Moving On
Pennsylvania's Amish won't ever forget what happened last fall, but they're determined not to let the tragedy define them, either
As spring arrives in Bart Township, there are few if any lingering questions of "why?" or "why here?" And no one believes that the urbanization of Lancaster County-which is squeezing an Amish population that doubles every two decades-played a role in the shooting. The killer was local-"not someone drugged out from Philly or Baltimore or New York," said the Rev. Kristine Hileman, a local Presbyterian minister. Many of the Amish knew Roberts, a milk truck driver.
The school was simply the scene of a troubled man's crime-the girls weren't targeted because they were Amish, said Herman Bontrager, spokesman for the Nickel Mines Accountability Committee, established by Amish church leaders to manage the nearly $4 million in donations that have poured in. "This is where he lived, and it happened."
Yet it's precisely where the crime occurred, as well as the mysteries of the Amish faith and its tradition of forgiveness, that transfixed the world. On the day of the shooting, Amish expert Donald Kraybill of nearby Elizabethtown College and three colleagues answered reporters' calls for eight straight hours. The journalists mostly wanted to know how the community could so quickly forgive such a crime.
Lessons. The forgiveness here "wasn't an aberration," Kraybill said during a recent interview. "To a person, the Amish would argue that forgiveness is the central teaching of Jesus. They will take you to the Lord's Prayer-if you don't forgive, you won't be forgiven."
Those lessons are particularly potent in a place like Nickel Mines, which lies in an area known as "over the ridge"-literally over a mine ridge south of the Route 30 tourist corridor, where shops like "Amish Stuff Etc." and "AAA Buggy Rides" cater to visitors who come to tour Pennsylvania Dutch country.
Here, there are no Best Westerns, smorgasbord restaurants, or subdivisions gobbling farmland. And though nearly 70 percent of Lancaster County Amish no longer earn their living on a farm-many make furniture, gazebos, and sheds-south of the ridge more than half are still engaged in agriculture. Here the Amish culture is more conservative, and church leaders are typically stricter about enforcing the plain sect traditions of Old Order Amish, including limiting ownership of modern conveniences. There is strong reliance on the lessons of the Martyrs Mirror, published in the 1600s and filled with stories about Christian and Dutch Anabaptist martyrs. The most famous involves a fleeing Christian prisoner who saves a pursuing guard from drowning, only to be turned in by the guard and burned at the stake.
The stories in many ways form the basis of beliefs of the Amish, who in 1693 emerged as a distinct group from the Anabaptists, seen by breakaway members as becoming too assimilated with broader society and the outside world.
"I can't overestimate [these stories] in terms of Amish culture," said Kraybill, who with two Anabaptist scholars is writing a book, Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy, about the Nickel Mines murders and other incidents of Amish forgiveness-including one that occurred not far from the school just days before the girls were shot.
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