Although worlds apart in time and, seemingly, in culture, the Taoists of Ancient China and the Amish of contemporary America have much in common. Both sects share a commitment to a life of voluntary simplicity, based on strict religious principles. Both put the values of ‘community’ above those of ‘individualism’. Both foreswear those technologies which are deemed a threat to society or the environment. And both reject the formal institutions of the national State, obeying only those laws which are compatible with their religious conscience. We have much to learn from these ‘Eco-Anarchists’.

In describing an ideal society Lao Tse (c.604-531 BC) may have been the first to declare that "small is beautiful" and that contentment may be achieved through community and through a simple, natural lifestyle. In the words of the Tao Te-Chin:

Let there be a small country with a small population, where the supply of goods are tenfold or hundredfold more than they can use.
Let the people value their lives and not migrate far. Though there be boats and carriages, none be there to ride them.
Though there be armour and weapons, no occasion to display them.¹
. . . The more sharp weapons there are, the greater the chaos in the state.
The more skills of technique, the more cunning things are produced.²

The person of ideal character would, according to Lao Tse, combine moral action with humility:

Act, but not possess
Accomplish but lay claim to no credit,
Because he has no wish to seem superior.³

To have enough is good luck, to have more than enough is harmful. This is true of all things but especially of money.⁴

It is difficult for the people to live in peace
Because of too much knowledge
Those who seek to rule a country by knowledge are the nation’s curse . . .⁵
He who knows does not speak; He who speaks does not know.⁶

And the wise man will avoid competing with others. He will:

Never be first in the world.
Because he does not contend,
No one in the world can contend against him.^7,8

The greater the number of statutes, the greater the number of thieves and brigands.
When the government is efficient and smart its people are discontented.⁹

The Taoist philosophies of Lao Tse, and the lifestyles which his teachings inspired among his disciples, represent one of history’s archetypal examples of religious anarchism. The contemporary Amish are, likewise, anarchists and their simple Christian way of life belies a profound, and sometimes complex, system of individual and group morality with an ancient and enduring history. Of course, I am aware that the word ‘anarchist’ conjures up images of violent, bomb-hurling political fanatics who would seem to represent the very antithesis of the politically apathetic, peace-loving Amish. But I use the word ‘anarchist’ here in a more specific sense: namely to refer to those who tend non-violently to reject the formal institutions, laws and technologies of large-scale, bureaucratised civilisations in favour of the informal morality, and the simpler technologies, of small-scale, sacred communities. It is not difficult to find examples of modern thinkers who are representative of the latter version of anarchism. Among the best known may be counted Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi and E.F. Schumacher.

The similarities between Lao Tse’s small utopia and the existing social and cultural organisation of America’s "Old Order" Amish people are striking. The basic unit of Amish social, political and religious, organisation is the church/community district. Church/community districts are limited in their size by the number of people who can be accommodated in an individual member’s house for bi-monthly religious services. There is no church building per se, the Amish church being considered a state of mind rather than a physical entity. The practice of meeting in members’ homes, rather than in publicly identifiable buildings, is also believed to be related to the Amish/Anabaptist history of persecution in Europe.

Groupings of contiguous church districts within a geographic area are referred to as a ‘settlement’. There are presently about 95,000 members of the "Old Order" or "horse-and-buggy" Amish living in settlements in some twenty US states, as well as in Ontario, Canada and several Latin American countries. The major concentrations of Amish populations in the US occur in the rural Midwest, with the two largest settlements being located at Holmes county, Ohio and Lancaster county, Pennsylvania.

While the Amish are among the most law-abiding of America’s minorities, reportedly having almost no adult crime within their communities, they have historically refused to obey laws that they have interpreted as contradicting their religious beliefs. For example, in the past, the Amish have refused to comply with those laws enforcing compulsory high school attendance and with federal legislation making participation in the Social Security and the Selective Service systems mandatory. When it has occurred, Amish non-conformity to law has typically taken the form of non-violent civil disobedience which, as in the above situations, has often resulted in the legal system recognising the cultural uniqueness of the Amish and granting them various exemptions and/or accommodations.

