1. Stoltzfus, Grant M., “Memorandum to Persons Interested in Disseminating Information about the Mennonites and Amish and Their Way of Life,” Pennsylvania Dutchman, 1 05 1951, 7.Google Scholar

2. The brainchild of Franklin and Marshall folklore professor Alfred L. Shoemaker, the Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center was founded in 1949 with the intention of certifying and proclaiming the greatness of Pennsylvania Dutch culture. In 1959, the center's name was changed to the Pennsylvania Folklife Society.Google Scholar

3. Stoltzfus was a member of the Old Mennonites (also called the Mennonite Church), at that time the largest Mennonite body in North America and, like the Old Order Amish, comprised mostly of persons of south German or Swiss origin. Unless otherwise noted, the term “Mennonites” in this article refers to persons in this particular Mennonite body which, among American Mennonite groups, took the lead in mediating the Amish to other Americans.Google Scholar

4. Yoder, Joseph W., Rosanna of the Amish (Huntington, Pa.: Yoder Publishing, 1940);Google Scholar and idem, Rosanna's Boys (Huntington, Pa.: Yoder Publishing, 1948).Google Scholar For a discussion of Yoder's works, see Kasdorf, Julia M., “Fixing Tradition: The Cultural Work of Joseph W. Yoder and His Relationship with the Amish Community of Mifflin County, Pennsylvania” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1997).Google Scholar

5. Mennonites have often invoked the relational motif of “cousins” to justify their representations of the Amish, a designation based upon shared ethnic and theological ancestry. Of course, some Mennonites can claim Amish cousins in a strictly biological sense, sharing common grandparents or great-grandparents.Google Scholar

6. To be sure, midcentury Mennonites mediated the Old Order Amish through channels other than their publishing house, channels ranging from word of mouth and privately owned tourist enterprises to the church-sponsored Mennonite Information Center near Lancaster, which was founded in 1958.Google Scholar

7. Marris, Peter, Loss and Change (New York: Pantheon, 1974), 151.Google Scholar

8. By domesticating the Amish via popular literature, Mennonites participated in the great American religious tradition that R. Laurence Moore and others have called “commodification.” Long resistant to fiction as a dishonest and frivolous form of entertainment, Mennonites changed course at midcentury, conceding that popular literature, including fiction, could carry important messages to those who bought and read it. Given the high level of public interest in the Old Order Amish, it is hardly surprising that Herald Press soon hitched its religious concerns to the Amish buggy. See Moore, R. Laurence, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

9. See Roth, John D., ed., Letters of the Amish Division: A Sourcebook (Goshen, Ind.: Mennonite Historical Society, 1993);Google Scholar and Nolt, Steven M., A History of the Amish (Intercourse, Pa.: Good Books, 1992), 23–41.Google Scholar

10. The Amish developed two distinct factions during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, a conservative “Old Order Amish” faction and a more progressive “Amish Mennonite” faction. In this article, when used in a pre-1870 context, the term “Amish” refers to the group prior to its conservative-progressive bifurcation, whereas in a post-1870 context, the term “Amish” refers to the people generally known as the Old Order Amish. My contention that the Mennonites and the Amish were similar at the close of the nineteenth century refers to the Old Order Amish although, in retrospect, it is clear the Mennonites and the Old Order Amish had embarked upon very different trajectories prior to this time. See Yoder, Paton, Tradition and Transition: Amish Mennonites and Old Order Amish, 1800–1900 (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1991), 207–260.Google Scholar

11. This quotation appeared in a cover letter to the 1527 Schleitheim Confession, the first written confession of the Anabaptist movement. See The Schleitheim Confession, trans. and ed. Yoder, John Howard (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1977), 8.Google Scholar

12. Juhnke, James C., Vision, Doctrine, War: Mennonite Identity and Organization in America, 1890–1930 (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1989), 36.Google Scholar Some of these traits would have been prevalent among other Pennsylvania German religious groups, not just the Amish and the Mennonites. For a discussion of shared Pennsylvania German cultural traits, see Nolt, Steven M., “Finding a Context for Mennonite History: Pennsylvania German Ethnicity and (Old) Mennonite Experience,” Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage 21 (10 1998): 2–14.Google Scholar

