Witness

A fascinating programme on the Amish last night. I had always wondered how they came to be so peculiar when they are not really peculiar at all, they are just Anabaptists. It is because they only have the Bible in an archaic German that most of them cannot read. So most of them do not in fact read the Bible. An orthopraxy as complex as the most ultra-Orthodox Judaism has grown up without most people's realising that there was no real basis for much, or even most, of it.

But more mainstream Mennonites and similar were shown decrying the Amish on this point in an obvious attempt to liken them to the Catholic Church on the eve of the Reformation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The absolute ban on vernacular Bibles was peculiar to England, and was a response to the political threat posed by Lollardy, not anything to do with theology as such. And all those making theological decisions could in any case read the Bible, with which their daily liturgical life was shot through.