Abstract
The present study explores identity among the former Amish. While sociologists of religion have long been interested in religious identity, there has been less attention to religious identities among those who cross religious borders. Much of the literature suggests that individuals abandon former religious identities, including ethno-religious ones, when they join a new religious denomination (e.g., Sandomirsky and Wilson in Soc Forces 68:1211–1229, 1990; Sherkat and Wilson in Soc Forces 73:993–1026, 1995). While scholarship on the Jewish case challenges this assumption (e.g., Phillips and Kelner in Soc Relig 67:507–524, 2006; Sharot in Contemp Jew 18:25–43, 1997), research on other religious groups has largely overlooked these insights. This study extend insights from the Jewish case by examining holdover identities among the former Amish and comparing them with the former Ultra-Orthodox Jewish case, making use of Davidman's (Becoming un-orthodox: stories of ex-Hasidic Jews, Oxford University Press, New York, 2014) research. Analysis of in-depth interviews with 59 former Amish adults reveals that, while those who have left the Amish no longer define themselves as religiously Amish, they do not abandon their Amish identities entirely. Instead, they reconstruct the meanings of their Amishness in varied ways in their non-Amish contexts. Comparison of these patterns with former Ultra-Orthodox Jews illuminates contextual factors, including the Amish practice of adult baptism and differing normative conceptions of Amish and Jewish identities, that contribute to variation in holdover identities across these cases. Altogether, these results suggest that ethno-religious identities are not mutually exclusive of other denominational identities and support the conceptualization of religious identities as complex, multilayered, and constructed in particular contexts in interaction with existing notions about religious groups.
Introduction
In Becoming an Ex, Ebaugh (1988) provides a general model of role exit, which she defines as “the process of disengagement from a role that is central to one's self-identity and the reestablishment of an identity in a new role that takes into account one's ex-role” (p. 1). She studies various forms of role exit, including religious exit, though her book focuses on exit from occupational and institutional roles. Her respondents’ narratives reveal that those who exit roles, particularly highly salient ones, do not erase their pasts; instead, residuals of their former selves continue shaping their lives in the form of what she calls “holdover” identities (p. 8).
Despite Ebaugh's findings, there has been uneven attention to matters of holdover identity in the sociological literature. There are vast bodies of literature devoted to immigrants’ ethnic identities after border crossing (see, e.g., Rumbaut 1994; Waters 1999) and, within the sociology of religion, identities among American Jewry of varying beliefs and practices (see, e.g., Davidman 2014; Davidman and Greil 2007; Hartman and Hartman 1999; Horowitz 2000). However, there has been more limited consideration of holdover identities among other religious “border crossers,” including members of non-Jewish ethno-religious groups for whom religion and ethnicity overlap in some way. While there is evidence that ethno-religious identities persist after religious “dropout” (Bahr and Albrecht 1989; McNamara 1992), much of the literature on religious mobility tends to treat these and other religious identities as mutually exclusive and overlooks ways in which former ethno-religious identities, particularly non-Jewish ones, may persist or be reshaped in the face of new religious practice (see, e.g., Iannaccone 1990; Sherkat 2001; Sherkat and Wilson 1995; Stark and Finke 2000).
The present study addresses this gap in the literature with an analysis of holdover religious identities among those who have crossed an ethno-religious border: the former Amish. Through this analysis, I seek to examine varying ways in which respondents narratively express attachments to their Amish backgrounds and also how these identities line up with the Jewish case, focusing on Davidman's (2014) research on the former Ultra-Orthodox. Analysis of in-depth interviews with 59 former Amish individuals challenges the assumption made in some of the religious mobility literature that acquisition of a new religious identity strips away all attachments to one's former ethno-religious identity (Sandomirsky and Wilson 1990; Sherkat and Wilson 1995). While my former Amish respondents reject the Amish religion, they reconstruct the meaning of Amishness in their non-Amish lives and express continuing, though varied, connections to it. At the same time, comparison with the Ultra-Orthodox case illuminates contextual factors that contribute to variation in holdover identities among former ethno-religious individuals and suggests that perspectives on Jewish identities can help inform our understanding of identities among other ethno-religious groups.
