My wife has a friend who keeps insisting that she has to visit Shipshewana. So we did. Our first stop was the Menno-Hof, a museum about the Amish and Mennonite people, created and operated by Amish and Mennonite people. We went expecting to be preached at. What we didn’t expect was to be preached at for two hours and 15 minutes. It threw off our whole day’s schedule and got rather annoying before it was over.
The museum consists of a series of small rooms to which we were conducted by a guide and in which we saw videos and other displays about the history of the Anabaptists. In short, these were people who broke away from the main line churches because they didn’t believe in infant baptism. Down the road of history, the group splintered into the Amish, the Hutterites and the Mennonites.
The video rooms were followed by a self-guided section that repeated a great deal of what we’d just seen and heard, and then repeated it again.
At the end of this room, we were met by another guide who proceeded to give us a 10-minute lecture on the making of a quilt that featured squares from all the various countries in which the Mennonites have missionaries. Then we went to the “Tornado Room,” which gave a brief history of a tornado that hit the Shipshewana area in 1965 and and endless recitation of all the different places hit by disasters to which the Mennonites have sent relief. This was followed by another room in which a Mennonite church service was demonstrated. We were finally let out into a self-guided area about a famous Amish dude, but we walked straight through it and left as quickly as we could.
Bottom line, these fine folk are no doubt sincere and saved. But they have no understanding of progressive revelation and seem to have substituted the tyranny of the pope for a subtler tyranny by the elders. They don’t come right out and say that you have to do works to be saved, but they do say you have to be a committed member of a local church which involves obedience to the elders.
I’m a bit unclear on where they draw the lines. We spotted two teenage girls in full Amish get-up sitting in a buggy looking at at cell phone and I saw an Amish guy texting while driving his buggy down the road. But the main issue I have with them is that they claim to be living separated lives while at the same time deliberately making of themselves a tourist attraction to make money.
And that’s what Shipshewana is. An Amish tourist trap. The stores sell Amish-made furniture, the restaurants serve Amish food. You can even take a ride in an Amish-style buggy driven by a guy wearing Amish-style clothing which will take you to an Amish home for an Amish dinner. We passed.
My wife shopped for birdhouses in the cutesy downtown shopping area. I went to the event center and toured an antique car museum (next post). We met up after an hour to get pretzels. And let me tell you — the pretzels are worth the trip all by themselves.
We bought one with cinnamon and sugar and one “original.” The cinnamon and sugar was very, very good. The original was the best pretzel I’ve ever had and probably makes the list of 100 best foods I’ve eaten. If I had such a list.
We might have stuck around a bit longer and looked around more, but the whole town closed at 5:00 and, thanks to the interminable visit to the Menno-Hof, it was already that late.
We took back roads out of town and passed by an Amish softball game and several other community get-togethers.