The Ordnung and Gelassenheit: technology judged in congregation by what it does to the yielded, communal life — the car refused and the battery accepted, the telephone governed by its placement, and Hutterite communal farms among the most mechanized on the continent.
Tagged: Anabaptist
The Anabaptist family — Old Order Amish, conservative and progressive Mennonites, Hutterites — practices the most considered technology discipline of any tradition on this site. Its instrument is the Ordnung: the unwritten (among the Old Order) or written rule of the congregation, covering dress, tools, transport, and connection, reviewed by the whole church district and revised, slowly, in the Rumspringa-seasoned counsel of bishops and members. Its theological engine is Gelassenheit — yieldedness: the surrender of individual will to God and community, from which the technology rule follows, since a tool is judged by what it does to the yielded life.
The judgments are specific and often surprising to outsiders. The automobile is refused (it scatters the community and makes distance cheap) while the tractor may be admitted on steel wheels, or for belt power only, and diesel engines, batteries, solar panels, and LED lighting are widely accepted because they loosen dependence on the grid rather than tighten it. The telephone was refused in the home and then admitted in the shanty at the end of the lane — the technology accepted, its placement governed. Hutterites, who hold goods in common, run some of the most mechanized farms on the prairies while refusing personal ownership of the machines. Progressive Mennonites differ on nearly every item and share the premise: technology is a discipleship question, decided in community.
Three comparison points fix the profile. Against the majority culture: the question is never ‘does it work?’ but ‘what will it do to us?’ Against other conservatives: the authority is the local congregation’s rule, not a proof-text, so neighboring districts differ and both are faithful. Against the secular minimalists who imitate them: Gelassenheit is not self-improvement but obedience — the yieldedness precedes the rule, and the rule serves the yieldedness.
Recorded Stances in the Register
Connection to the electrical grid 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.
Industrial agriculture Selectively adopted
The Ordnung governs method, not output: draft power and scale are kept at the size a family and a settlement can work and owe nothing on, while fertilizers, seeds, and much else are admitted. Hutterite colonies, holding goods in common, run fully mechanized large farms — the family’s own internal comparison, kept in this register because it isolates the variable: the rule is about ownership and scale, not horsepower.
The automobile Resisted
Car ownership is refused under the Ordnung because it dissolves the settlement’s geography: a congregation must live within visiting distance, and the car makes exit cheaper than endurance. The same logic admits the hired car and the tractor governed by district rule — the unit of analysis is ownership and its social effect, never the engine.
The internet and social media Regulated
Smartphones are governed by placement and purpose in the stricter districts — business use at the shop or the shanty, no home internet in Old Order districts — while progressive Anabaptist bodies adopt the tools and argue about formation. The judgment is the Ordnung’s standard one: what the device does to attention, courtship, and the settlement’s boundary.
Vaccination Selectively adopted
Amish communities vaccinate at lower rates than their neighbors and decide family by family in most districts — the Ordnung rarely addresses vaccination directly — while accepting outbreak measures and mission-clinic programs; public-health authorities describe the posture as hesitant adoption rather than refusal.
References
- Donald B. Kraybill, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner & Steven M. Nolt, The Amish (2013)
- Donald B. Kraybill, The Riddle of Amish Culture (rev. ed., 2001)
Related Across the Site
- Digital technology and community Flashpoint — Attention as the substance of community: streaming congregations and phone fasts, the industry’s own defectors making the ascetic argument, and the placement rules of the Amish applied to the pocket screen.
- Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online Library — Reliable information on Anabaptist congregations, people, and historical and theological topics, with the full texts of Mennonite confessions.
- Menno Simons.net Library — The life, complete writings, doctrine, and images of Menno Simons, including English translations of his works.
- Connection to the electrical grid Technology — 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.
- Industrial agriculture Technology — The yield is not in dispute; the terms are: horsepower governed by scale among the Amish, waste forbidden by bal tashchit, the technocratic paradigm indicted by Laudato si’ — and the Green Revolution’s billions fed, recorded in the same ledger.
- The automobile Technology — Refused as property, used as a service: the car is the cleanest demonstration that the Ordnung judges ownership and social effect, not machinery.
- The internet and social media Technology — A library that became an environment: embraced as infrastructure by every tradition’s teachers, and governed — by placement rules, communications ethics, or platform law — wherever its formation of persons is taken seriously.
- Vaccination Technology — From Jenner’s parish campaigns to polio fatwas: mostly embraced, sometimes governed, and fought over in our century along lines that cross every tradition.