Peaceful Societies

Sam Mullet and his followers were members of a cult—they were not really Amish people, according to Donald Kraybill, a leading scholar of Anabaptist studies at Elizabethtown College. Mullet, plus a number of men and women in his congregation, were convicted last September in federal court of hate crimes for aggressively cutting the hair and beards of people in the autumn of 2011.

Kraybill explained his perspectives at a public seminar held at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies on the Elizabethtown (PA) campus two weeks ago. His views appear to be similar to those of another prominent scholar of Amish studies, David Weaver-Zercher, who gave a similar presentation only three weeks earlier. The two scholars have collaborated in writing two different books about the Amish (Kraybill et al. 2007 and 2010).

Kraybill told the 250 people who attended his talk that Mullet was a loner who didn’t really affiliate his group in Bergholtz, Ohio, with other Amish districts. His group thrived for a while after he founded it in 1995, but after he excommunicated eight families in 2006, the group started having serious troubles.

About 300 Amish bishops gathered together in Ulysses, Pennsylvania, to discuss the situation in Bergholtz. The extent and style of the excommunications were extraordinarily arbitrary, the professor said. “He was a lone ranger and was basically independent,” he told the audience.

The gathering of bishops decided to make an exception for Mullet’s actions and agreed to accept the excommunicated families into other church districts. Kraybill explained that the decision by the bishops undercut Mullet’s authority, since Amish people in Bergholtz could then disobey his whims and not fear his power over them. They could easily gain acceptance into another district, if necessary.

From that point on, according to Kraybill, Mullet’s hold on his group started to go downhill, and it became more and more cult-like. Mullet started to consider himself as pure, a figure like Elijah, and all other Amish in his mind were wrong. He thought of himself “as a prophet of God, and all the other Amish as prophets of Baal,” Kraybill argued.

The cultish characteristics increased. He subjected disobedient members to physical punishments, locked members who crossed him in a chicken coop, and sexually abused the wives of members. His attitudes and activities led to further excommunications, followed by the beard and hair cutting incidents. These activities prompted police action and then federal involvement under the hate crimes statute.

Because of all those developments, Kraybill denies, as Weaver-Zercher did, that Mullet and his followers were actually Amish. “In my opinion they were moving very rapidly in a cult-like direction, so I do not like to use the word Amish because I think they represent all sorts of things that are not at all at the heart and soul of genuine Amish faith and worship,” Kraybill concluded.

He added that neither riding around in a horse-drawn buggy, nor dressing differently, makes one an Amish person. The infamous actions in the vicinity of Bergholtz, Ohio, a year and a half ago clearly set them apart from the peaceful society known as the “Amish,” in the opinions of two leading scholars on the subject.

Two years ago the Indian press covered a hopeful story about a Yanadi village that had established a crab framing operation near Sorlagondi, a coastal community in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

DRDO Last week, a news source reported that the Indian Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) has completed studies about the suitability of a 321 acre tract of land in Nagayalanka mandal, near Sorlagondi, the Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh. It has proposed that the land be designated as the site of a long-range missile testing facility. It is not clear if the new facility will destroy the Yanadi fish farming operation described two years ago, but it is clearly in the same vicinity.

V. K. Saraswat, the Directory-General of DRDO, approved investigating the missile launching facility last November, and three months later a team of four had completed surveying for the proposed development. An official for the Nagayalanka mandal, D. Chandra Sekhar, told The Hindu newspaper that the detailed government survey noted the physical characteristics of the landscape, including the locations of mangroves and salt ponds.

Much of the proposed 321 acres will be taken from the Sorlagondi Reserve Forest, said G. P. Anand, the Eluru Divisional Forest Officer for Wildlife Management. Some land will also be taken from common forest areas, which presently include fish ponds and mangroves.

According to The Hindu, the local fishing people are quickly speaking out in opposition. The Marine Products Export Development Authorities have allowed local people to develop fish ponds in the area, the news article reports, and many of those ponds evidently fall within the proposed project boundaries.