13. Mennonite practices that the Amish considered worldly varied according to time and place. In the eighteenth century, when Mennonites fastened their clothing with buttons, the Amish, who fastened their clothing with hooks and eyes, targeted that Mennonite practice as worldly. In the nineteenth century, the Amish perceived Mennonite worldliness in the Mennonites' construction of meetinghouses for worship, their growing acceptance of Sunday schools and their embrace of missionary activities. In the twentieth century, Mennonite worldliness showed itself in the ready acceptance of the automobile, electricity, and other modern technologies.Google Scholar

14. Yoder, Tradition and Transition, 109. Mennonite editor Paul Erb noted the persistence of this pattern in the early 1960^s, writing, “there is a certain amount of tension between the Amish and Mennonites because of the movement of members from the Amish to the Mennonites.”Google ScholarErb, Paul,“Mennonites and Amish” Gospel Herald, 5 06 1962, 507.Google Scholar

15. See, for instance, Driedger, Leo, “The Anabaptist Identification Ladder: Plain-Urbane Continuity in Diversity,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 51 (1977): 278–91.Google Scholar As Donald Kraybill points out, the Amish would not oppose this seemingly ethnocentric metaphor. Given the Amish emphasis on Christian humility, they often describe those who leave the Amish church for a more liberal church as having “gone high.” For a discussion of the ladder metaphor, see Kraybill, Donald B. and Olshan, Marc A., eds., The Amish Struggle with Modernity (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1994), 266–67.Google Scholar

16. Kauffman, Daniel, “Our Iowa Field,” Herald of Truth, 15 07 1896, 209.Google Scholar Kauffman later tried to reverse fields, writing that he was unfairly “charged with saying that the ‘old order’ branch of the Amish church was ‘plunging headlong into worldliness.’ ” Kauffman, Daniel, “Our Iowa Field,” Herald of Truth, 15 09 1896, 275.Google Scholar

17. My statement about the Mennonites and the Old Order Amish traveling different trajectories at the turn of the century would not apply to certain other groups that went by the name Mennonite at that time, for example, the various Old Order Mennonite groups. For parallels between the various Old Order groups, see Hostetler, Beulah Stauffer, “The Formation of the Old Orders,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 65 (1992): 5–25.Google Scholar

18. See Schlabach, Theron F., Peace, Faith, Nation: Mennonites and Amish in Nineteenth-Century America (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1988), 295–321.Google Scholar

19. Mennonites continued to be more rurally oriented than Americans as a whole, though much less so than the Old Order Amish. As late as 1972, 38 percent of Mennonites still lived on farms of three acres or more. Kauffman, J. Howard and Harder, Leland, Anabaptists Four Centuries Later: A Profile of Five Mennonite and Brethren in Christ Denominations (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1975), 284.Google Scholar

20. For a mid-twentieth-century Mennonite statement on nonconformity, see Bender, Harold S., “Mennonite Church,” in Mennonite Encyclopedia (Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Publishing House, 1957), 3: 615.Google Scholar

21. Amish groups varied in their degrees of conservatism, as did Mennonite conferences, so the levels of neighborliness and estrangement often varied according to geography. For a more geographically focused pictureGoogle Scholar, see Kraybill, Donald B., “At the Crossroads of Modernity: Amish, Mennonites, and Brethren in the Modern Era,” Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage 10 (01 1987): 2–12;Google Scholar and Kraybill, Donald B. and Fitzkee, Donald R., “Amish, Mennonites, and Brethren in the Modern Era,” Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage 10 (04 1987): 2–11.Google Scholar

22. For dress distinctions between various Amish and Mennonite groups, see Gingerich, Melvin, Mennonite Attire through Four Centuries (Breinigsville, Pa.: Pennsylvania German Society, 1970).Google Scholar

23. For example, the Old Order Mennonites drove horses and buggies at midcentury (as did the Old Order Amish), but the Beachy Amish drove cars (as did Mennonites in the Mennonite Church). For a concise history of the Beachy Amish, who separated from the Old Order Amish in the late 1920s, see Nolt, History of the Amish, 233–36.Google Scholar

24. Writers sometimes expressed this dualism in different words, for instance, “plain and worldly,” “plain and gay,” and “sect and church.” See, for instance, Yoder, Don, “Plain Dutch and Gay Dutch: Two Worlds in the Dutch Country,” Pennsylvania Dutchman, Summer 1956, 34–55.Google Scholar