Ethno-Religious Identity and Religious Mobility
There has been considerable attention to religious identity within the sociology of religion, although it has not always been framed as “identity” (Greil and Davidman 2007). According to Ammerman (2003), religious identities relate to “‘religious’ actors, ideas, institutions, and experiences that play a role in the story of who we are and who I am” (p. 216), arising from the interplay of agency and structure. Ammerman (2003) focuses on the production of religious identities in interaction and narrative as well as the ways in which they are embodied. Cadge and Davidman (2006) further emphasize that religious identities are multilayered and, in their study of Jewish and Buddhist religious identities, demonstrate how some religious identities are simultaneously ascriptive and achieved or chosen.
Scholars have shown particular interest in the religious identities of members of ethno-religious groups, those in which religion and ethnicity overlap with one another. Members of such groups are linked not just by shared religious beliefs, practices, and affiliation but also by shared family ties, neighborhood, language, history, traditions, and culture (Harrison and Lazerwitz 1982; Sandomirsky and Wilson 1990). These consolidated social ties are thought to strengthen group members’ commitments to one another and affect group members’ religious mobility, especially for those groups, including Mormons, Amish, and Jews, for whom ethnicity and religion are tightly linked (Hammond and Warner 1993).
Scholars contend that ethno-religious group members’ social and cultural ties help sustain connections to their ethno-religious groups even when they do not hold the group's beliefs or engage in its practices, in contrast to members of other religious groups (Harrison and Lazerwitz 1982; Sandomirsky and Wilson 1990; Sherkat and Wilson 1995). In other words, former members of ethno-religious groups may retain their ethno-religious identities despite exiting these groups. However, Sherkat and Wilson (1995) argue that joining a new religious group produces such role strain that it “require[s] switchers from quasi-ethnic groups to abandon their ethnic identities in order to join another denomination” (p. 1000).
Research on some Christian groups supports the notion that members of ethno-religious groups maintain their identities outside of religious belief and practice. For example, some former Mormons maintain, at times marginal, levels of Mormon belief and connection to their Mormon communities (Bahr and Albrecht 1989) or hold “cultural Mormon” identities akin to “secular Jewish” ones (Phillips 2001). Research provides similar evidence of “cultural Catholics” (McNamara 1992). However, in contrast to predictions from the religious mobility literature, a recent Pew (2015) report highlights a category of individuals who identify as Catholic while reporting non-Catholic (most commonly Protestant) denominational preferences, suggesting that some individuals maintain ethno-religious identities even after joining new religious groups.
The Jewish Case
Most evidence about the complexity of ethno-religious identities comes from the vast body of literature on American Jews. This scholarship suggests that the association between religion and ethnicity is particularly complex for this group because “the boundaries between religion and other aspects of life are blurred” (Phillips and Kelner 2006: 509). Research reveals that individuals make claims to Jewishness across a wide range of religious belief and practice (Davidman 2014; Davidman and Greil 2007; Hartman and Hartman 1999; Horowitz 2000; Sharot 1997; Tenenbaum and Davidman 2007). For example, in her study of Jewish identity, Horowitz (2000: 183) asks, “How are American Jews Jewish?” and finds evidence of a variety of behavioral and subjective aspects of Jewishness. Along with a group who are actively engaged in Jewish religious practice, she identifies categories of individuals who base their Jewishness solely in a strong sense of subjective meaning; others who relate it to cultural or communal involvement, apart from religious practice; and others still who describe their Jewishness as “a fact of their origins, but not something in which to revel” (2000: 80). Additional research finds that some individuals claim Jewish identities jointly with other religious identities (Phillips and Kelner 2006), in contrast to zero-sum assumptions among other scholars (Sherkat and Wilson 1995). For example, some individuals hold Jewish and Buddhist identities simultaneously (Kamenetz 1994). Others even describe identities blending elements of Christianity and Judaism (Schwadel 2010). The intensity of Jewish identities appears to vary by experiential and contextual factors, including age, bar/bat mitzvah status, family structure (Horowitz 2000), and local Jewish population share (Alper and Olson 2013).