If the project does, indeed, destroy the work of the Yanadi village, it would represent a strange repetition of history. Reddy and Reddy (1987) analyzed the consequences for the Yanadi communities of Sriharikota Island when the government of India built a space rocket launching facility there over 40 years ago. Sriharikota is also located on the coast of Andhra Pradesh but about 150 miles south of Sorlagondi.

When the people living on the island were resettled to new villages on the mainland by the government of India in 1969, according to the authors, many aspects of their culture were changed. The reciprocity and cooperation between families, which had characterized their previous lifestyle on the large island, were replaced for the most part by the individualism of an economy based on wage labor. The family economy, which before the resettlement was the primary unit of production and barter, became less relevant since wages derived from laboring jobs allowed people to purchase necessities from stores.

Although husbands and wives previously cooperated in producing foods, after the relocation the men became the primary wage earners and they derived more authority in their families. When they abandoned their subsistence activities, their commitments to other aspects of their culture, such as their feasts, ceremonies, and ritualized gift-giving, were also undermined.

Reddy and Reddy also observed that the Yanadi reliance on shamans for healing declined after they were relocated. Their former recreational activities—visiting friends and relatives, playing, dancing—also diminished due to the lack of resources and time. The Yanadi lost their strong attachments to their natural environment in their new mainland villages.

Obviously it is not clear if the Yanadi community described two years ago with the fish farming operation will be affected by the new development, but the news story implies that the government is not asking the local fish farmers their opinions about the proposed missile launching facility. India’s desire for rockets and missiles may trump local considerations about subsistence and cultural preservation, just as it did many decades ago.

The Voice of America news service reported last week that the San groups in Botswana, including the G/wi, have filed a court suit against the government for continuing to deny them access to their lands. Survival International (SI), an indigenous rights organization based in London, is aiding the San peoples in their struggle.

Despite the fact that the San won a major court battle against the Botswana government in 2006 guaranteeing them the rights to their lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), the government, according to the San, continues to hassle them. SI alleges that government harassments and efforts to intimidate the San people have been increasing in recent months, prompting this latest court action.

Rachel Stenham, a spokesperson for SI, says that one of the ways the government is attacking the San is by denying them permission to reenter the CKGR when they have temporarily left. The San people are afraid, she said, “to stay inside the reserve for fear they either will be taken out by force, or the next time they try to go back into the reserve, they will not be allowed to go back in to see their families.”

She also said that the Botswana paramilitary police, the Special Support Group, has taken to patrolling the CKGR looking for people that, they allege, are hunting illegally. She indicated that several San people have been arrested while using traditional methods of hunting game.

News reports several months ago indicated that the government has outlawed hunting by the indigenous people. It has started arresting people for gathering wild foods as well as for hunting without the permits that are never, in fact, issued.

Stenham told the Voice of America that the San people must be permitted to live in peace on their traditional lands. But the government’s policies are making life very difficult for them. “They are not being allowed to hunt, and game is basically the main food that the Bushmen totally rely on,” Stenham said.

Jumanda Gakelebone, a San spokesperson that VOA contacted, emphasized the importance to his people of having access to their traditional lands. “If you talk about somebody’s…land, you talk about his life, you talk about his origin…. That land was my healing. That land was my origin. That land was everything.”

The Piaroa, and the other indigenous groups in Venezuela, are speaking out in opposition to a national mining policy which they feel threatens their lives, their environments, and their cultural values. The Venezuelan Association for the Advancement of Science announced on its website last week that the Coordinadora de Organizaciones Indígenas del Estado Amazonas (COIAM), which represents Indian groups in southern Venezuela, has issued a statement protesting the proposed mining.

The various Indian groups met in Puerto Ayacucho, capital of the state of Amazonas, to discuss mining plans by the national and state governments that might affect their indigenous rights. COIAM includes at least four Piaroa groups among its constituent member organizations.

The Piaroa and their allies begin their statement, which the website reprints, by recognizing the progress that the national government, led by the late President Hugo Chavez, has made in seeking to promote indigenous rights. In particular, they express appreciation for the government’s efforts to protect them from international schemes that might harm their environment.

