Feb. 18 issue
Expert: Beard cutters not Amish
Clan members, sentenced for attacks, strayed too far to be authentic, scholar says
By Tim Huber Mennonite World ReviewThey have beards and buggies, but a leading expert on the Amish says the Bergholz, Ohio, group that conducted a series of retaliatory beard-cutting attacks in 2011 near the Pennsylvania border should not be considered Amish.
Allen Miller, left, and Crist Mullet, right, one of Sam Mullet’s children, photographed during an interview in Bergholz, Ohio, Oct. 15. — Photo by Marvin Fong/The Plain Dealer/RNS photo
Donald B. Kraybill, the senior fellow of Elizabethtown (Pa.) College’s Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, said the Bergholz clan ceased to be Amish because they used punitive force and stopped holding regular church services, among other reasons.
“I call them a clan, and I do not consider them Amish at all,” Kraybill said.
Kraybill served as a cultural witness in the September trial in which a jury found 16 Bergholz men and women, including leader Sam Mullet, guilty of 87 charges, including hate crimes.
The group was sentenced Feb. 8. Mullet, 67, received a 15-year sentence. Other sentences ranged from one to seven years.
For defendants who are married couples with as many as eight children, U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster staggered the sentences, so both will not be incarcerated simultaneously.
In September, Kraybill gave five hours of testimony in a crowded courtroom. He visited the Bergholz area last year and interviewed about 15 people, including victims, Amish leaders involved with Mullet and members of Mullet’s group — a group Kraybill hadn’t heard of before the story broke in 2011.
His research revealed a group Amish in name only.
“They discontinued church services about two years before the beard cuttings,” Kraybill said. “They discarded the New Testament and [put] their focus on the Old Testament. I have evidence of illustrations comparing Sam to the prophets like Elijah.”
Kraybill notes the group routinely violated key articles of the Dordrecht Confession of Faith, a 1632 document used by all Amish congregations, which rejects revenge and the use of force.
Comments
-
The persons Mullet married were his youngest daughter and her fiance who were planning to be married before the men were arrested for the beard cuttings. 22 members of the Bergholz Amish Community went to Pennsylvania a couple weeks ago to hear him speak about the beard cutting case. Dr. Kraybill did not say any of the things he said in this article in the presence of the Bergholz Amish. As for the wedding, the Bergholz group attempted to ge other Amish Bishops to perform the ceremony but they refused out of fear how they would be treated by the greater Amish community. It is not the Bergholz Amish who left the Amish, it is the other Amish that have strayed from their teachings years ago, including 300 Amish Bishops from "strict shunning" communities who thought it appropriate to overturn Bishop Mullet's community's shunnings. A lot of false claims have been made about the Bergholz Amish. Unfortunately, Dr. Kraybill has perpetuated them. The Bergholz Amish, including Samuel Mullet, have always been willing to talk to Dr. Kraybill. If he ever gave them that courtesy, maybe he would not be running around telling everyone that they are not Amish.
-
Kraybill has it right.......they are not Amish,they are their own cult......we as Amish & Mennonites need to help the world know.....help to understand the truth.......Thank You Kraybill
-
I am NOT an Amish expert, but I have been a lawyer in the Holmes County Amish community since 1975. Until this story broke, I never heard of the Ohio Bergholz community.
I defer to Dr. Kraybill as to whether the Berkholz community is Amish. BUT I can say in 38 years I have neither met nor heard of an Amish leader the likes of Sam Mullet.
-
Thank you...I have been waiting for an article like this. I have been growing weary of people calling the clan Amish and having to explain the difference.
-
I merely capsulize here what I stated in this MWR forum several months ago. It is a very slippery slope when you start to call someone "Amish in name only."
Every single different Amish and Mennonite group that exists can say, or has said, that other so-called Amish and Mennonite groups are not faithful, are fixated on non-essentials, have incorrect doctrine, are distracted from the real message of the gospel, etc.
Mennonite discipline is lax enough at this point in history that churches which wish to affiliate with some of our Mennonite conferences, particularly immigrant churches, can apparently gain membership largely by expressing interest. Supposedly all these disparate groups are still included under the various big umbrellas of Mennonite ecumenism, including MWR. It is ironic, therefore, that someone from the most tolerant of all these groups, MCUSA and Church of the Brethren, is now making judgments about who is in and who is out based on beliefs and practices, as distinct from their own profession. I hope that Pope Kraybill will now give us the complete list of essentials without which one cannot use or be known by the names Amish or Mennonite.
And by the way, is it "Amish" to depart from a 300-year-old Amish practice that when someone is excommunicated by one bishop that excommunication is respected by all other bishops? Mind you, I don't approve of what I know about these excommunications to begin with, but I think the question can fairly be asked. And one can at least understand the ire such an unprecedented variance would have aroused in a snubbed Sam Mullet, even if not justify its fruits. We can only hope that it was preceded by the appropriate amount and spirit of brotherly admonition as suggested in the Gospel of Matthew, although the stereotypical Amish bishop is not exactly known for a willingness to listen.
Given the fact that as an in-group writer Donald Kraybill is not exactly a disinterested party, I also have to take very seriously the comments of "ebryan" above that there are misrepresentations involved (although I would wish that this writer would fully identify himself or herself). I have personally found that one should be reluctant to speak too critically about someone without consulting the object of the critique. And it is troubling if Kraybill is saying one thing to the media and another to the Bergholz themselves. Do not confuse me for an apologist for Samuel Mullet, who I know only by his tarnished reputation; I am merely calling for consistency and analytic rigor.
