Peaceful Societies

A Mennonite man from southeastern Pennsylvania cheated Amish and Mennonite investors out of nearly 60 million dollars, according to an article in the Washington Post. Philip E. Riehl faces federal charges for securities fraud and conspiracy.

A milk product from the Trickling Springs Creamery (Photo by Elle Cayabyab Gitlin on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Riehl was the majority owner of the Trickling Springs Creamery, an organic dairy business in Chambersburg that abruptly shut its doors in September last year. The story in the Post provides a detailed account of the fraudulent aspects of the business and of an investment fund he founded for the members of the Amish and Mennonite communities, the Riehl Investment Program. The people who trusted him and invested their savings in the creamery or directly in the fund may have lost it all.

He supposedly told his investors that the creamery was a successful business and that his fund was profitable. But operations at the creamery were losing money and were being supported by investors’ money. Federal prosecutors said that the fund was “plagued by defaults and uncollectable debts.”

The West End Mennonite Fellowship in Lancaster advertises its commitment as “A Church for All People” (Photo by Allie_Caulfield on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The lengthy Post article chronicles the lies and deceptions that Riehl was using and his fraudulent ways of getting funds from his religious community—Mennonites and Amish who trusted his expertise. The reporter quotes from an SEC document about the swindler’s exploitative methods of getting money: “Riehl knew that members of his religious community had a high level of trust and respect for one another, and he relied on this trust to secure investments.” Riehl and his three associates have been excommunicated from their Mennonite churches.

According to another news report on the Ponzi scheme, he did write a letter of apology in 2019 to the people who had trusted him with their funds. The details about the various federal and state charges against Riehl are not as important as the basic story: he violated the trust of the Amish and Mennonites in Pennsylvania. Many of them may be traditional enough to believe in the old saying about how one bad apple can spoil a whole basket. At the least, the proverbial bad apple can color the perception of the rest of the crop by the general public.

Tomorrow, February 14, people in the United States and many other countries will celebrate Valentine’s Day, not as an official holiday but as a folk celebration of romantic love. If you can ignore the commercial aspects of the occasion, this unofficial holiday celebrates the love among couples that can foster nonviolence. For an advocate of peace, Valentine’s Day is more enjoyable than some official holidays that tend to promote militarism and possible warfare.

A stitched valentine
(Photo by oddharmonic on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The question for this website is, how do the various peaceful societies view romantic love? A number of anthropologists who have studied these societies have touched on marriage patterns and relationships between lovers; at least two have gone into some detail about those issues. In the spirit of St. Valentine, it is worth examining the different approaches that the Semai and the Ifaluk take toward romance. And the second question is, how do their views on love relate to their peacefulness?

In 1981, Clayton Robarchek published an important article that included a discussion of love among the Semai entitled “The Image of Nonviolence: World View of the Semai Senoi.” He analyzed the Semai responses to sentence completion tests, which showed that the answers all clustered around two primary values—affiliation and nurturance. He defined affiliation as maintaining harmonious interpersonal relations, while nurturance meant supporting others physically, materially, or emotionally with both a giving and receiving spirit.

A 66-year old Semai woman holding tapioca for sale in Kampung Rening, Cameron Highlands (Photo by tian yake on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Robarcheck explained that some Semai concepts include both nurturing and affiliating meanings, such as their word hoo’, which could be translated as “love.” To outsiders, hoo’ is a word of affiliation, but to the Semai the concept also includes nurturing values. The sentence completions by the Semai show that they do not think of goodness and badness in people as direct opposites. They think of goodness as positive nurturing behavior—helping, giving, loving, making friends. They define badness as the presence of negative affiliation behaviors such as slander, gossip, ignoring advice, fighting, hitting, and stealing, much more than the absence of nurturant behaviors—the absence of helpfulness and giving. In essence, their concepts of good and evil lie on opposite poles of different, but overlapping, dimensions.

A Semai man in Kampung Asli Rening, in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia (Photo by tian yake on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Five years later, Robarchek published another article (1986) that expanded on the points he had made earlier. In a sentence completion test, he asked his Semai subjects, “More than anything else, (s)he is afraid of …” The most common response was “becoming embroiled in a dispute,” a reply that was more frequently given than fears of tigers, spirits, and death combined.

He wrote that relations between spouses ideally are conceived of in terms of nurturance and dependence. Wives and husbands should feel hoo’ toward one another, though the connotations of protecting, nurturing, cherishing, and supporting are emphasized as well by the word. The most common response to the question, “More than anything else (s)he worries about…” was “rejection by his/her spouse.”