25. Erb, Paul, “Mennonites and Amish,” Gospel Herald, 5 07 1962, 507.Google Scholar

26. Bender, Elizabeth Horsch, “Three Amish Novels,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 19 (1945): 275.Google ScholarThe other two novels Bender considered were Helen Reimensnyder Martin'sSabina, A Story of the Amish, published in 1905, and Joseph Yoder's Rosanna of the Amish, published in 1940.Google Scholar

27. Dobson, Ruth Lininger, Straw in the Wind (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1937).Google ScholarDobson wrote the novel while a student at the University of Michigan, where it won the Hopwood Contest for Fiction in 1936.Google Scholar

28. Young, Stanley, “Indiana Patriarch,” New York Times Book Review, 21 02 1937, 6.Google Scholar Another reviewer, reflecting a similar progressive bias, wrote that Straw in the Wind deftly portrayed Indiana's Amish community, “where superstition and bigotry still survive.” M. S. U., review of Straw in the Wind, by Dobson, Ruth L., Saturday Review of Literature, 1 05 1937, 18.Google Scholar

29. Aurand, Ammon Monroe Jr, Little Known Facts about the Amish and the Mennonites: A Study of Pennsylvania's “Plain People” (Harrisburg, Pa.: Aurand, 1938).Google Scholar

30. John A. Hostetler to Paul Erb, 28 July 1953, in book editor's files, Mennonite Publishing House, Scottdale, Pennsylvania [hereafter, MPH]. The nature of bundling among the Old Order Amish, past and present, has been difficult to determine, in part because of variations between settlements. Throughout the twentieth century, some Amish communities have condemned bundling and rigorously guarded against it. Others have defended the practice as a time-honored and worthy tradition. Since the Amish communities that condone bundling tend to be more secluded, students of Amish culture have failed to establish the extent and the effects of the practice, for instance, the degree of chastity maintained by those who bundle. For the most careful midcentury discussion of this practice, see Smith, Elmer Lewis, The Amish Today: An Analysis of Their Beliefs, Behavior and Contemporary Problems (Allentown, Pa.: Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, 1961), 88–92.Google Scholar

31. For details on Hostetler's response to Aurand's publications, see Hostetler, John A., “An Amish Beginning,” American Scholar 61 (1992): 558.Google ScholarIn 1983, Hostetler and Herald Press released a different booklet titled Amish Life, and the original was retitled The Amish. The 800,000 sales figure pertains to the original Amish Life and its successor, The Amish.Google Scholar

32. Hostetler, John A., “Toward a New Interpretation of Sectarian Life in America,” Pennsylvania Dutchman, 15 06 1951, 1.Google Scholar

33. Hostetler, John A., Amish Society, 4th ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

34. For Hostetler's activities with respect to Witness, see Zercher, David L., “Homespun American Saints: The Discovery and Domestication of the Old Order Amish” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997),238–49.Google Scholar

35. Hostetler, Amish Life, 31; also, Hostetler, John A., “The Amish in American Culture,” American Heritage 3 (Summer 1952): 8.Google Scholar

36. Hostetler, “An Amish Beginning,” 554–55; and idem, Amish Society, 82.Google Scholar

37. Hostetler, Amish Life, 30 (“What Good Are They?”), 31. Cf. Morgan, Arthur E., The Small Community: Foundation of Democratic Life (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942).Google ScholarMorgan wrote: “For the preservation and transmission of the fundamentals of civilization, vigorous, wholesome community life is imperative. Unless many people live and work in the intimate relationships of community life, there never can emerge a truly unified nation, or a community of mankind” (19).Google Scholar

38. Hostetler, “Toward a New Interpretation of Sectarian Life in America,” 1.Google Scholar

39. Hostetler, “Toward a New Interpretation of Sectarian Life in America,” 7. For a general discussion of post-World War II scientific optimism, see Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 295–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. William G. Mather, introduction to Amish Life, v; and Amish Life advertisement in Pennsylvania Dutchman, 12 1952, 6.Google Scholar

41. Midcentury Mennonite writing on rural life is voluminous. For representative pieces, see J. Winfield Fretz, “Mennonites and Their Economic Problems,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 14 (1940): 195–213;Google ScholarHershberger, Guy Franklin, “Maintaining the Mennonite Rural Community,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 14 (1940): 214–23;Google Scholar and Gingerich, Melvin, “Rural Life Problems and the Mennonites,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 16 (1942): 167–73.Google Scholar See also Theron Schlabach, F., “To Focus a Mennonite Vision,” in Kingdom, Cross and Community, ed. Burkholder, John Richard and Redekop, Calvin (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1976), 35–38.Google Scholar