They proceed, however, to express strong reservations about mining development projects that the government has announced over the past few years, particularly an agreement it has reached with the China Transnational Company, which opens a lot of territory to mineral extraction.

The indigenous organizations especially reject the proposal referred to as the Arco Minero del Orinoco, a plan which seeks to open mines in the Guayana region, the highlands that the Piaroa consider to be part of their territory. They feel it may affect the landscape and have an impact on their cultural stability.

They question the intentions of the bilateral agreement signed with the Chinese company. The problem is that the indigenous lands have not yet been demarcated, even though the Venezuelan constitution requires such demarcations. They make it clear that the lives, health, and cultural survival of the indigenous peoples of Amazonas depend on the effective protection of their environment.

An article reviewed in this website over eight years ago helps connect these perceptions with long-term Piaroa values. The health and safety of the environment is essential to the Piaroa cultivation of their manioc gardens, and to numerous aspects of their culture that are dependent on those gardens. Mostly cultivated by women and shamans, the manioc gardens provide more than just abundant foods. They also serve to display the skills and hard work of the cultivators, foster sharing, provide venues for socializing and the performance of rituals, and remind people of the importance of the close relations they have with one another. The forests, and their gardens, are thus essential to their culture, so they need to be protected.

In early March, the same grouping of indigenous organizations, COIAM, issued a statement of condolences to the Venezuelan people on the occasion of the death of Hugo Chavez. That document discussed the ways the late president had helped the indigenous peoples of Venezuela. It expressed appreciation for the fact that he recognized their historical rights and for the way he tried to repay the debt that Venezuelan citizens owe to the indigenous people of their country.

Their message acknowledged that the Piaroa, and the other groups in Amazonas, will have a lasting respect for Chavez, who was always a friend of native peoples. Chavez, they said, dignified the lives of the poor, and particularly of the indigenous citizens of the nation.

The document extended condolences to the family of Chavez, his close friends, and to the national government, with the hope that, in the difficult time following his death, the common good and the peacefulness of the country would be maintained.

The Big Sky Hutterite colony, located in northern Montana near the Canadian border, has decided to take its dispute with the state to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Montana passed a law in 2009 which the initiating legislator admitted was designed as an anti-Hutterite measure. Corporate lobbyists advocating the new law won over the legislature in part because the Hutterites don’t lobby. The law requires colony businesses to provide workers compensation in case of injuries on the job, even though, as members of the colony, they are actually not employees and do not receive any wages for the state-mandated compensation to protect.

A lower court upheld the Hutterite view in a suit filed by the Big Sky Colony, which claimed that the law is discriminatory and violates Hutterite freedom of religion. But in January this year, the Montana Supreme Court supported the state by a five to four vote, deciding that the law does not violate their freedom of religion. It merely regulates their commercial enterprises. The Hutterites argue that their communal way of life is an integral part of their religious values, and that their colonies can only function with people working together on a variety of colony businesses.

Anti-Hutterite groups argue for the importance of fairness, for “leveling the playing field,” by requiring them to pay for workers compensation. But that belief ignores the inescapable fact that the non-Hutterite businesses—primarily construction firms—have to pay their workers, and the colonies do not.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has decided to support the colony in launching an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. As Luke Goodrich, an attorney at the Becket Fund, explained, “this case involves the right of internal church governance. Hutterites have been living in accordance with their religious beliefs for 500 years.”

He added, “they all take a vow of poverty, they hold all of their possessions in common, and they vow not to use the secular legal system against each other. But the new workers compensation law would violate all of those teachings because it would create a property right for individual members, which all members vow not to have.”

Goodrich adds that the case should give the Supreme Court the opportunity to resolve the different ways the U.S. states view the meaning of the free exercise of religion.

The Becket Fund’s website provides further amplification of its perspectives on the case. “The Hutterites are a peaceful and industrious people who have lived every aspect of their lives in religious communities for almost 500 years—eating meals in a communal dining hall, educating their children in a communal school, wearing the same homemade clothing, and working together on a communal farm,” it says.