The non-compliance of the Amish in such matters is related to the fact that it is not to governments, nor to secular interests, that they owe their first allegiance (they are, in fact, forbidden by their faith to swear oaths of allegiance to national governments). Rather, the Amish owe their primary loyalty to their Ordnung: that is, to rules that are locally formulated by church/community leaders and are discussed and voted upon by a district’s members. Most of an Ordnung is based upon the leaders’ understandings of scriptures, but there may be considerable variation in interpretation from settlement to settlement, or even from district to district. For example, in Ohio, the Ordnungs of some church districts forbid their members from living in small towns and from accepting money from any type of in-town employment. Other districts permit their members to live, as well as to work, in towns and even to take factory jobs.

Despite such variations, the Amish of the Old Order clearly recognise themselves as belonging to a single, distinct faith and as being "one people". The core values of Amish culture, which serve to unite the various districts and settlements include:

1. Separation from and non-conformity to the secular world, in language, dress, the use of modern technologies, consumption patterns, types of residence, etc. For instance, the Amish employ German as their primary language, dress in dark clothing resembling that of their eighteenth century ancestors, avoid (large-scale) modern technologies and refuse to live in big cities or to adopt urban life-styles.

2. Value-oriented rationality, or rationality in the service of family, community and religious ideals. Such value-oriented rationality, stands in sharp contrast with the "ends-means" or "instrumental" rationality of the larger society.

3. A preference for small-scale communities, farms and business enterprises. This is exemplified by the deliberate avoidance of great wealth, large landholdings and other forms of material accumulation.

4. A reverential attitude toward nature and a respect for the benefits of manual labour. About half of all Amish men are self-employed farmers, many more work in agriculture-related occupations or in manual trades or crafts. Factory work is often regarded as an economic stepping-stone toward the purchase of a farm or a small shop.

5. Voluntary simplicity. Great store is set by simplicity and functionality, with complexity and ornamentation being avoided in all things. Outer simplicity or "plainness" is linked to inner spirituality and humility by the Amish.

6. Christian pacifism, as embodied in the Sermon on the Mount. The unqualified refusal to take up arms against other human beings or to serve as combatants in military service is a hallmark of the Amish.

7. Adult baptism. The belief that only adults should be baptised into the church because only adults can decide rationally whether or not to follow a faith. "No one is born Amish", members of the Order say, "we have all chosen to become Amish".

8. The supremacy of the sacred community over the rights of the individual. This is expressed in many ways, but especially through the practices of "banning" and "shunning" those who have rejected the faith, or who have transgressed the moral norms of the community.

9.Humility. Personal ambition and individualism are viewed as expressions of selfishness and as being incompatible with the ideal of brotherly love. Unchecked egoism is a great evil and human behaviour must be regulated and limited in accord with man’s understanding of God’s wisdom.

The Amish, like Lao Tse, view the natural world as a potential gardenplace, a virtual cornucopia of abundance if human beings are but wise enough to live in harmony with the ways and cycles of nature. Amish farmers thus attempt to farm as naturally as possible, minimising their uses of chemicals and practising such organic methods as crop rotation, the use of animal manures as fertilisers, and the construction of Martin (bird) houses for controlling crop-destroying insects. Some Amish farmers still believe in planting "by the signs" and draft horses are regularly employed for tilling the soil and other farm tasks. The American Standard Bred horse is typically used to pull traditional black, or grey, Amish buggies which remain the mainstay of family transportation. On the other hand, Amish men who are employed in factories may ride to work in carpools with "English" co-workers and other family members may be permitted to accept rides in motor vehicles that are driven by non-Amish friends or neighbours. The Amish find no inconsistency in riding in motorised vehicles – yet in prohibiting their ownership and operation – because they do not believe that the automobile itself is evil. What they fear, rather, is the development of a widespread dependency upon cars among their people which, they believe, would disrupt the social organisation of their families and communities and render them more vulnerable to the influences of an (often evil) outside world.