Ifaluk wearing their lava lavas (detail from the cover of the book Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory, by Catherine A. Lutz)

The Ifaluk also value the concept of close love among romantic couples and, like the Semai, their concepts are quite different from those held by Westerners. In her 1988 book about the Ifaluk, Catherine Lutz described how they think of fago (compassion/love/sadness) as a link between the needs of one person and the nurturing feelings of others.

For instance, a woman expresses fago for the singer on the radio; a man indicates his fago for his son, and reprimands his brother because of his drinking, that he doesn’t fago his own life. Ifaluk personal names include the word: Lefagochang (love and generosity), Fagoitil (love quickening), Lefagoyag (love binding), Fagolimul (love and generosity).

And answering our second question above, Lutz writes (p.136) “fago is also seen as an emotion that can prevent violence.” The concept implies a feeling of love for the potential victim of one’s anger, which short-circuits violence. Children are raised with the constant feeling of fago for other children: when a toddler picked up a piece of coral and made a threatening gesture toward another, the adults nearby immediately called out the need for him to fago the other kid.

The Ifaluk fago people because of their exemplary behavior as well as because of their needs or their being in danger. They particularly appreciate a person who is maluwelu (calm, like the water in the lagoon), since that individual is gentle, compassionate, and does not frighten others. The calm person is giving, which should be reciprocated with fago (compassion) as much as needed. The maluwelu person creates fago in others.

Maroligar, the second-ranking chief on Ifaluk in 1953, has tattoos on his face and arms (Image from the Atoll Research Bulletin no. 494, Golden Issue 1951-2001. U.S. National Museum of Natural History, in the public domain)

The emotion of fago is only brought to full flower by understanding and intelligence, by the mature ability of people to understand their language and social system. In fact, fago is linked to power: the higher one’s position in the social hierarchy, the more one is expected to fago others. The chiefs fago precisely because they are intelligent and mature. Their fago is measured by the extent of their nurturance, by their well-behaved, calm demeanor, and by their gentleness.

It would be inaccurate to try and generalize a way to promote peacefulness among the peoples of the world from the values attached to hoo’ and fago by the Semai and the Ifaluk. But it is clear that these two highly peaceful societies attach a lot of meanings to the concepts of romantic love. Perhaps we should hope that instead of valentine’s cards, boxes of candy, and bouquets of flowers to celebrate this special day among people, Americans might begin to associate words like fondness, devotion, and peacefulness to February 14. We don’t need to adopt the terminology of the Semai or the Ifaluk, but we could try to emulate the ways they tie love to their creations of nonviolent societies.

Like most of the other societies described in this website, the designation of the Tahitians as “peaceful” rests on careful analysis by a qualified anthropologist. Robert Levy convincingly provided detailed analyses of conditions on the ground in a particular time and place—the Society Islands in the 1960s. But how have social and cultural conditions changed over the years since that original assessment was made? Are they still as nonviolent as they used to be?

Two Tahitian women (Photo by Jeyan in Wikipedia, Creative Commons license)

Unfortunately, physical violence in Tahiti, and particularly within Tahitian families, is rising. According to figures released on January 28 by the High Commissioner for Polynesia, Dominique Sorain, the statistics for numerous types of violence for 2019 show some improvements—decreases in violence—but other categories show increases.

At a press conference shared with four other officials, M. Sorain announced the priorities of the government for stemming violence as controlling the use of illegal drugs, the pursuit of road safety, and the need to prevent family violence. The report by the High Commissioner presented detailed summaries of the statistical trends in several categories.

The rate of damage to property, his first category, made a 4 percent improvement last year compared to 2018. He cited a total of 5,200 incidents of vandalism, theft, scams, and breach of trust. That total represents 19.01 offenses per 1000 inhabitants, compared to the figure for all of France of 32.27.

Tahitian road traffic (Photo by Peter Gill in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

Another category of violence that showed some improvement compared to the previous year is deaths due to accidents on the roads. There were 142 last year compared with 183 in 2018. Sorain attributed the improvement, at least in part, to police patrolling plus an awareness campaign.

Turning to categories that showed increases in violence in 2019, he started off with the figures for interpersonal violence: 2,929 incidents, of which 81 percent were within the family. The bar chart he presented showed a rate of just over 2,500 incidents the previous year. The High Commissioner identified domestic violence as the highest priority problem in Polynesia.