The website goes on to provide a sophisticated, legal argument for the Hutterites. “The new law would force the community to violate its 500-year-old commitment to holding all possessions in common,” it says. It argues that the law is pointless, since the colonies already cover all possible expenses, such as medical costs, for members for whatever reasons, so the requirement that they must provide workers compensation doesn’t help Hutterite laborers in any way. It just forces them to violate their religious beliefs by possibly putting them in a position of taking hostile actions against the colonies where they live and work.

The Becket Fund provides additional materials about the case, including another quote from Attorney Goodrich: “This law proves the danger of allowing corporate lobbyists to prey on an ancient, peace-loving religious community.” He’s done his research well.

The organizers of the Ladakh International Film Festival (LIFF) are promoting a movement in India to build awareness of the need to protect women and girls from rape, infanticide, and feticide. The festival, which began last summer, is now receiving films for its second year. Some 600 people attended last summer. Organizers are hoping the festival will increase tourism.

The movement that LIFF has initiated is called Campaign RED, standing for the principle that women in India deserve Respect, Equality, and Dignity. Meghna Agnihotri, a Director of LIFF, said that the new campaign does not necessarily focus on changing other people, or agitating on the streets, or even pestering government agencies. Instead, she said, “Campaign ‘RED’ is all about chang[ing] oneself and influencing others to a better and inspired living.”

The organizers hope to obtain 37 million signatures of people who will support their campaign. Ms. Agnihotri indicated that the gender gap in India is 37 million less females than males.

A member of the group that organizes the festival, and now the Campaign RED, said that the organization wants to develop sensitivity among individuals so they will change their own attitudes and those of others in their neighborhoods. They plan to continue the campaign during the 2013 film festival, which is scheduled for June 15 through 17 this year, and they will encourage attendees to pledge their support. They expect to reach out to partner organizations, asking them to also help change attitudes toward females.

A recent news story in the Times of India said that LIFF itself is incorporating more women into its organization. The 2013 festival will focus on “Women in Cinema” and it will have the tagline “Celebrating Womanhood.” The festival program will include a panel discussion on crimes against females in India, and it will review practical ways to achieve equality for women in that country.

As a news story in this website indicated last November, equality for women has been a critically important value for the Ladakhi people. Rural women in that peaceful society are unique in India for being quite self confident, in large part because they feel safe from attacks by males.

Ladakh contrasts with New Delhi and other urban centers, where crimes such as the December rape and murder of a young woman on a New Delhi bus are common. There is a higher rate of sex crimes in the national capital than in any other major city in India. In fact, New Delhi has more sex crimes than the five other largest Indian cities combined.

Ladakh may not be perfect—no society is—but at least women are safe from violence there. A film festival that is encouraging equality for women is, itself, an encouraging, and certainly most appropriate, development in that society.

Amish “reality” shows often create unreal, inaccurate impressions of the well-known peaceful society, according to prominent scholar David Weaver-Zercher. The professor at Messiah College in south central Pennsylvania gave a public lecture on Tuesday evening, March 26, entitled “Amish Behaving Badly? Amish Realities and Amish Reality Shows.”

According to a news report about his lecture, Weaver-Zercher evidently did not deny that occasionally Amish do act badly, but he made it clear that the published accounts often get things messed up. For instance, he discussed a 1998 case involving a drug bust of two men, both named Abner Stoltzfus. Even though they were supposedly Amish, neither had actually been baptized—so they really were not members of that community.

He also went over the more recent events in Bergholtz, Ohio, where the errant Amish bishop, Sam Mullet, led attacks against other Amish. Mullet and a number of his followers were subsequently convicted and sentenced to federal prisons for attacks that had fit the definition of hate crimes.

In fact, Weaver-Zercher said, the ordination of Mullet as a bishop was only witnessed by one other bishop. This was in sharp contrast to the normal Amish custom of having more than one bishop attend ordinations. Several of the practices at Bergholtz—the way they did not hold regular Sunday worship services, the harsh disciplinary style of Mr. Mullet, and of course his advocating physical force against individuals he perceived of as enemies—all were contrary to normal Amish culture. The Bergholtz people could perhaps be better referred to as “Amish-like” rather than “Amish.”

