Amish Beard Cutting - The Difference Between Culture and Religion

You may remember the sensational 2012 trial in federal court, Cleveland, Ohio, in which Samuel Mullet and fifteen of his followers were convicted of hate crimes for beard cutting incidents that took place in 2011 near Bergholz, in eastern Ohio.  Mullet was sentenced to fifteen years in the federal penitentiary in Texarkana, Texas, for the crime which he maintained was nothing more than an internal church dispute over articles of faith.  His fifteen followers were similarly sentenced to federal penitentiaries, for terms ranging from one to seven years.

Once imprisoned, Mullet discovered that inmates who lack high school diplomas are required to take classes toward high school equivalency.  Mullet petitioned that this violates his First Amendment religious freedom, on the grounds that mandatory prison education at the high school level violates the U.S. Supreme Court decision that prohibits compulsory education of all Amish children beyond the eighth grade.  Mullet’s petition was approved recently by the federal prison system, according to statements made to Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer newspaper.  So as it now stands, the federal prison system is not going to require Amish prisoners to improve themselves by taking high school classes while they are serving their sentences.

I find myself asking where, in all of this, is there thinking based on religion, and where is there thinking based on culture?  Certainly it is evident that Amish people are Christians.  As Christians, Amish people take guidance for their faith from the Bible.  Is that a matter of religion?  You bet.

But what about the beard cutting and the refusal to participate in education beyond some arbitrary grade?  That is most assuredly a matter of culture. For this, it seems to me, Amish people take their guidance more from social traditions than from the Bible.

To my way of thinking, there is no better way to illustrate the difference between Amish culture and Amish religion.  And it is intriguing to me that Amish people will cite religious freedom in order to justify a cultural preference.