The predominant use of horse-and-buggy transportation binds Amish youth – physically and symbolically – to their settlement areas, making it difficult for them to avoid the scrutiny of their elders and the social controls of their church/communities. The situation recalls the words of Lao Tse:

Let the people value their lives and not migrate far.
Though there be boats and carriages,
None be there to ride them.¹⁰

The avoidance of advanced technologies by the Amish is selective, not universal, and those technologies that are perceived to have the greatest potential for creating external social and economic dependencies are those which are also most apt to be avoided. Hence, sect members may make use of such "modern" devices as pocket calculators, or solar cells for recharging lantern batteries, because these technologies are not viewed as constituting serious threats to community values and self-sufficiency. Conversely, the use of "high-wire" electricity is strictly proscribed, as is connection to other public utilities, which, it is thought, would tend to "yoke" believers to a profane world. While firearms are to be found in most Amish homes, these are for use in hunting and not for self-defence. Again, the verses of Lao Tse seem descriptive:

Though there be armour and weapons,
No occasion to display them.¹¹

Amish technologies, when properly understood, are neither archaic nor modern – but appropriate.¹² I use the term "appropriate" as it was used by Schumacher, that is, to designate a technology of intermediate scale. Such technologies tend to be inexpensive, are readily available to the members of a community and are capable of being produced locally. They are labour, rather than energy, intensive, are minimally harmful to the environment, and they do not violate the humanity of those who use them.

Schumacher believed that a commitment to the use of appropriate technologies would itself make a vital contribution toward the elusive goals of peace, permanence and ecological harmony. But he also thought that no purely sociological formula could ever ensure non-violence and peace among humans, and he quoted Gandhi to the effect that a truly just society would, of necessity, further have to be grounded upon a widely-shared belief in "the God of Love".¹³ In this respect, too, Amish society closely corresponds to Schumacher’s notions of an ideal "conserver society".¹⁴

While non-violent resistance to government authority is apt to be associated, in the modern mind, with the teachings of Gandhi and his disciples, the Amish have long practised non-violent civil disobedience. In this connection, the Martyr’s Mirror is a sacred Amish text that recounts the tortures and executions of thousands of early Christians and Anabaptists. In face, due in part to their pacifism, the Amish were driven entirely out of Europe and none remain on the Continent today.

In an often-quoted and telling story from the Martyr’s Mirror, Dirck Willems, a Dutch Anabaptist is fleeing from religious persecution by local authorities in 1569. In an effort to escape he runs across a frozen lake. He is closely pursued by a sheriff but the sheriff falls through the lake’s thin ice and cannot regain his footing. Willems returns and rescues the sheriff, knowing full well that he will be burned at the stake for his efforts. Following the rescue, the weeping sheriff delivers Willems to a certain fate at the hands of executioners.¹⁵

Like the followers of Gandhi, the Amish value manual work, communal life, deep humility and a conviction that moral deeds are far superior to stated intentions in the conduct of human affairs. There is even a Gandhi-like tolerance of other religions among the Amish, who do not believe that salvation is reserved for them alone, nor indeed that anyone can ever know for certain whether they have earned salvation. Although the Amish do not proselytise – "He who knows – speaks not" – they do accept "seekers" into their fold if the seekers are able to demonstrate through their actions that they sincerely desire to live in accord with the customs and rules of the sacred community.

The parallels between the Amish and the followers of Gandhi (or those of Schumacher) should not be extended too far, however. For, unlike the latter, the Amish avoid national political participation, shun public speaking (before non-Amish audiences) and refuse to take part in any form of court proceeding or legal litigation. In all of these respects, the Amish more closely resemble the more profound political pessimism and spiritual anarchism of Lao Tse:

The greater the number of statues
The greater the number of thieves and brigands.¹⁶

and

Never be first in the world.¹⁷

Despite the absence of laws, lawyers, courts, prisons or police, Amish society remains virtually crime-free. An Amish attitude toward punishment was expressed by an old Bishop who told me that it would be better if all the prisons in the U.S. could be torn down. "Prisons", he said, "only make people worse. They should go back to public floggings and shame them into straightening out."