42. Fretz, J. Winfield, “Community,” in Mennonite Encyclopedia (Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Publishing House, 1955), 1: 657–58.Google Scholar The objectives of the Mennonite rural-life movement of the 1940^s and 1950^s mirrored the objectives of the earlier and more broadly based Country Life Movement that stretched back to the late nineteenth century. Because Mennonites underwent urbanization later than many Americans, their rural-life movement started comparatively late. For general accounts of rural problems, see Danbom, David B., The Resisted Revolution: Urban America and the Industrialization of Agriculture, 1900–1930 (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1979);Google Scholar and Bowers, William L., The Country Life Movement in America, 1900–1920 (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1974).Google Scholar

43. Hostetler sat on the editorial committee of Mennonite Community for almost three years (1950, 1952–53). When Christian Living superseded Mennonite Community in 1954, Hostetler served as the new periodical's community life editor for five years, until 1959.Google Scholar

44. In contrast to the long-held assumption that the Amish comprised a disappearing remnant, Kollmorgen demonstrated the opposite, and he attributed this strength to a faith that enabled the Amish to withstand the community-shattering assaults of technology and urbanization. See Kollmorgen, Walter M., Culture of a Contemporary Rural Community: The Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 1942).Google Scholar

45. Hostetler, “Toward a New Interpretation of Sectarian Life in America,” 1–2, 7.Google Scholar

46. Hostetler, , Amish Life, 10–11.Google Scholar

47. See, for example, Morgan, Small Community; Brownwell, Baker, The Human Community (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950);Google Scholar and Hitch, Earle, Rebuilding Rural America (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950).Google Scholar For secondary analyses, see Nelson, Philip Jeffrey, “An Elusive Balance: The Small Community in Mass Society, 1940–1960” (Ph.D. diss., Iowa State University, 1996);Google Scholar and Shi, David E., The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 215–47.Google Scholar

48. Hostetler, , Amish Life, 31.Google Scholar

49. According to Toews, Paul, Mennonites in American Society, 1930–1970: Modernity and the Persistence of Religious Community (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1996), of the Mennonite leaders who met in 1945 to form the Mennonite Community Association, none farmed (195).Google Scholar

50. Grant Stoltzfus, the editor of Mennonite Community, who in 1951 called for improved literature on the Mennonites and the Amish, reviewed Amish Life shortly after its release. He noted that “many will rejoice that at last something like this has appeared,” something that provides the public with “the truth” about the Amish. Grant M. Stoltzfus, review of Amish Life, by Hostetler, John A., Gospel Herald, 11 11 1952, 1118–19.Google Scholar

51. Miller's novels were The Crying Heart (1962); Katie (1966); The Tender Herb (1968); and To All Generations (1977). According to Herald Press sales records, the four novels sold a total of 31,819 copies in Herald Press hardback editions. Chicago-based Moody Press reprinted The Crying Heart in 1965 and Katie in 1974, selling 116,404 and 62,299 copies respectively.Google Scholar

52. Clara Bernice Miller to Ellrose Zook, 9 June 1965, in MPH book editor's files. The Ordnung is the orally based set of rules and regulations of a particular Amish community.

53. For biographical information on Clara Bernice Miller, see Vesta Miller to Paul Erb, 28 03 1961; Clara Bernice Miller to “Sirs,” 7 July 1961; and Ervin N. Hershberger to Paul Erb, 19 February 1962. All letters are in MPH book editor's files.Google Scholar

54. Miller, Katie, 72 (“would have thought”), 269 (“nothing wrong with the old”).Google Scholar

55. Miller, , Katie, 83.Google Scholar

56. Clara Bernice Miller to Ellrose Zook, 9 06 1965 (“Things are heartbreaking enough within the framework of the Amish without exaggeration”); Clara Bernice Miller to Ellrose Zook, 11 August 1965 (“Far be it from me to slander the Amish … [T]he manuscript shows a true picture of the average Amishman's spiritual light”); and Clara Bernice Miller to Maynard Shetler, 10 February 1967 (“[I]f the Amish fuss too much I'll write a book about them that is much worse. And true, too.”). All letters in MPH book editor's file.Google Scholar

