- Nov 26, 2019
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2. Amish with their Ordnung
Oh, here is something that might interest you on the subject of the Ordnung. It might surprise you to learn that this aspect of the Amish church is not inherently recent or innovative or of 17th century origin. Rather, the word Ordnung means “Order” in German, and there are books of church order dating back to the first century, for example, the Didache and a derivation of it called the Didascalia, which is still used officially by the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the equivalent document is called the Typikon, and it varies between jurisdictions, which can be independent regional churches like the Serbian Orthodox Church or the Antiochian Orthodox Church or the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, and between parishes and monasteries, for example, in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the monasteries on Mount Athos in Greece still use the traditional Sabaite-Studite Typikon that is used by most parishes and monasteries, with minor variations, in the Church Slavonic-speaking Orthodox churches like the Russian Orthodox, Belarussian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, and related traditional jurisdictions like the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, whereas most parishes and monasteries under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which include most Greek Orthodox churches in the United States, use the recent and somewhat controversial Violakis Typikon (which is somewhat simpler, but even Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, a loyal bishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, described some aspects of the Violakis Typikon as “ill-advised.” Additionally, there are typikons used by the Old Rite Orthodox and the related Russian Old Believers who are not in communion with the canonical Orthodox churches. There is the disused “Cathedral Typikon” that was reconstructed by scholars such as the musicologist Dr. Alexander Lingas, who runs the choir Capella Romana, and which was used until the conquest of Constantinople by Venice in the 1200s for worship at the Hagia Sophia, and in a few other places, and in the US, there is a monastery in the Orthodox Church in America called New Skete that has a highly idiosyncratic typikon of its own inspired by the old Cathedral Typikon.
And other Eastern churches also have the idea of books of church order. The liturgical equivalent in the Armenian church would in English be called the “Directory”; I cannot recall the Armenian word.
Moving west, we find the concept exists in, for example, the Traditional Latin Mass, or Vetus Ordo, of the Roman Catholic Church, vs. the new mass, or Novus Ordo, and also in monastic rules, for example, the Rule of St. Benedict.
Thus these works include instructions pertaining to the life of the faithful or of monks in a monastery, like the Rule of St. Benedict or the Didache, whereas in other cases, an order might pertain only to liturgical matters, with other issues addressed in volumes of canon law.
The Methodist Book of Discipline represents the former approach, whereas the Directory for Public Worship instituted to replace the Anglican Book of Common Prayer during the tyrannical reign of Oliver Cromwell would be an example of the latter, a liturgical instruction book. In the Presbyterian churches in particular it was common to have, instead of specific liturgical books, to instead have more general instructions to ministers in a “Book of Order”, whereas Continental Calvinists like the Dutch Reformed or the French reformed theologian Boucher had no problems with the retention of written liturgical prayers for worship, but these bothered the Scottish Presbyterians, and for many centuries they resisted implementing them, until the liturgical revival in the 19th century, which coincided with the Scoto-Catholic movement in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
So the subject of the “Ordnung” is interesting, in that virtually every church has something like the Ordnung; what makes the Amish and Old Order Mennonite Ordnungs interesting is the extreme intensity with which they prescribe and proscribe certain aspects of the daily lives of their members, in a manner that goes far beyond that of most other denominations.
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