The Mited Man

The Amish of Wayne, Holmes and Tuscarawas Counties, Ohio, are among the ' plainest of the picture-book Plain People. Their men wear buttonless dark blue overalls and jackets, wide-brimmed black hats and beards. Their women go in bonnets and shoe-length black dresses. With fierce rectitude, they forbid themselves automobiles, electricity, telephones and tractors, rather than engender the sin of pride.

Amishman Andrew J. Yoder, 33, and seven times a father, wrestled with his conscience. Twice a week he had to drive his 1 1/2-year-old daughter Lizzie 15 miles in a square-rigged buggy so that she could see a doctor. To ease the trip for Lizzie, Andrew wanted to buy a car.

Andrew bought it. From that time on he was lost and godless in the eyes of Bishop John Helmuth and the others. In accordance with the 17th article of the Amish doctrine, the Dordrecht Confession of Faith,* the Mennonite "mite" or "shun" was placed against him. It declares: ". . . we believe and confess that if anyone . . . is so far fallen as to be separated from God ... he must also be shunned so that we may not become defiled . . . [and] that he may be made ashamed. . . ."

For 5 1/2 years thereafter, Yoder was "mited." He was a social outcast. No Amish cobbler would fix his shoes. Even his brother Dan could not eat with him. When he was out threshing, he had to take his meals in barns or cellars--alone. Said he: "It was like feeding the dog out of a dishpan. And I felt like a whipped dog." Once Bishop Helmuth tried to force him off the 50-acre farm in Paint Township that Andrew works with his father. Bespectacled, meek-mild-looking Andrew pulled the Bishop out of his house by the seven-inch hairs. of his chin.

Finally, Andrew could take it no longer. The mited man filed suit for $40,000 in Wayne County Common Pleas Court against the Bishop and his elders and asked the court also to make the elders call off the "shun." Last week in Wooster, a jury of nine men and three women, none of them Amish, listened sympathetically as the thin-faced, round-bearded Yoder retailed his woes.

In defense of the Bishop and the elders, Pastor John Nisley answered Andrew. He said gravely: "I have prayed to God for a way to get out of this and every time I run up against a stone wall. It's up to God to forgive him, not me. And if God hain't going to--well, he just hain't."

The jury agreed with Andrew but reduced the damages from $40,000 to $5,000. The court ordered the church to lift the mite. Andrew seemed satisfied, said, "I think they will think for some time before they put on any more bans." He would be permitted to worship in an Amish Church but he would have no voice in the church or be admitted to communion. To the stubborn Amishmen, who frown upon court actions, God's law came before that of men. Andrew would still be under a mite of a mite.

* At Dordrecht, Holland, in 1632, Netherlands Mennonite groups compiled previous confessions of faith, called them "A Declaration of the Chief Articles of Our Common Christian Faith." Present Mennonite and Amish bodies trace their origin to Zurich, Switzerland, where in 1525 the Swiss Brethren were organized. As dissenters they were harried all over Europe, migrated to America in large numbers in the 17th and 18th Centuries, first settled in Pennsylvania, where William Penn had offered them asylum.

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