Davidman's (2014) recent research provides additional insight into Jewish identities, focusing specifically on those who cross a strong religious boundary: the former Ultra-Orthodox. Her work, which focuses on embodiment, reveals that, after their exits, former Ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) individuals describe deeply imprinted, lasting connections to their Orthodox pasts, which result, in part, from their intensive embodied socialization experiences and lead to feelings of considerable ambivalence after their exits. Davidman finds evidence of these connections in respondents’ patterns of language, clothing and bodily comportment, including continuing preferences for modest dress, religious practices like lighting Sabbath candles, and ongoing feelings of loss. She explains that elements of their Orthodox upbringings “show up in surprising ways when [they] least expect it” (p. 196). For example, one of her respondents recalls feeling guilty when he suddenly realized that he was not wearing a yarmulke one day at work, despite having abandoned the practice several years before (Davidman 2014: p. 25). In their interviews, these former Haredi individuals portray identity attachments that are largely engrained and habitual, persisting despite religious exits that they thought were “thorough and permanent” (p. 181). Yet, Davidman (2014) also notes that respondents intentionally choose to engage in Jewishness, particularly involving forms of Jewish ritual practice, although this practice differs from Orthodox standards. Despite their exits, these individuals remain attached to their Jewish identities primarily because they are so deeply engrained but also because they remake them in their new secular contexts, like some of Horowitz's (2000) respondents.
These approaches to Jewish identity have allowed scholars to uncover remarkable complexity in individuals’ Jewish engagement and attachments, yet, despite appeals to extend these kinds of considerations to other religious groups (Hartman and Kaufman 2006), similar examinations of non-Jewish identities have been quite rare, even among groups like the Amish that also blur the boundaries between religion and ethnicity (Hammond and Warner 1993). In this paper, then, I extend these insights regarding Jewish identity to the former Amish.
The Amish Case
The Amish are an offshoot of the Anabaptists, a radical group that broke off from the Protestant Reformation in sixteenth century Europe (Hostetler 1993; Kraybill et al. 2013). They abide by basic Christian tenets but share a number of characteristics that separate them from some other Christian groups, including their values regarding discipleship, obedience, and Gelassenheit (yieldedness) to God's will and practices of nonviolence, separation from the world, and adult baptism (Hostetler 1993; Kraybill et al. 2013). The Amish consider baptism a serious commitment that only adults can make; therefore, those who break their baptismal vows face serious sanctions (excommunication and shunning), while those who leave before baptism do not. Baptismal status, then, structures religious life and religious exit, such that most of those who leave their Amish churches, approximately 15% of all Amish born, do so before baptism (Young Center 2016).
All Amish share some similarities in living styles and religious practices as well as forms of interaction with the non-Amish, which shape their embodied experiences of Amishness. For example, the Amish famously make use of horse-and-buggy transportation, a characteristic that many scholars use to distinguish the “real” Amish from other groups (Kraybill 2010; Donnermeyer et al. 2013). The Amish also dress in a plain style, delineated specifically by their churches (Kraybill et al. 2013). Amish children's first language is one of two German-based dialects, but all Amish sing certain a capella hymns in standard German during their approximately 3-h long worship services, held every other Sunday.
Despite these similarities, recent scholarship highlights the diversity among the Amish, which results, in good part, from their lack of bureaucratic organizational structure and authority. The Amish are organized at the local level into more than 2200 different church districts, geographically bound church communities of 20–40 families that worship together and share a common set of rules governing daily life (Ordnung) (Young Center 2016). Individual districts may be connected to those that share a similar Ordnung and those that are geographically contiguous, but they largely function as independent units. A whole host of factors—including but not limited to migration history, settlement location and size, economic markets, local ordinances, availability of land, and leadership personalities (Hurst and McConnell 2010; Nolt and Meyers 2007)—produces diversity among the Amish.
Amish identities, then, are shaped by their varying districts, affiliations, and settlements as well as broader contexts (Nolt and Meyers 2007). Yet despite this complexity, scholars contend that, as a whole, the Amish share a sense of peoplehood and common identity, akin to ethnicity, although scholars portray this identity in different ways (Hostetler 1993; Nolt and Meyers 2007; Weaver-Zercher 2001). In their recent theoretical treatment, Nolt and Meyers (2007) claim that the basis of a collective Amish identity is neither the shared characteristics outlined above nor the almost total impermeability of the Amish to religious seekers. Instead, it is the cultural conversations, both literal and metaphorical, in which the Amish engage that produce their collective sensibility and truly define the Amish. These cultural conversations include dialogues with the past, especially regarding their religious traditions and marginal status; with the “world,” particularly relating to their separation from it and place within it; and within their own communities, both at the district level and more broadly, especially in negotiations with the state. While the content and the outcomes of these conversations vary across districts, they define the Amish as a community, according to Nolt and Meyers (2007), because the Amish agree that they are the matters of utmost significance.