Although there are some areas of divergence between Taoist and Amish-Anabaptist ethics, these differences do not negate the central point of my thesis; namely, that Amish society represents a special variety of anarchism – a variety, moreover, that has persistently appeared and reappeared throughout human history. While I cannot explore all of the differences between the Taoist and Amish belief systems here, three obvious areas of divergence are:

1. The Amish commitment to Jesus Christ as the personification of God and the way to salvation;
2. The greater liberality and individual permissiveness of Taoist morality – for example, as regards art, poetry, music and, especially, expressions of sexuality; and,
3. The greater introspectiveness and mysticism of Taoism;

Each of these three points may be briefly considered in turn. The first difference is mediated by the fact that the Taoists believed that the spark of the divine burned within all human beings, but that only some (like Christ?) became aware, or enlightened. It should also be recognised that the Amish commitment to Christ entails, above all, the adoption of a Christ-like lifestyle. Yet such a lifestyle, as it is interpreted by the Amish, does not differ substantively from the kind of life that was advocated by Lao Tse, that is, a life dedicated to brotherly and sisterly love, non-violence, simplicity, communalism, spirituality, and closeness to nature. The point is that how one lives is as important to the Amish as faith itself – and this was equally true of the Taoists. Salvation, for both religions, rests not upon faith alone but upon an interactive balance between right thinking and right action.

Second, although it seems clear that Amish culture is less Dionysian and expressive than was that of the early Taoists, it should be noted that the principle of moral moderation or optimal balance, is a major, if not the major, tenet of Lao Tse’s teachings. Furthermore, the Amish are considerably less puritanical than is popularly assumed. For instance, smoking, drinking and "bundling" (that is, sleeping with one’s clothes on in the same bed as someone of the opposite sex) are allowed in some Amish church districts and illegitimate births, although uncommon, do sometimes occur in Amish communities.

Third, while the Taoists may have been more introspective and meditative than the Amish, who are more given to physical activity and intense social interaction, even this distinction seems to be one of degree rather than of kind. In this regard, I find Hostetler’s notion of the "silent discourse" most interesting.¹⁸ The silent discourse refers to the many ways in which the Amish use silence and inaction to comprehend, and to cope with, the world. For example, rather than answer an outsider’s taunt or insult, an Amishman may merely remain silent, and Amish parents may simply choose to ignore some of the transgressions of their teenaged children. But silence and inaction can, it seems to me, also be viewed as typically Taoist, or Buddhist, reactions to many of the moral problems and paradoxes of life. Thus, the sage triumphs through inaction and understands the utility of emptiness and non-being. "He who knows – speaks not". Finally, it should be emphasised that the Taoists were not introspective hermits, but utopian communalists and, as Knoll points out, their admonition to know and to cultivate the self were – and were meant to be – other-directed. Lao Tse, no less than Confucius and the other Chinese philosophers, was preoccupied with the problem of government. "The Way is essentially utopian. The echo of a distant Golden Age…"¹⁹

How are the similarities between the world-views of Taoism and Amish-Anabaptism to be explained? It is safe to assume that there has been little, or no, cultural diffusion between the two belief systems. It does, however, seem likely that the two cultural systems may have evolved as similar responses to certain common types of historical challenges and experiences. There is abundant historical evidence that both Taoism and Amish-Anabaptism developed as the religions of persecuted outsiders; both were the faiths of rebellious intellectuals and of exploited peasants, and, to some extent, both were reactions to widely perceived, and deeply felt, moral economic, and social, injustices. As such, both were highly critical of the political and cultural establishment of their day.

