My People, the Amish (by Joe Keim)

On a recent flight I finished reading a Kindle fiction book about an Amish-like community. Scrolling through my unread books, I spotted ‘My people, the Amish’, by Joe Keim. It was evidently a fairly short non-fiction book, and I thought it could be interesting to read more about the lifestyle and culture of the Amish.

The book opens rather dramatically with Joe and his wife evidently planning an escape. We don’t learn exactly what this involves, or why they are leaving the Amish until rather later in the book. But it makes a good starting point, hooking me into the story immediately.

We then learn a fair bit about the author’s childhood, growing up in an 'old order' Amish community. He felt that it was rather too rigid at times, and didn’t feel much affection from his parents, nor affirmation from anyone. As a teenager he left more than once, but was able to return, until the final time, the one foreshadowed in the prologue, when he and his wife decided they had had enough.

I found the style of writing a bit rambling. There is some interesting background about the Amish community, which (at least in the order being described) seems to have changed very little in the past couple of hundred years. The author makes it clear that they are not all the same. However he becomes convinced that his community is not just traditional but legalistic, talking a great deal about God without actually knowing his love.

An important part of the book involves the author meeting ‘English’ Christians - regular Baptists and other Protestants - and learning to follow Jesus. Unfortunately the group he becomes involved in seems (to me) to be almost as legalistic as his Amish community, in different ways. Perhaps for someone growing up in this culture it’s necessary to have rules, but I found his ‘interview’ of his daughter’s potential husband (documented in an epilogue to the book) quite disturbing.

I also found that the book became quite preachy in the second half. It felt as if the author's agenda was not just comparing his former lifestyle with his newer one, or the Amish with the Baptists, but pushing his own brand of Christianity. Much of what he does seems positive - reaching out to those who do not know God, pointing them towards Jesus - but the structure of the organisation he founded seems rather rigid.

It isn’t a long book, and I finished it in just a couple of hours, shortly before my flight landed. I skimmed several sections that were rather repetitive, but as a different kind of diversion for a flight it wasn’t a bad book.

It’s still free for the Kindle, so I would recommend it in that format to anyone interested in knowing a bit more about the Amish and why someone might leave them, so long as you don’t mind a fair bit of preaching.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's Book Reviews