Dvd Review: Devil's Playground (about the Amish)

The Amish, according to this mesmerizing 2002 documentary, have a concept that I find fascinating: an Amish rite of passage called Rumspringa, which is translated as "running around." This starts when they turn 16.

The idea of Rumpsringa is that Amish teenagers are allowed to break all the traditional Amish rules and explore the "English" world. As this documentary about the time period shows with actual footage, these Amish teens often go wild with drinking and drug use and, in one featurered youth's case, dealing drugs. The ritual usually ends around age 18-22 when the person makes a major life-changing decision: Whether to stay outside the Amish world or return to it?

They can choose at that point to not return to Amish life, but that essentially means saying goodbye to their family and community forever. While a few – including one in this documentary – make that choice – the film says that 90 percent of them return to the church. If they do return to the church but later leave it, as one featured does, they are shunned by the church since it is interpreted as breaking a promise with their faith.

This also means that some are returning to the fold while pregnant or dealing with a drug addiction. The Amish don't baptize their members until after this ritual is over, under the logic that members should be able to decide for themselves if they want to be baptized. One notes that Jesus was not baptized until he was in his major 30s. It made me wonder if it would not make more sense for more faiths to wait until people are adults before baptizing them.

The film's title comes from the Amish name for the outside world, the Devil's Playground. I showed this movie at my Unitarian Universalist church Sunday both because I find this ritual fascinating and because I knew it would provoke an interesting discussion about faith and whether it would make sense for other organization religions to have essentially a "time out" period.

For example, I grew up Catholic but I knew that the no sex before marriage rule was one that would be broken. But during my teenage years we had classes about confirmation, got confirmed, went to college and then rarely went back to Catholic church again except when visiting my mom, who is still Catholic. So that didn't exactly work as planned.

Would I still be Catholic if I was allowed for one year to sin all I wanted before deciding whether I want to say, via confirmation, that I was going to stay Catholic for the rest of my life? Maybe. Well, in my case it's doubtful because I have trouble with authorities and group-think. However, I know some lapsed catholics who might have stayed with the faith had there been a permissible time to have sex – perhaps with people of their own gender- and break other rules – before choosing to remain Catholic for the rest of their lives.

The same could be said for other faiths as well. How would that affect other faiths, be it Muslim, Judaism, Budhism, etc? Would this be a good way for people to test their faiths? I set up this article as a place where we can discuss this but we can just do it here as well.

One of the excellent points raised during the discussion at church was what this ritual says about how the Amish view the lives of the non-Amish, who they call The English. Do they really think our days are built around sex, drugs and rock and roll? Well, ok, maybe it is for some in college but I don't think that's the case for the average person. Things like jobs and other commitments, not to mention running out money, get in the way.

The film also has surprises, particularly the prevalence of cell phones and the explanation that decisions not to have items such as television and cars has less to do with electricity (as is commonly claimed) as what the possible effect and impact of the item on the faith and a community. Television, for example, could negatively affect relationships and people's behavior so it is banned.

The dvd comes with a director's commentary in which she talks about what some of the members featured are up to now and how she got such amazing footage. The director, Lucy Walker, also has an article here where she discusses some of those issues.

If you want to see a fascinating movie providing a glimpse into a little known ritual of Amish life check out this movie.

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