The professor discussed the various Amish so-called reality shows by pointing out how they are scripted ahead of time, how directors coach participants in the proper ways to deliver their lines, and the nature of the scripts—the “reality” experience. He admitted that he is repeatedly asked whether the reality shows are real. And more to the point, do they portray Amish life realistically?

His response was to break the question down into three phases. Are the actors really Amish? Are they in fact actually depicting themselves? Are the facts being depicted accurately? In reply, he said that the essence of being Amish is to be a baptized member of an Amish church, and living under the discipline of that church.

He argued that even though people are born Amish and continue to live, as adults, in the homes of their parents, they are only actually Amish if they are baptized and join the church. The actors on the show “Amish Mafia,” when they discussed the question of being baptized on camera, were, by his definition, not really Amish. At least, not yet. He did say that the actors on popular shows, such as “Breaking Amish,” are born into Amish families—they are “genetically Amish.” They come from the community.

As far as accuracy is concerned, he believes that the National Geographic show “Amish: Out of Order” is relatively accurate, whereas the series “Amish Mafia” is not.

After a three week hiatus, the News and Reviews feature of this website will resume publishing updates on Thursday, April 4. The delay was caused by an unexpected change in the Internet server configuration on March 15 which took down the website for two days.

Our two technical advisors, Matthew Albright and Jeffrey Suydam, without whom this website would not exist, were able to restore Peaceful Societies on Sunday evening, March 17, but problems remained with updating or making any kinds of changes. Those issues have now been resolved and we look forward to continuing, in four days, our regular Thursday morning (eastern U.S.) pattern of posting news reports and reviews of important works about the peaceful societies.

On Monday last week, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi received a delegation of Nubians from southern Egypt who presented a variety of demands that, they said, had been ignored by former President Hosni Mubarak. Further, they expressed their disappointment that there have been no changes in their situation since Mubarak’s regime fell over two years ago.

According to a statement issued by the presidential palace, the delegation asked Morsi to “end the unfairness against them and help them retain their stolen rights.” The delegation asked Morsi to have his government promote the development of human and agricultural resources in southern Egypt, in the areas where the Nubians live.

They also demanded that the government should help Nubians who had been forced out of their homes along the Nile River many decades ago to be resettled along Lake Nasser. They asked the government to develop better infrastructure in Nubian villages. Furthermore, the delegation suggested that Nubian women should be encouraged to enter Egyptian politics, which would thus help empower them.

The delegates told the president that their demands were quite reasonable since they had been marginalized by the larger Egyptian society for so long. Egyptians have not, they said, paid much attention to their concerns.

They brought numerous specific issues to the attention of the president. They complained that many of the houses they had been given when they were relocated were dilapidated and needed to be rehabilitated. They also said that 12 villages had sanitary drainage problems, and that village health units were needed. They urged the construction of a sugar cane factory to provide employment for Nubians.

On a long-term basis, they urged the creation of a higher level group that would expedite the resettlement of the Nubian people along the banks of Lake Nasser. They also suggested the adoption of a bill about resettlement as a way of finally compensating them for the fact that their homes and villages had been expropriated for the construction of the Aswan Dam in the early 1960s.

President Morsi responded that he would urge his government to raise the Nubian concerns at a meeting of the Shura Council, the upper house of the Egyptian parliament. The president also asked the delegates to form a small committee of Nubians that could continue to work with the president on the concerns and demands they had expressed in the meeting.

Following the meeting, the president reportedly vowed to seek an end to the marginalization that the Nubians have suffered in Egypt.

Trouble in India’s West Bengal state involving the Gorkhas and the Lepchas was in the news last week, as violence again disrupted life in the hills of North India where these people live. The dispute between the Gorkhas, the Lepchas, and the government of West Bengal made headlines in India early in February, as the Gorkha threats of violence became a normal staple of Indian news.

