Or is anyone on this board currently on rumspringa? I have many questions and would love to hear about it.
The “Heritage of Lancaster County” series by Beverly Lewis describes a young woman who starts out the first book in the midst of rumschpringe. It’s described in that book as more of a time to “goof off” and get your head straight about whether or not you’ll take “the kneeling vow” (where you kneel in front of the entire community and vow to uphold the Amish way of life upon pain of hellfire or whatever.) AFAICT, I suppose it could extend to drunken debauchery, but it’s certainly not supposed to.
As a matter of fact, the characters in the book tend to refer to anyone who does that sort of wild partying as ferhoodled, and it’s viewed as abnormal and totally unusual.
I saw it, too. Really interesting. For a lot of kids, it’s actually more like a period of four-five years. What surprised me most was that 90% of them return to the church after Rumspringa.
There is a Penn-Dutch farmers market near me. It’s a co-op. And it’s a costume party! No, I’m kidding. But you do get to see everyone in full on Amish garb.
A side note: In high school, I had a friend that was in a band called “The Fighting Amish”.
I think it’s brilliant and pretty progressive. How many Catholics, Jews, hell, mainstream Christians say to their kids “OK, go out, see the world and make up your own mind about this” ? Not many. I went to Church every Sunday from birth to 22, there was no discussion.
Sure some kids go crazy, but I think it’s one of the more interesting parts of the Amish culture, which I used to study like crazy as a young pre teen. I thought it would be fun to live as Laura Ingalls Wilder.
I’ve seen this documentary as well. Living in Waterloo region, I’m used to seeing alot of old-order Mennonites around, and to an outsider, Amish and Mennonite are very similar. So it was a bit of a shock to see Amish kids partying and doing drugs. I agree with HSHP that the film seemed quite balanced. They showed a wide variety of young people on rumspringa, from one who received death threats from local drug dealers, to others who still dressed and mostly acted in the traditional way, but went to a few parties and smoked a couple of cigarettes.
Just FYI: As a Cathlolic I was encouraged to “go out and see the world” (granted to a much lesser extent) before officially joining the church. The process is called Confirmation and we are supposed to research other religions and do some soul searching to determine if we really are Catholic or were just raised Catholic. It seems very similar to rumspringa to me-- at least in concept.