Caesar & God

To the stolid, austere Amish farmfolk of central Ohio, education beyond the eighth grade is a waste and a danger; it is enough that a child learn to read, write and cipher. This stubbornly held tenet of their strict, old-fashioned sect runs squarely into an Ohio law requiring children to remain in school until they are 16. From time to time in Amish country, parents have been prosecuted for violating the law, but more often, tolerant school boards ignore the Amish boycott of high schools, or make senseless obeisance to the law's letter by letting Amish schoolchildren repeat the eighth grade over and over. But by last week in prosperous, rural Wayne county (pop. 70,000, including some 3,000 Amish, 800 of them school-age children) the conflict between the sheltering religion and a school system tightening its standards had passed beyond easy tolerance.

Into Wooster, the county seat, drove bearded Amishmen who hitched their buggies near chrome-splashed V-8s, walked heavily beside their black-bonneted wives into the courthouse, where three Amish couples were on trial for contempt. Their offense: after refusing to let their children start the ninth grade, they carted the three teen-agers to an Amish settlement in Pennsylvania, defying a court order that they be placed in a children's home and allowed to go to school.

As the session began, Judge Don Young told the defendants that they could avoid punishment if they obeyed the order (two other sets of Amish parents obeyed last month, turned a boy and a girl over to the children's home, let them go to school). Replied stocky, 46-year-old John Hershberger: "I couldn't give up my son. It is against my scriptures.'' Defendants

Emmanuel Slabaugh and Eli Hershberger (John's distant cousin) backed up his refusal. Their bonneted wives, standing quietly by, said nothing. Said Judge Young: "I can't indulge in a religious argument. Religious convictions do not stand against an order of this court. We must render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. And today we're dealing with Caesar." He ordered that the parents be locked up until the three teen-agers are turned over to the children's home.

At week's end, the three Amish youngsters were still at large, and their parents were still in jail. Amish Bishop Samuel Swartzentruber said they would stay there "if it is God's will. We are not giving in." Some non-Amish Wayne County residents sympathized with the industrious, black-clad farmers, with whom they get along well, if distantly. But most of them agree that not even religion should be allowed to cut off children from the opportunity to become businessmen, doctors, lawyers or musicians, if they want to, instead of farmers. Prospect for the next school year: more trouble for Ohio's Amish, when a new state law will make illegal all one-room schools, including the one-room parochial schools where many Amish children get their instruction in reading, writing and ciphering.

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