My mother's people are Old Order Mennonite - horse and buggy Mennonite, very close cousins to the Amish. I grew up in Lancaster County and lived near Amish farm land.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I was born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania - in Amish Country!
Growing up around Amish farmland, I enjoyed the opportunity to witness firsthand their love of family, of the domestic arts - sewing, quilting, cooking, baking - as well as seeing them live out their tradition of faith in such a unique way.
Mennonites are very conservative. They don't drink, dance, smoke, go to movies. I grew up in a very conservative faith-based community.
One of my earliest memories was of seeing horse-drawn buggies with little Amish children peering out at me from the back, their legs dangling as they jabbered in Pennsylvania Dutch, sometimes pointing and giggling at my family following slowly behind them in our car.
I grew up Protestant. My dad was a Charismatic pastor of the Families of God denomination. Often, we noticed that - during a lot of his evangelistic-type services - that some of the Amish and Old Order Mennonite couples would come and stand across the street from the church and look in the door.
I come from the countryside. I come from a bunch of horticulture family members. My best friend was a farmer's boy.
The Amish communities of Pennsylvania, despite the retro image of horse-drawn buggies and straw hats, have long been engaged in a productive debate about the consequences of technology.
My mother is, my father certainly was. They were kind of the local intelligentsia in the town where I grew up.
My parents were born in Norfolk and spent their early years working in the big houses of that rural English county, my mother as a cook and my father as a handyman and chauffeur.
I grew up in southwestern Ontario in the heart of a Mennonite community. All my family are part of the Mennonite church.