The Taaone Hospital in Tahiti (Photo by Eole Wind in Flickr, Creative Commons license)

He said that the figures for domestic violence are increasing because the government is encouraging Tahitians to file complaints. The government is implementing a range of measures to search for answers. In the second half of 2020, a medico-judicial unit will be created in the Taaone Hospital that will allow the police to be involved with health care matters such as domestic violence.

Another category of violence to show an increase in 2019 is drug-related offenses, up 10 percent compared to 2018. The rate of 6.38 incidents per 1,000 inhabitants of Polynesia compares to 3.2 for France as a whole. The High Commissioner said that a significant contributing factor is the growing use of ice. However, the record year for the capture of ice was 2017.

These current statistics on violence among the Tahitians contrast with the impressions of their society 60 years ago gained by Robert I. Levy when he was doing his fieldwork among them. In one of his works, Levy (1978) described his careful observations at two Tahitian communities in the early 1960’s. His work was reviewed in a news story in December 2017, though his points are important enough to mention again briefly.

Levy saw that the Tahitians did not have many problems with hostilities. Furthermore, people did not show much anxiety, stress, physical or muscular strain, or psychological problems. The anthropologist concluded that the Tahitian people managed hostility without it becoming a problem.

The physical environment of the Tahitians in Faanui, a village on Bora Bora in the Society Islands — The physical environment of the Tahitians in Faanui, a village on Bora Bora (Photo by Makemake in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

He also observed that the cultural and physical environment on Tahiti exerted a lot of influence on the gentleness of the Tahitians. The adaptation of the villages to the natural environment minimized external frustrations—food and other needs were easily available and plentiful. Further, their culture helped reduce frustration. For instance, they believed they had little control over nature or the behavior of others. They felt that trying to change the nature of reality would probably cause a rebound that could destroy the initiator.

People were optimistic but passive at the same time, a condition that was produced by their methods of socialization and reinforced by other values and practices in their society. Their universe was less frustrating for them than one where individuals are believed to be able to change things.

In that same article, Levy indirectly offered a little hope that the increases in violence noted by the High Commissioner last week might yet be reversed. He observed how Western visitors to Tahiti in the 18th and 19th centuries reported that the Tahitians were peaceable and gentle to one another. The exception was during the early 19th century, 1810-1820, when there were reports of violence and heavy drinking, probably due to the recent arrival of Protestant missionaries and the stress of a transition to new patterns prompted by Western influences.

However, Levy noted that things soon settled back into their former, gentle ways. Hopefully, the Tahitians will be able to do the same thing again—to reach back into their past traditions and find ways to recover their peaceful culture.

On India’s Republic Day, January 26, the Birhor living in a small village in the state of Bihar were connected to the electric grid with the rest of modern India. Two days later, the Hindustan Times published a description of the village and the ceremonies involved with turning on the electricity.

Birhor village residents (Cover photo from the book The Birhors of Chotanagpur Region by Sudhir Kumar)

Light bulbs flickered on in the village of Dudhimati, in the Nawadi District of Bihar that day. The correspondent writing the story colorfully referred to the village, in the words of the Google translation, as a bunch of “houses without windows and doors.” But the people finally joined, in a few ways, the mainstream of Indian society. The local Sub-divisional Officer, Chandrashekhar Azad, had taken the initiative in bringing modernization to the village.

About 100 people live in the 20 dwellings in Dudhimati. Except for one house which already had an electric connection, the administration has provided new light bulbs in all the other homes.

Birhor woman with children (Screen capture from the video “Birhor—a Tribe Displaced for Nothing” by VideoVolunteers on YouTube, Creative Commons license)

The Republic Day ceremonies in the village (in India, Republic Day is essentially their Independence Day) also included a special gift for the Birhor children. Karyanand Sharma, President of Bright Career Educational and Welfare Trust of Nawada, pledged to support primary education for free for the 21 children in Dudhimati. Support from the trust includes an arrangement whereby a teacher in a nearby school will begin teaching reading to the kids. They also are providing school clothing for the children plus pencils, pens, and copy books.

Furthermore, administrators decided that the village needed to have road access—the footpaths to the outside were no longer good enough. Heavy equipment was used to cut a new roadway through foothills to reach the community. Soon the road will be paved. Also, a water tank and public toilets are in the works.

