Word: amish
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...refused to enroll their 14- and 15-year-old children in the local public high school. They were fined $5 each* for violating Wisconsin's compulsory-school-attendance law. A small case, but a crucial one. The three farmers-Jonas Yoder, Wallace Miller and Adin Yutzy-were Amish. They had kept their children out of high school as a matter of religious conscience, because the Amish eschew too much worldly knowledge. Total pacifists, they could not even personally fight the convictions; by the strict tenets of their faith, a court suit would violate Jesus' injunction to "turn...
Other Christians decided, on their behalf, that meekness had its limits. A small group called the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom -including among its members a Roman Catholic, a Lutheran and some sympathetic ex-Amish-took up the case. Last week in the Supreme Court, they won a significant Constitutional victory. In a 7-0 decision, the court upheld a 1971 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that the state's compulsory-education law violated the Amish right to religious freedom. Justice William O. Douglas filed a partial dissent because two of the three children had not been consulted...
Hippie Heroes. Although Wisconsin v. Yoder was the first Supreme Court case in the long history of the Amish in the U.S., the Amish have always been a people apart, at odds with society. Their founder, Jakob Ammann, was a Mennonite bishop in 17th century Switzerland. After Ammann clashed with the sect's leaders over fine points of observance and demanded strict excommunication of backsliders, he and his followers broke away in 1693 and became the Amish. They sought refuge in America after William Penn's colony became a haven of religious freedom...
Over the years, as they spread into other states and increased their numbers to about 60,000, the Amish have still clutched that religious freedom doggedly. As one result, they can stand as heroes to laissez-faire conservatives on the one hand and to hippie-type communal dropouts on the other. Though they are farmers, they steadfastly refuse farm subsidies. They do not need, or want, welfare payments of any kind. They refuse to pay Social Security taxes or accept Social Security benefits: care of the elderly, they insist, is their religious duty. They do not want to grow rich...
...northern borders of Harlem, across the Hudson, through the almost Dantean landscape beside the New Jersey Turnpike, where his family rolls up the windows against the stench of chemical plants. Down the road, as the Howard Johnson's tick by, all breathe easier. By mid-Pennsylvania, past the Amish country and into the Allegheny foothills, the father is almost counting cows with his children. Local radio stations dissolve in static every 50 miles; insects detonate against the windshield. He stops and has the oil checked. The American is in his seasonal migration...