-
Mullet is quintessentially Amish
The formation of the Amish church and community is rooted in the deep objections its founder, Jakob Ammon, had to the slow and steady deviation by his fellow Anabaptist radicals from the founding principles of Anabaptism. His introduction of strict discipline (including Meidung) and other existential reforms were designed to save his brothers and sisters from cultural and religious assimilation into the first two branches of Protestantism. Those are precisely the same reasons for the formation of the strict Bergholz Amish District Church. Bishop Sam Mullet is a modern Jakob Ammon, a profoundly Amish leader deeply disconcerted with the growing assimilation of the Amish into larger American culture and, as a result, their eventual disappearance. The federal case against these devout Amish Americans is nothing less than a witch hunt. Kraybill should be ashamed of himself for participating in this witch hunt and echoing the demonization Bishop Mullet. Who is he to declare anyone as not being Amish, particularly a quintessential Amish leader like Bishop Samuel Mullet?
-
I am the attorney that represented Samuel Mullet at trial and continue to represent him on appeal. I have been fighting false and misleading information about Samuel Mullet from the day I became his lawyer. The narrative of Sam Mullet as a cult leader was a false one perpetrated by the government to justify its overreach in prosecuting Sam Mullet and his church in federal court. I submitted a much longer post on this forum only to have it removed by the editors. Attis's interpretation of Samuel Mullet and his community is an accurate. He moved to Bergholz to establish a community that got back to the basics of the Amish faith. In 2006 when the Bergholz church excommunicated some of its members for engaging in acts of dishonesty, one family returned to a former community where they were still very good friends with the Bishop there and convinced this Bishop to convince others to disregard the Amish's own teachings on strict shunnings. Inviduals beards were not cut in retaliation for the reversal of shunnings that took place in 2006. The story is much more complicated than that. The fact is the majority of the incidents were carried out against family members for personal, not religious reasons. Furthermore, Samuel Mullet did not participate in or order any of the incidents, a fact even the government did not dispute during trial. Instead, the government argued Samuel Mullet's responsibility was based upon his position of Bishop and his failure to stop other community members from carrying out the incidents.
-
To Edward Bryan, I thank you for your additional comments. I am curious whether MWR ever reached out to you for comment before any of its reports were published, in view of your obvious interest in being heard, and particularly before publishing this last report. And were you told why your remarks were removed from this forum? I have also been censored by MWR's editors and have communicated with MWR's membership about censorship policy (I will appear to speak at the MWR annual meeting to be held 3/8/13). Also, if you have written at more length about the Mullet case, I would like to read more -- I invite you to let me know by searching my name and contacting me through my office (I am an attorney as well -- I am not sure if MWR would permit me to mention my e-mail address or website, so I won't try).
At the same time I have called for consistency and integrity in the way the broader Anabaptist community speaks about and regards the Bergholz group, I do find it very difficult to accept Samuel Mullet as "quintessentially" Amish (per "Attis") when I hear about the disturbing sexual practices associated with his "counseling." Perhaps it goes without saying that such practices have never been an accepted feature of either Amish or Mennonite teaching, whatever may have gone on covertly in some quarters, and I am aware of discipline of leaders who have crossed boundaries. Such practices are frequently if not universally an abuse of power. I am NOT aware that a leader's abusive sexual practices has led to the conclusion that he was not Amish or Mennonite, though. These leaders were and are simply regarded as sinners (although even that is apparently not enforced with much rigor in today's MCUSA, since I am aware of at least one apparently unrepentant minister who is still shown as having MCUSA credentials). If Mullet had been open about these practices and had tried to justify or were to try to justify them as either Christian or true to historic Amish teaching, then I would be more sympathetic to Kraybill's judgment; I do not have sufficient primary source information on that.
-
To Edward Bryan, I, like Bruce Leichty would also be interested in your remarks that were removed from this forum? You may email me at twocyldoc@comcast.net I have not been impressed with what the leading expert on Amish had to say on this issue.
-
Bruce, Sam Mullet has denied the allegations of sexual misconduct and does not try to justify any such acts as within his authority as an Amish Bishop. A lot of false information has been spread about Samuel Mullet by other Amish. Sam has always adhered to strict Christian and Amish teachings. He founded the settlement in Bergholz to try to get back to true Christian and Amish teachings. One of his concerns is the fact that "bed courtship" was tolerated in the other communities in which he lived and he did not think such was an appropriate practice for young Christians who were dating. He also felt that Rumspringa was abused by many communities to allow their young folk to not be held accountable for anything. As to what was edited, I was told that my comment was too long and that much of what I wrote could not be verified. I did speak directly to an editor and informed him of my status in the case. I invited the editor to have the reporter who penned the article to contact me. To date, nobody from MWR has contacted me. Apparently they are not interested to learn the other side of the story.
-
That’s great news that they are not Amish, as I am sure that the good news of their forgiveness will be immediately forthcoming. We know that the Amish reject retribution and embrace forgiveness. In fact, the entire world learned how the Amish unhesitatingly forgave the man who took the lives of those schoolgirls at the Nickel Mines schoolhouse. How much more readily will the Amish also forgive who took only some facial hair! I expect the forgiveness announcement will being coming shortly.
-
The question of Amish identity aside--I am uncomfortable with such proclamations of religious affiliation, unless the individual at question makes them for him or herself--I cannot help but find a certain irony, even humor that the person leading the sect accused of maiming hair is a Mr. Mullet. Suddenly, we have a story straight from The Onion.
Comment on the article Expert: Beard cutters not Amish
Please keep comments civil. MWR editors reserve the right to remove any comment. When posting a comment, you agree to the MWR Comments Policy. Name and comment will be posted; commenters are strongly encouraged to give their full name. Email address is for follow-up only and will not be made public.
Download