What people get wrong about Rumspringa, the Amish rite of passage

For the Amish people, Rumspringa means something completely different than what you often see in popular media.

The idea of “Rumspringa” has a specific spot in the American imagination. A rite of passage for young people in some Amish communities, Rumspringa is seen by most outsiders as a wild time away from strict Amish rules, when teenagers can experiment with the modern vices of the world. While that may be true for some Amish communities, Rumspringa is actually a much more general — and generally more tame — term for an important time of discernment in an Amish youth’s life. Like so many cultural practices, the specifics vary from group to group. This in turn reveals another truth: Amish culture itself is far from a monolith. Before understanding what Rumspringa is, one has to understand the basics of Amish communities in America. The Amish are described by some historians as an ethnoreligious group, meaning their identity is tied to both their religion and their common culture and ancestry. In this case, the Amish are traditional Anabaptists (a specific type of Christianity) with German, Swiss, Dutch and other European roots who are living in the United States. Amish beliefs originated in Switzerland during the Protestant reformation, a time of great change in Christian religious practices during the 16th century. In the early 1700s, Amish people began emigrating from Europe to the United States, settling mostly in the state of Pennsylvania before eventually inhabiting nearby states and parts of southeastern Canada. Amish communities share general beliefs, but their practices may differ depending on region, levels of religious and cultural conservatism and the specific heritage of different communities. Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, has the largest Amish population in the US, numbering around 30,000. Among this population, there are roughly 229 different Amish districts, each with their own subcultures.