The Amana Society, 1867-1932: Accommodation of Old World Beliefs

277 Pages·2013·8.61 MB·English

by  Frank M. Moore

Olivet Nazarene University
Digital Commons @ Olivet
Faculty Scholarship – Theology Theology
5-1988
The Amana Society, 1867-1932: Accommodation
of Old World Beliefs in a New World Frontier
Setting
Frank M. Moore
Olivet Nazarene University, [email protected]
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Recommended Citation
Moore, Frank M., "The Amana Society, 1867-1932: Accommodation of Old World Beliefs in a New World Frontier Setting" (1988).
Faculty Scholarship – Theology. 10.
https://digitalcommons.olivet.edu/theo_facp/10
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THE AMANA SOCIETY, 1867-1932: ACCOMMODATION OF
OLD WORLD BELIEFS IN A NEW WORLD FRONTIER SETTING
By
Frank M. Moore
Dissertation
Submitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate School of Vanderbilt University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in
Religion
May, 1988
Nashville, Tennessee
Copyright by Frank M. Moore 1988
All Rights Reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODCTION 1
Statement of Purpose . . . 1
Previous Work in the Field 3
Discovery of New Material . 5
Chapter
I. A HISTORY OF THE AMANA SOCIETY TO 1867 8
Amana Today . . . . . . . . . . . 8
The Pietist Movement and Radical
German Pietism . . . . . . . . 10
The Formation of the Community of
True Inspiration . . . . . . . . . . 16
The Expansion of the Community ..... . 22
Years of Transition . . . . . . . . . . 29
The Reawakening . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Leadership under Christian Metz . . . . 38
Immigration to America . . . . . . . . . . 42
The Ebenezer Society . . . . . . . 44
The Transfer to Amana . 50
II. THE DOCTRINES AND WORSHIP OF THE
AMANA SOCIETY . . . . . 55
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century
Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Doctrines of the Amana Society . . . . . . 64
Der Glauben . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
The Catechism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
The Confession of Faith . . . . . . . . 85
"The Twenty-Four Rules" . . . . . . . . 90
"The Twenty-One Rules" . . . . . 92
Worship in the Amana Society . . . 96
Regular Worship Services . . . . . . 97
Special Annual Observances . . . 101
III. LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE IN THE COMMUNITY 109
Leadership of Barbara Heinemann
Landmann . . . . . . . . . . 111
Establishing Her Authority . . 111
God's Displeasure With Amana . 117
ii
A Predictable Schedule . . . 120
Offenses in the Community . . . . . 121
Leadership of the Great Council . . . . . . 127
Elders' Conferences . . . . . . . . . . 1 3
Confronted With Change and
Outside Influences . . . . . . . . . 137
Messages to the Community . . . 143
Modifying the Rules . . . . . . . . . . 147
The Elders' Response to Offenses . . . . 149
Serious Threats to the Community . . . . 152
The Impact of World War I . . . . . . . 159
Loss of Isolation . . . . . . . . . . . 162
The Great Change . . . . . . . . 167
IV. THE FAITH OF AMANA AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE 169
A Favorable Environment For
Developing Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
A Voluntary Organization . . . . . . . . . 176
An Attitude of Asceticism . . . . . . . . . 185
Industry and Prosperity . . . . . . . . . . 188
Where is the Enemy? . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Calamity and God's Displeasure . • . . . . 195
Members Not Spiritual Enough . . . . . 200
Free Will and Social Control . . . . . . . 204
Institutionalization . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Secularization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
A Shift of Emphasis . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Disbanding the Communal Organization . . . 226
V. THE OLD AND THE NEW 236
A New Look at the Faith . . . . . . 236
Subtle American Influences . . . . . . 241
Resisting Assimilation . . . . . . 247
A New Relationship with the World . . . . . 248
Change and Continuity in the Faith . . . . 252
Remaining True to the Faith . . . . . . . . 254
Adjustments After the Great Change . . . . 256
Faith in Amana Today . . . . . . . . . 262
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 265
iii
INTRODUCTION
Statement of Purpose
The purpose of this dissertation is to study the
religious character of the Amana Society from the death,
in 1867, of Christian Metz, the inspired leader who
brought the group to America, to the time of the Great
Change in 1932 when the religious and economic interests
of the society were separated. While some attention has
been directed in other studies to Amana as a communal
group, almost no attention has been given to its religion.
This study will begin with a brief history of the society
from its inception in eighteenth-century Germany to the
time the community moved to Iowa. This is necessary not
only to set the context of the study but also to introduce
the connections Amana has with the Inspirationist
doctrines of the French Camisards and Boehmist influences
in Radical German Pietism. These connections, absolutely
necessary to understand Amana's religion, have not been
made in previous studies of the society.
The dissertation will continue with a presentation
of the doctrines and worship patterns of the Amana