At the beginning of last week, the Trinamul Congress, the political party that rules West Bengal, announced that it would hold a public meeting during the third week of March to advocate development in the hills of the state. The government’s proposed meeting will be held in either Kalimpong, a town with a large number of Lepchas, or in Mirik, another town about 20 miles away where some Trinamul leaders live.

The meeting will be scheduled to coincide with strikes planned for the same time, the third and fourth weeks of March, by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), the Gorkha group that is agitating for an independent state for themselves. Plans announced by the chief Minister of the state at the end of January that would focus development on the Lepcha people prompted the anger of the Gorkhas, who live in the same hilly area of the state.

Rajen Mukhia, who is coordinating the proposed public meeting for the state government, has been meeting with Mukul Roy, a prominent politician at the national level in India. Mr. Roy is the representative to the upper house of the Indian Parliament from West Bengal. Mr. Mukhia indicated that Mr. Roy would attend the public meeting. The purpose of the meeting, Mukhia said, was to “apprise the hill people of Trinamul’s principal objective to expedite all-round development across the hills.”

In other words, the government is trying to indicate that their proposals for more development are not intended to undercut the Gorkhas. The leader of the GJM, Bimal Gurung, decided to counter this move by the state government by going to New Delhi to meet both the national president and the home minister of India. Observers were hopeful that, if things went well in New Delhi, the proposed 48 hour general strike might be put off by the GJM.

News sources on Tuesday last week reported that the GJM delegation, led by Mr. Gurung, had met with home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and argued their case for Gorkhaland. They blamed the current problems in the state entirely on Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal. They pressed their long-standing demand for tribal status for the Gorkha community in the West Bengal hills.

The home minister evidently listened carefully to the GJM demands. In response, he asked the delegation to call off the announced general strike, which was scheduled for March 14 and 15, and again for March 21 and 22. The GJM promised to review the matter with their committee when they return to Darjeeling.

Matters turned more serious on Wednesday, when a meeting of 10 to 15 Trinamul (also spelled Trinamool) Congress members taking place in a hotel in Kalimpong, was disrupted by a group of thugs. Just as the Trinamul members were about to hold a news conference, around 30 people, believed to represent the youth wing of the GJM, assaulted them with sticks and iron rods. Two people were injured, four of the attackers were arrested, and the police are trying to catch the others.

The Times of India news report indicated that important leaders of the Bhutia and Lepcha communities in Kalimpong were targeted by the attackers. Chewang Bhutia and Bruno Lepcha were covered in blood and rushed to a hospital after the attack. A Trinamul official in charge of the Darjeeling area, Gopal Chhetri, expressed the government’s anger at the attack.

“There is no democracy in the Hills in the misrule of the GJM party. Our leaders and supporters are intimidated every other day and today they were even attacked,” Mr. Chhetri said. An official for the GJM denied that his group had anything to do with the violence.

On Friday, police in West Bangal announced the arrest of additional people who had allegedly been involved in the attack. The national government has indicated a willingness to get involved and has agreed to send several battalions of troops to help the state police restrain the growing threats of violence.

The GJM leaders, still in New Delhi, argued that the whole thing is a conspiracy by the West Bengal government to create a state of terror in the hills so they can deploy their troops. According to Jyoti Kumar Raj, the assistant secretary of GJM, “there is no trouble in the Hills whatsoever. The deployment of security forces is a ploy of the state government to create panic and terror.”

The Lepchas, who are simply asking for some development assistance from the state, and are willing to endure hunger strikes to dramatize their plight, appear from the news reports to be pawns in the power play between the government and the Gorkha leaders.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Sam Mullet Headed a Cult, not an Amish Congregation

Yanadi Fish Farming May Be Threatened

G/wi File Another Court Suit

Protecting the Piaroa Environment

Montana Hutterites Appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court

Film Festival in Ladakh Promotes Women’s Equality

Amish Reality Versus TV Shows

News and Reviews Feature Will Resume

Nubian Delegates Meet President Morsi

Violence Threatens the Lepchas

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