Compare Traditions on One Technology
Choose a technology and read the traditions' recorded stances side by side — each with its rationale in its own terms. The comparison is the section's method in one view: the differences are in the reasons.
Connection to the electrical grid
The current is accepted and the connection refused: batteries and solar panels yes, the meter no — the Ordnung’s distinction between a tool and a tie, in its sharpest form. The full register entry
Anabaptist, Mennonite, and Amish
Resisted
Grid connection is refused because the tie, not the current, is the technology: connection brings the world’s schedule, bills, media, and inspections into the home and dissolves the boundary Gelassenheit requires. Electricity itself is admitted in bounded forms — battery, inverter, generator, solar — which loosen dependence rather than tighten it, the exact opposite of the connection’s social effect.
- Donald B. Kraybill et al., The Amish (2013)