Society. These doctrines have never been systematically
presented in other studies. They, too, must be taken into
1
2
consideration if one is to understand why Amana responded
as it did to its rapidly changing environment at the end
of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth
centuries.
The major thrust of this dissertation will be an
analysis of the religious developments of the society from
1867 to 1932. The generally accepted view of Amana's
religious development, which has been presented in the
course of historical investigations, states that the
social changes which occurred within the community reflect
a breakdown of the group's religion. This is the
conclusion of Barnett Richling's master's thesis, Diane
Barthel's recent work on Amana, and a host of magazine
1
articles about Amana published across the years. This
dissertation challenges the generally accepted theory of
spiritual declension and offers evidence to support
another view.
The following presentation will attempt neither to
give a sweeping religious history of the society nor to
give a social analysis of the evolution of the community.
1
Barnett Richling, "Sectarian Ideology and Change
in Amana" (Master's thesis, McGill University, 1974);
Diane Barthel, Amana: From Pietist Sect to American
Community (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984);
Marcus Bach, "Amana: The Glory Has Departed," The
Christian Century, August 28, 1935, 1083-1086.---
3
The central agenda will be, rather, to investigate the
religion of the society as it was taught and lived
throughout the period of study, with special attention
being given to the significance of the changes which took
place. The dissertation will conclude by suggesting an
interpretation for these developments which challenges the
spiritual declension theory and presents Amana's faith in
a new light.
Previous Work in the Field
Since Amana was a closed commune until the
twentieth century, few outsiders visited the colonies in
the early years of their existence. One of the first
outsiders to see the colonies in operation and write about
2
them was Charles Nordhoff, who visited in 1875.
Information was incomplete until the State Historical
Society of Iowa published the first full presentation on
the Amana Colonies in 1908 in Amana: the Community of True
3
Inspiration by Bertha M. H. Shambaugh. It offers not a
scholarly presentation but rather the conclusions of a lay
observer. The book is composed of a collection of two-or-
2
charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of
the United States (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), 25-63.
3
This work was reprinted in 1932 with a section
aaaea on the Great Change under the title Amana That Was
and Amana That Is.
4
three-page essays she wrote on various aspects of Amana
life and history. Her bibliographical information is
often incomplete and difficult to locate. However, even
with its flaws, Shambaugh's work has remained the chief
source of information on Amana until recent years and is
still in print.
Francis DuVal wrote his Ph.D. dissertation in 1948
on the life and leadership qualities of Christian Metz.
The study gave careful consideration to Metz but
contributed little to an understanding of Amana's
religion. Without a doubt, the best and most complete
presentation of the Amana Colonies was made by Jonathan
Andelson in "Communalism and Change in the Amana Society:
1855-1932," his Ph.D. dissertation submitted in 1974. In
it Andelson studied Amana's communalism from a
sociological point of view and offered plausible reasons
for the society's abandoning its communal economic
organization in 1932. He did an excellent job analyzing
the social development of the community but did not
explore the religious thought of the society or the
influences the religion had on the changes the community
experienced.
The most recent Amana study was conducted by Diane
Barthel in Amana: From Pietist Sect to American Community,
which was published in 1984. She devoted most of her
attention to twentieth-century developments in Amana and
5
said very little about its religious thought. She
accepted the spiritual declension theory as an explanation
of the social changes which occurred prior to and
following the Great Change. An examination of her
references shows very little use of primary resources
available in the Amana museum and archives. Her
presentation is little more than a compilation of what
others have written about the community.
Discovery of New Material
Besides the fact that no one has given direct
attention to the religious thought of Amana and the role
it played in the development of the community, a new study
of the society is warranted by the fact that new material,
offering new insights, has recently been made available
through a number of sources. The Amana Heritage Society
has made a concentrated effort over the past several years
to obtain copies of all extant writings about the Amana
Society for its museum. Consequently, more material is
available today than ever before. Old records and books
are brought to the museum almost every time a building is
renovated or a deceased member's personal effects are
examined. For example, when Jonathan Andelson presented
his study in 1974, minutes of the Great Council meetings
(Bruderraths Beschluesse) were available only through
1900. Today copies are available through 1932. Andelson