During the Republic Day ceremonies in the village, the oldest resident, 89-year-old Arjun Birhor, raised a flag held by Chandrashekhar Azad , the Sub-divisional Officer. Prakashveer, the local member of the legislative assembly, attended as did other administrators of the subdivision. The people of the village reportedly crowded around, quite curious to see what was going on.

A group of volunteers in Egypt is beginning to compile a dictionary of the Nubian language in order to save it from going extinct.

The cover of the pamphlet published by Koma Waidi with 230 Nubian words translated (Image of the cover included in an article in The Arab Weekly)

According to an article published last week in The Arab Weekly, the volunteers, calling themselves the Koma Waidi initiative, Nubian for “Tales of the Past,” have published a pamphlet describing 230 Nubian words. The article quotes Hafsa Amberkab, one of the volunteers, as emphasizing the importance of saving the language before it is completely forgotten. With every death of an elderly Nubian, more bits of the language are forgotten. “This great language sustains a new loss every day,” says Amberkab.

When many Egyptian Nubians were relocated to other communities in the 1960s due to the construction of the Aswan Dam, they left behind in their abandoned villages not only their homes but also their culture and their language. Adapting to life in cities dominated by Arabic-speaking Egyptians, a foreign language to Nubians, many focused on starting new lives. That included learning to speak the language of the majority and teaching it to the next generation.

A Nubian elder (Photo by Barthwo on Pixabay, Creative Commons license)

Over the years, many young Nubians have become increasingly ignorant of the language of their society, though some elders are trying to pass it along to their children and grandchildren. The Koma Waida initiative is attempting to fill in the gap, to preserve the language spoken by living elders before it’s too late.

Volunteers such as Amberkab are traveling to villages in southern Egypt and seeking out people who are willing to be recorded and filmed speaking their native Nubian. The volunteers then take the videos to scholars who translate the words into Arabic, English and Spanish. “It was very useful documenting these words before they are either forgotten or dead with the people who can still speak them,” Amberkab said.

The future of the Nubians in Aswan (Photo by Eve Fouché in Flickr, Creative Commons license)

It took several weeks for the volunteers to collect the data and produce the booklet. They hope it will be the first step in producing a dictionary of the Nubian language. According to Mustafa Abdel Qadir, an expert in Nubian culture, the language is really “only alive in the minds of those who lived in Nubia before the construction of the High Dam.” Many words and terms have already died as the people who used them have passed on.

Fatma Ghadar, another volunteer, expressed the fear that some day the Nubian language will only be a thing of the past. That is what motivates the self-funded volunteers to continue their work. “New generations of Nubians can learn this language only when it is documented,” says Ghadar. The volunteers tell The Arab Weekly that losing the Nubian language would be a major loss for humanity.

On Monday, January 20, the government of Egypt celebrated its settlement of the claims of the Nubian people with an event in Aswan. Egyptian Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli attended along with several other national cabinet ministers: Housing Minister Assem El-Gazzar, Culture Minister Enas Abdel Dayem, and Social Solidarity Minister Nevin Al-Qabbaj.

Moustafa Madbouli, Prime Minister of Egypt (Photo by Philip Kavalas in Wikimedia, cropped, Creative Commons license)

In his comments at the celebration, as reported by the news magazine Egypt Today, the Prime Minister praised the government’s support for the Nubian people and its determination to resolve the issues they face. He also discussed development projects that have been implemented in Upper Egypt such as health, roads, education, electricity, housing, sanitation, and drinking water. His participation in the celebration symbolizes the commitment of the government to the region and its people, he said.

In June last year the government of Egypt, carrying out the orders of President Abdel al-Sisi, announced a plan to compensate Nubians who could claim damages due to the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the early 1960s or damages from the creation of Lake Nasser behind it.

The committee charged with determining the people who were eligible for compensation found that 11,716 individuals had valid claims. It determined that 7,865 Nubians were affected by the construction of the dam and another 3,851 by the reservoir itself.

A mud brick building and a donkey cart on a farm in Nubia (Photo by COSV in Wikimedia, free use)

Omar Marwan, another official, replied to a question about the type of compensation the Nubians will be getting. He said they will be receiving lands, houses or cash depending on their circumstances. Some will get agricultural lands. Nubians who have already built homes on state lands will be granted legal ownership. People who built houses on land fronting on rivers will be granted permanent rights to ownership of the properties.

A massive, but entirely peaceful, demonstration was held in Leh on Sunday, January 12, by Ladakhi students demanding self-government within the provisions of the 6th schedule in the Indian constitution. Schedule 6 allows the government to form autonomous district councils to administer areas that have already been given autonomy within their states.

