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Amish Mennonite

27 resources

🎬 Videos(3)

Video

RfRx Foundation Spotlight - The Amish Heritage Foundation with Torah Bontrager

Recovering from Religion

The Amish Heritage Foundation is a history-making nonprofit committed to empowering Amish women and children with education beyond the 8th grade level, enabling them to better create and choose their futures. They provide educational services to Amish people, foster public awareness about the crises hidden in Amish society, as well as creating and making cultural literacy training available to agencies, institutions, and individuals. They envision that one day Amish children will have the right to learn beyond the 8th grade (including the right to learn about science, technology, engineering, math, civics, law, philosophy, and the arts) and that education will be a constitutional right for every U.S. citizen.

Video

RfRx - Religion Spotlight - The Amish with Torah Bontrager

Recovering from Religion

As an offshoot of the Mennonites, the Amish have been around since the 17th century and are well known for their public-facing quaint and austere lives. However, along with their historical and religious cousins, the Mennonites and other Anabaptists, those who are on the inside know it's not at all an idyllic life within these isolated religious communities.

📄 Articles(11)

Article

Women Talking

Sarah Polley, Miriam Toews

In 2010, eight women from an isolated Mennonite colony grapple with reconciling their reality with their faith after it is revealed that men from their community drugged and raped the community's women at night for years.

📚 Books(8)

Book

Dad, God, and Me

Ralph Friesen

In a compelling, honest, and transparent account, Ralph Friesen tells the story of his father, Reverend Peter D. Friesen of Steinbach, Manitoba. He also tells his own story, of the search for his father and a crisis of faith. Growing up in a fundamentalist Mennonite community as the son of a minister, Ralph resisted the pressure to be 'saved' and struggled to find a spiritual alternative.

Book

Runaway Amish Girl

Emma Gingerich

Growing up Amish and leaving the fold, Emma Gingerich left her Amish community in Eagleville, Missouri, at the age of eighteen. Her memoir Runaway Amish Girl: The Great Escape captivates even the timid reader. Disagreeing with the beliefs of Amish traditions and upbringing, the pressure became too much for her to bear. Forced to make a personal decision, Emma found the courage to leave the only life she had ever known. She had no idea the emotional turmoil she'd inflict on her family and friends. The emotional reaction of her parents, brothers and sisters, are gut wrenching. Considered no longer a daughter and a sister, temporarily exiled, Emma finds a way to be free. Education becomes her priority as she finds her place in this "English" world. This true story is a rare glimpse into the life of a brave young woman - Runaway Amish Girl: The Great Escape.

Book

Tears of the Silenced: An Amish True Crime Memoir of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Brutal Betrayal, and Ultimate Survival (Amish Book, Child Abuse True Story, Cults)

Misty Griffin

True story of child abuse. When Misty Griffin was six years old, her family started to live and dress like the Amish. Misty and her sister were kept as slaves on a mountain ranch and subjected to almost complete isolation, sexual abuse, and physical violence. Their step-father kept a loaded rifle by the door to make sure the young girls were too terrified to try to escape. No rescue would ever come since the few people who knew they existed did not care. Sexual abuse among the Amish people. When Misty reached her teens, her parents feared she and her sister would escape and took them to an Amish community. Devastated to again find herself in a world of fear, cruelty, and abuse, Misty was sexually assaulted by the bishop. "...I knew I had to get help, and one freezing morning in early March, I made a dash for a tiny police station in rural Minnesota. After reporting the bishop, I left the Amish and found myself plummeted into a strange modern world with only a second-grade education and no ID or social security card." Ultimately Misty graduated nursing school and currently works as an activist for abused children.

Book

Crossing Over: One Woman' Escape From Amish Life

Ruth Garrett & Rick Farrant

Ruth Irene Garrett was the fifth of seven children raised in Kalona, Iowa, as a member of a strict Old Order Amish community. She was brought up in a world filled with rigid rules and intense secrecy, in an environment where the dress, buggies, codes of conduct, and way of life differed even from other Amish societies only 100 miles away. This Old Order community actively avoided all interaction with English, everyone who lived on the outside. As a result, Ruth knew only one way of life, and one way of doing things.This compelling narrative takes us inside a hidden community, offering a striking look as one woman comes to terms with her discontent and ultimately leaves her family, faith and the sheltered world of her childhood. Unsatisfied, she bravely crosses over to contemporary life to fully explore the foreign and frightening reality in hope of better understanding her emotional and spiritual desires. What emerges is a powerful tale of one woman's search for meaning and the extraordinary lessons she learns along the way.

🎙️ Podcasts(2)

Podcast

podcast

The Plain People's Podcast

Welcome to The Plain People's Podcast, where current and former members of the Amish and Mennonite churches share their stories of struggle, triumph and abuse with hosts Jasper Hoffman and Marc Masoner.

🏢 Organizations(2)

Organization

organization

Amish Heritage Foundation

Enlightenment principles for the new generation of Amish leaders. | Founder Torah Bontrager

Organization

organization

Amish Descendant Scholarship Fund

Help other Amish and former Amish achieve their dreams of a college education

📁 Other Resources(1)

Group

group

Former Amish and Former Mennonite Group

Former Amish and Former Mennonite Group (A Support Group not a dating page) has 3,480 members. This group consists of people who have either been Amish or Mennonite at some point in their life. The...