57. Hostetler, John A., “God Visits the Amish,” Christian Living, 03 1954, 6–7, 40–41.Google Scholar

58. For positive Mennonite reviews of The Crying Heart, see Wenger, J. C.,yGospel Herald, 21 08 1962, 747;Google Scholar Gospel Evangel, September-October 1962, 16; and Melvin Gingerich, “On My Desk,” Mennonite Weekly Review, 1 November 1962, 4. For positive reviews of Katie, see Gingerich, Melvin, “On My Desk,” Mennonite Weekly Review, 19 01 1967, 4;Google Scholar andYoder, Elmer S., Missionary Bulletin, 05 1967, 8. Missionary Bulletin was a publication of the Conservative Mennonite Conference, a group closely affiliated with the Old Mennonites.Google Scholar

59. To be sure, this language of heartfelt conversion was not new to midcentury Mennonites, but it assumed added significance in this time of waning cultural distinctiveness. See Toews, , Mennonites and American Society, 214–28;Google Scholar and Hostetler, Beulah Stauffer, American Mennonites and Protestant Movements: A Community Paradigm (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1987), 279–87.Google Scholar Hostetler and Toews both cite William McLoughlin's revitalization thesis, which contends that religious awakenings occur during times of cultural disorientation. See McLoughlin, William G., Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607–1977 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).Google Scholar

60. As noted above, the prevalence of bundling among the Amish varied from place to place. Still, the survival of this close-body, sexually charged custom scandalized midcentury Mennonites, even as most American evangelicals were scandalized by dancing. Mennonites were further chagrined by Amish tobacco use, which midcentury Mennonites had largely abandoned. For a snide Mennonite commentary on tobacco usage, see the picture of a cigar-smoking Amishman, captioned “photo without comment,” in Christian Living, September 1968, 9. On Mennonite and Amish views on tobacco, see Bender, Harold S., “Tobacco,” in Mennonite Encyclopedia (Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Publishing House, 1959), 4: 732–34.Google Scholar

61. Miller, Crying Heart, 7. Paul Erb, who edited The Crying Heart, Miller's first novel, knew from the start that Miller was no longer Old Order Amish. Still, the book jacket read: “There have been many books about the Amish, but here is one written by an Amish woman. And because it comes from one inside the group, it is an authentic picture of the Amish in Iowa.”Google Scholar

62. Sharon Sue Ketcherside, review of The Crying Heart, by Clara Bernice Miller (“reliable portrayal”);Google ScholarRonald L. Peterson, review of The Crying Heart, by Miller, Clara B., The Banner, 15 10 1965, 24 (“pictures and descriptions”);Google Scholar and Daehling, Edythe M., review of The Tender Herb, by Clara Bernice Miller, Lutheran Women, 11 1968, 29 (“accurate and beguiling”). Ketcherside, who wrote for the Mission Messenger, sent her review to Herald Press, where it can be found in MPH book editor's files.Google Scholar

63. Neidermyer, Dan, Jonathan (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1973), 46.Google Scholar

64. Dan Neidermyer to Ellrose D. Zook, 05 1971, in MPH book editor's file.Google Scholar

65. Dan Neidermyer to Charles Shenk, 14 April 1971, in MPH book editors file. See also “Neidermyer Book to Debut Shortly,” Lancaster (Pa.) Sunday News, 10 06 1973, 29.Google Scholar

66. Ellrose Zook to Dan Neidermyer, 3 05 1971 (“we would appreciate your counseling us as to what the Amish reactions may be”); Dan Neidermyer to Ellrose Zook, May 1971 (“Two former Amish read JONATHAN; reaction was very favorable”); and Ellrose Zook to Dan Neidermyer, 6 June 1972 (“I believe you had some former Amish read it and they felt it was OK”). All letters in MPH book editor's files.Google Scholar

67. See Paul M. Schrock to Dan Neidermyer, 16 10 1972; and Richard H. Crockett to Dan Neidermyer, 1 November 1972. Both letters in MPH book editor's file. 68. Paul M. Schrock to Dan Neidermyer, 7 June 1973, in MPH book editor's file. Schrock replaced Ellrose Zook as the Herald Press book editor in 1972.Google Scholar

68. Paul M. Schrock to Dan Neidermyer, 7 June 1973, in MPH book editor's file. Schrock replaced Ellrose Zook as the Herald Press book editor in 1972.