The Main Bazaar in Leh (Photo by Christopher Michel in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

According to the Wikipedia, 10 districts in Northeast India have been designated as 6th Schedule areas but the Leh and Kargil districts of Ladakh, which also have been designated as autonomous, have not been given self-government. So the students, who had been protesting quietly in a tent camp at Leh’s Old Bus Stand, decided to publicize their demands more dramatically.

A newspaper from that region of India published an article referring to the protest march the students organized as the “first of its kind [a] unique peaceful procession.” The dramatic protest in Leh , which included singing of folk songs, ended at the Balkhang Chowk Main Bazaar in the small city. There, the students performed a skit to dramatize the importance of the 6th Schedule for Ladakhis.

The event was organized under the banner of the group Students Organization of Unified Ladakh (SOUL). The President of SOUL, Rigzin Dorjay, released a song he had composed for the occasion about the need for the 6th Schedule to be implemented.

Rural students dancing at a village school function in the Puga Valley of the Chang Tang region, southeastern Ladakh. (Screenshot from the video “Ladakh ‘Six Souls of Puga: The Wind of Change’” Documentary Film Part 2, by Chamba Kaysar on YouTube, Creative Commons license)

Stanzin Tsetan, an advisor to SOUL, commented to the reporter that the folk music and singing during the procession were important facets of the heritage of Ladakh. The organizers of the event wanted to showcase the Ladakhi traditions as well as their demand for Schedule 6.

A press release from SOUL indicated that the students planned to take Monday off and then resume their “chain hunger strike” demanding Schedule 6 on Tuesday the 14th.

The Okapi Conservation Project loaded a news story into its website recently describing the interrelationships between the okapis and the Mbuti people. They have shared their lives in the Ituri Forest for 40,000 years. The organization now recognizes that the Mbuti should have a special management relationship to the okapis, a species of forest giraffe. One of the goals of the organization is to create more opportunities for the Mbuti to become involved in Okapi research and management.

A Mbuti net hunter near Epulu (Photo by Radio Okapi in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

When this new approach was introduced to the Mbuti not long ago, they quickly agreed. They soon discovered an okapi mother and her calf about four km. from the village of Epulu, an important community next to the Okapi Wildlife Reserve.

The article points out that harming okapis and chimpanzees is forbidden in Mbuti culture: they believe the animals embody forest spirits. Hence, they think they must live in harmony with one another and contribute to projects that will help protect the animals.

The approximately 5000 Mbuti who live within the bounds of the Okapi Reserve have been particularly involved with the recent celebration of World Okapi Day. Also, they speak at groundbreaking events for new buildings being built in the reserve and they assist patrolling rangers. The Okapi Dispensary has recently been equipped with beds so Mbuti can sleep there, a recognition of the importance of their culture in the reserve.

An okapi in the Ituri Forest (Photo by Kim Gjerstad/Terese Hart on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

In sum, the organization is now fully aware of the value of including the Mbuti in management efforts for the okapi. After all, the forest people understand the forest ecosystem and can contribute immeasurable skills to management programs. Three Mbuti began employment as forest rangers in 2018.

The discovery of the Okapi mother and her calf has led to extensive observations of the pair by the Mbuti. They have tracked the two, collected samples of their diet and their stool, and recorded the hoof prints of the mother and her calf. They developed an ingenious method for recording the hoof prints by outlining them with tough grasses.

The article expresses hope that the information the Mbuti will be able to provide to the staff at the Okapi Conservation Project, particularly about the relations between a mother and her offspring, will prove to be useful. The staff plans to set up camera traps and teach the Mbuti how to service them. They also want to teach them how to make plaster casts of hoof prints in order to gather more accurate data on the growth of the calf.

In case the links in the Okapi Conservation Project website are not working correctly, this interesting article on the Mbuti and their relationship to the charismatic forest animals can easily be found by doing a Google search for the title of the news article, “Mbuti Pygmies Assist with Monitoring Okapi.”

An article in the Namibia Economist last week indicated that the Ju/’hoansi in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy are using donated funds to build stone walls around village water facilities to protect them from elephants.

Elephants in Namibia ( Photo by Frank Vassen on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The Conservancy has around 18 water points which need to be shared among the human residents and about 1000 – 1500 elephants. The rock walls—about two meters high—are completely elephant proof, so once the boreholes, water storage tanks, and equipment are all protected from the big animals, the villagers can invest in projects that require secure water such as agriculture and livestock.