Taoism, for example, was much more than a religious subculture in China; it was a brilliant and stinging rebuke of the existing social order of China and its supporting culture. Lin Yutang says that the Taoists’ "sharpest shafts were always directed at official pomp and dignity."²⁰ Lao Tse and Chuang Tse were devastating critics of China’s pampered mandarins, of her ritualistic civil servants, and of her greedy, aggressive, militaristic politicians.

Confucianism, the idealistic religious philosophy which most Chinese officials and civilised gentlemen purported to follow was, according to Lin Yutang, a favourite target of the nihilistic Taoists who "saw through the folly and futility of the Confucian saviours of the world…"²¹ Confucianism broadly supported action, Taoism inaction (or action only in accord with nature). Confucianism taught respect for authority and bureaucracy (Confucius being the father of the Chinese civil service system); Taoism advocated community and equality. Confucianism revered academic study and logic; Taoism taught reliance upon naturalistic observation and intuition. Confucianism rationalised civilisation; Taoism dissected its weaknesses and offered antithetical, countercultural alternatives. As Lin Yutang comments: "Confucians worship culture and reason; Taoists reject them in favour of nature and intuition… Confucius was a positivist; Lao Tse a mystic."²²

The tenets of Taoism, like the later tenets of Anabaptism, initially proved to be more compatible with the naturalistic, resigned, laissez-faire attitudes of peasants than with the aggressive beliefs of the wealthy and educated classes; hence, the early adherents of both faiths were mostly peasant farmers. Eventually, however, Taoism gained greater respectability among China’s higher classes (unlike the Amish faith in Europe which remained a religion of the common people) and some Chinese scholars attempted to reconcile its principles with those of Confucianism. The fact that such a reconciliation was never completely successful is reflected in the saying that every Chinese gentleman is a Confucianist when he holds official power and a Taoist when he returns to private life.

The early Anabaptists, like the founders of Taoism, were critics of a civilisation which they perceived to be at once morally corrupt, affected, unnatural, materialistic, violent and generally ungodly. And, just as Lao Tse is said to have dropped out of Chinese officialdom,²³ the first Anabaptist leaders and theologians were disaffected Roman Catholic clerics who abandoned Catholicism to become part of the Reformation movement in Germany and Switzerland.²⁴ But the Anabaptists, unlike Luther, carried their critique of existing European social institutions far beyond purely theological questions and into the considerably more dangerous areas of political, economic and social, organisation.²⁵ The Anabaptists became advocates of numerous religious and social reforms that they proposed to implement within their own communities – and among their own people. These reforms won them rapid popularity and a wide following among the peasantry, but they were widely feared by governments and by rival religious factions, who conspired together in the Anabaptist persecution.²⁶

The Amish, who had splintered off from the older, Mennonite Anabaptists, under the leadership of Jacob Ammon in 1693, were among the most orthodox, conservative and uncompromising of the Anabaptist sects; accordingly, they were singled out for the most severe forms of persecution. Their deliberate non-conformity and steadfast pacifism resulted, initially, in their being forced to live in isolated and remote areas and, finally, in the complete Amish exodus from Europe.

The Anabaptist leaders, like the Taoists before them, concluded that civilisation itself was essentially flawed and irredeemable and that, to achieve salvation, it would first be necessary to seek a more authentic mode of existence.²⁷ Separation from the world therefore became as important to the Amish as it had been to the Taoists. For both Bishop and Sage, it was impossible to be both a worldly person and a holy person. The seeker after the divine would have to distance himself or herself physically, psychologically and socially from the hurried and frantic, yet essentially frivolous or harmful, pursuits of civilised life.^28,29,30 Peace and wisdom were to be found far from the city through the regular rhythms of a common life in the midst of natural surroundings. In such a setting the believers would exert a moral influence upon others and would become, as the Amish are wont to say, "A light unto the world". Or, as the poetry of Lao Tse expresses it:

The Sage embraces the One
And becomes the model for the world.
He does not reveal himself,
And is therefore luminous. . .³¹

He who is conscious of the white
But keeps to the black
Becomes the model for the world.³²