69. See Maynard W. Shetler to Mrs. Carl E. Yoder, 26 06 1973; and Maynard W. Shetler to Anna Weaver, 5 September 1973, both in MPH book editor's file. In addition to Jonathan, Herald Press's realistic offerings included Omar Eby, The Sons of Adam (1970); Merle Good, Happy as the Grass is Green (1971); Omar Eby, How Full the River (1972) and A Covenant of Despair (1973); and Kenneth Reed, Mennonite Soldier (1974).Google Scholar

70. Ellrose D. Zook to Dan Neidermyer, 27 05 1971 (“exactly the same problem”); and Maynard Shetler to Mrs. Carl E. Yoder, 26 June 1973 (“true-to-life”). Both letters in MPH book editor's file.Google Scholar

71. Joseph Stoll to Dan Neidermyer, 24 08 1973 (“odd, ignorant”); and Roseanne S. Brennaman to Paul M. Schrock, 22 May 1974 (“stripped the Amish naked”). Both letters in MPH book editor's file.Google Scholar

72. Paul M. Schrock to Maggie Duffy, 29 05 1973. Letter in VI-6–2, box 3, “Paul Schrock, 1973–74” file, Archives of the Mennonite Church, Goshen, Ind.Google Scholar

73. Paul M. Schrock to C. W. Boyer, 26 09 1973 (“mixed reactions”); and Paul M. Schrock to Roseanne S. Brennaman, 24 May 1974 (“measure up”). Letters in MPH book editor's file.Google Scholar

74. Amish parties paid Herald Press nearly four thousand dollars to purchase 2,595 copies of Jonathan, with the understanding that Herald Press would then destroy those copies. Maynard W. Shetler to David Wagler, 6 September 1974. Letter and canceled check in “Jonathan” file at Heritage Historical Library, Aylmer, Ontario.Google Scholar

75. Reed, Kenneth, Mennonite Soldier (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1974).Google Scholar

76. Long after Jonathan had been pulled from publication, Herald Press's publishing agent continued to defend the novel's truthful nature. Ben Cutrell claimed the shredding decision was made “in Christian consideration” to the Amish, who found the book's portrayals of Amish immorality “offensive.” But, wrote Cutrell, “I cannot agree that the book is evil and should not have been published… As a steward of God and responsible person at Mennonite Publishing House, I want to continue to ‘speak the truth in love’ through literature by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Ben Cutrell to C. W. Boyer, 6 11 1974, in MPH book editor's file.Google Scholar

77. In A. Martha Denlinger's Real People: Amish and Mennonites in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. (1975) Herald press returned to the genre that John Hosteler introduced twenty years earlier, the tourist-oriented descriptive booklet. With the exceptions of clara Miller's To All Generations (1977) and Barbara Smucker's Amish Adventure (1983), Herald Press avoided the realm of Amish-theme fiction for fifteen years, until the inauguration of Mary Borntrager's ten-volume “Ellie's People” series in 1988. Borntrager's novels demonstrated the acquired reticence of Herald Press to explore Amish life in a realistic fashion, as did anotherHerald Press endeavor, Carrie Bender's five-volume “Miriam's Journal” series, launched in 1993. The novels sold quickly. According to Herald Press's 1996–97 catalog, nearly 450,000 “Ellie's People” books were in print, and over 80,000 “Miriam's Journal” books were in print. For the year ending 31 January 1997, twelve Bender or Borntrager novels placed among Herald Press's twenty-five best-selling titles.Google Scholar

78. Of course, some Mennonites continue to use the Amish as a positive foil, that is, as a way to critique Mennonite life. See, for instance, Preheim, Rich, “Identity, Complacency and Making Headlines in This World,” The Mennonite, 1 09 1998, 16.Google Scholar

79. A recent example of a commercially driven, uncharitable representation of the Amish was “The Secret Life of the Amish,” a journalistic expose that debuted on ABC's 20/20 on 21 February 1997. In “Secret Life,” 20/20 countered idealized images of the Amish by citing examples of child abuse and psychological cruelty in an Ohio Amish settlement. While the incidents cited were not fabricated, the presentation as a whole was unbalanced, giving disenchanted ex-members the first and last word on Amish life. For a critique of 20/20's exposé, see Lehman, Dan W., “Graven Images and the (Re)presentation of Amish Trauma,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 72 (1998): 577–87.Google Scholar