Three villages are receiving the funding to build the walls from two sources: the Green Climate Fund and the Environmental Investment Fund of Namibia. The former is an international development funding agency headquartered in South Korea. It invests in projects that seek to counteract the effects of global climate change in the developing countries.

The drought that has affected all of Namibia has stressed wildlife searching for water, which has had an impact on the gardens that the villagers have been trying to protect. The GCF/EIF funded project will also service and overhaul all the village boreholes in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy during the coming year.

Women doing craft work at a San village in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy (Photo by Gil Eilam on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The news story last week updates a report in this website from April 2017 that described in some detail the development of water resources in the Ju/’hoansi San villages and the importance of protecting them from harm. The Ju/’hoansi used to move about following the natural availability of water but now that they have settled into permanent villages, they clearly need secure sources of it.

That 2017 report indicated that one solution to the conflict between elephants and the villagers’ need for secure water was to provide water for the animals with the hope that they would not be as inclined to harm the facilities in the villages. To judge by the news story last week, it appears as if the Conservancy is now focusing on effectively preventing the elephants from approaching the water facilities. It’s the only strategy that really works.

It’s an election year in the U.S. and once again the Republicans are looking for ways to get more votes in Pennsylvania from the Amish. A news story on a Harrisburg-area television station last week described their latest attempt to court the Lancaster County Amish.

A group of Amish and Mennonites wave to President George Bush during his visit to Lancaster, PA, in 2006 (Photo by Kimberlee Hewitt, White House image, in the public domain)

According to the report, the Trump administration invited some Amish people to meet with the president in the White House, the first time such a meeting has occurred. Congressman Lloyd Smucker, a Republican who represents Lancaster County, helped facilitate the meeting, though he indicated it was at the behest of the administration.

Kyle Kopko, Associate Professor of Political Science at Elizabethtown College, told the television reporter that wherever the Amish have registered to vote, they have overwhelmingly done so as Republicans. He said that the Amish population is doubling about every 20 years and they typically vote quite strongly for conservative candidates. However, “this is going to be a generational change,” he argued. Their voting is not likely to be significant in the 2020 election.

Steven Nolt, Professor of Anabaptist Studies at Elizabethtown, said that while a third of the Amish in Lancaster County remain farmers, the majority of them are now the owners of small businesses. Important issues for them are limiting the regulation of businesses by governments, limiting taxation, and securing religious liberty—classic Republican values.

But Prof. Nolt also said that the Amish are conscientious objectors; issues such as exemptions from serving in the military and not being required to send their kids to high school are important to them. He felt that having the president’s ear may prove to be beneficial for them.

Both professors indicated that political changes won’t occur overnight, though they agreed with the truism that every vote counts. The fate of the election in 2000 was decided by 537 votes in Florida for George Bush. If the 2020 election is as close, and if Pennsylvania turns out to be the keystone state, 1000 more Amish votes in Lancaster County could possibly decide the election, according to Dr. Kopko.

President Bush meets some Amish in Lancaster County, PA, August 16, 2006 (Photo by Kimberlee Hewitt, White House image, in the public domain)

Earlier news stories in this website have mentioned this hope among Republican operatives in the state. A report in 2008 analyzed the 2004 election in which then-President Bush campaigned in Lancaster County. Despite the conservative values that Bush seemed to uphold and his genuinely charming public manner, the Lancaster County Amish in the long run may have also been opposed to voting for a president who had led the U.S. into a war with Iraq. Many of them appeared to sit out the election and let God, in their view, decide who would be the next president.

Another article in 2016 made similar points to the one eight years earlier. Despite the folksy, likeable style of Bush, and his frequent references to God in his speeches, the Amish had qualms about voting for him in 2004 due mostly to his war in Iraq. Out of more than 10,000 potential Amish voters in Lancaster County that year, just over 1,300 voted.

A reporter quoted in 2016 questioned noted authority on the Amish Donald Kraybill, also from Elizabethtown College, about the prospects for the 2016 election. Kraybill replied that while the Amish do tend to respect successful business executives, Donald Trump’s boastful style is antithetical to their passion for humility.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Fraud in Amish Country

Valentine’s Day and Peace

Increases in Violence among the Tahitians

Electricity Reaches a Birhor Village

Saving the Nubian Language

Nubian Claims Settled

A Peaceful Protest in Ladakh

Mbuti Help Manage the Okapi

Keeping Elephants out of Water Sources

Republicans Seek Amish Votes

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