The Amish, then, are a unique religious group with considerable within-category variation, yet they are a useful case for the examination of non-Jewish ethno-religious identity holdover and for comparison with the Ultra-Orthodox case. First, there has been relatively little research on the former Amish. Apart from Nisly's (2006) study, which reveals that former Amish professionals retain connections to their Amish cultural values, other research on the former Amish offers little insight into identity, focusing instead on rates of exit, factors associated with defection, and reasons for leaving (Faulkner and Dinger 2014; Greksa and Korbin 2002; Mazie 2005; Meyers 1994). Further exploration of this case, then, is warranted. Second, for both the Amish and the Ultra-Orthodox groups, religion and ethnicity overlap greatly (Hammond and Warner 1993), and both communities experience somewhat similar levels of separation from mainstream American society (Davidman 2014; Kraybill et al. 2013). As such, in both cases, religious exit alters their lives in substantial ways as former members leave behind family, friends, community, language of origin, cultural traditions, and more. These similarities suggest that there may be important parallels in the construction of identity for these former ethno-religious group members.
Despite their similarities, differences between the former Amish and former Haredi Jews may shape their identities in varying ways. For example, the practice of adult baptism provides Amish individuals with a community-sanctioned option for religious exit unavailable to the Orthodox (Davidman 2014), thereby offering the Amish with different contexts for constructing holdover ethno-religious identities than former Haredi Jews. At the same time, when the former Ultra-Orthodox leave their communities, they enter a social context where individuals claim many different kinds of Jewish identities, including subjective, secular, or cultural Jewish ones (Horowitz 2000). Such a context provides former Haredi Jewish “apostates” like Davidman's respondents (2014: 225) space to make claims to Jewish identities outside of Jewish belief and practice. The former Amish's options appear more limited. There are non-horse-and-buggy groups that identify as “Amish” in some way (Waldrep 2008; Anderson 2011). The largest is the Amish Mennonites, a movement that, in some ways, straddles the boundary between the Amish and Mennonites, one of the most closely related religious groups to the Amish, who share Anabaptist roots with the Amish as well as their practices of nonviolence, adult baptism, and “plainness,” to varying degrees (Anderson 2011). Yet, even here, Amishness is tied to a particular religious affiliation. Consequently, the former Amish appear to face a more limited set of models for reconstructing holdover ethno-religious identities outside of Amish religious practice and affiliation.
With these similarities and differences in mind, the present study extends insights from the scholarship on Jewish identity to the former Amish case by repurposing and expanding Horowitz's research question, “How are American Jews Jewish?” for the former Amish case. To this end, I explore (1) the varying ways in which the former Amish are Amish; (2) how these former Amish identities resemble and differ from Jewish ones, especially former Haredi ones (Davidman 2014); and (3) how variations in former Amish identities may be related to contextual factors, including baptismal status, age at exit, and denominational destination.
Data and Methods
In this paper, I analyze respondents’ narratives of religious exit and identity change. Narratives are (re)constructions of life events and experiences reflecting the social contexts in which they are made and structured by cognitive schema shared across groups (Wuthnow 2011; Yamane 2000). Narrative analysis provides researchers with deep and nuanced insights into social experiences that cannot be otherwise studied.
For this study, I located potential respondents via colleagues’ and acquaintances’ contacts, local and online advertisements, and postings on Amish-related Facebook pages and other websites, using snowball sampling techniques to identify additional participants. These methods permitted me to identify primarily those who considered themselves to be ex- or former Amish and those who maintained connections with other former Amish individuals. As a result of this selectivity, my sample may be skewed towards individuals who identify with Amishness in some form. However, because the purpose of this research study is not to estimate how common it is for Amish identities to persist but rather to examine if and how they persist at all, this sampling method is suitable for this analysis.
This paper examines qualitative data from a larger study on individuals who left the Amish. From 2012 to 2014, I conducted in-depth interviews with 59 adults—31 women and 28 men, ranging in age from 18 to 81—who were raised in Amish churches but have since left them. My respondents were brought up in 30 different Amish settlements across the United States and Canada. All but two spent at least part of their childhoods in Old Order or other “horse-and-buggy” Amish families. These two respondents were born into families who were members of Amish Mennonite churches; had parents who had been raised Old Order; experienced childhoods that were largely oriented around Old Order communities; and considered themselves Amish while growing up, even though their identities did not align with some scholars’ strict definitions (Kraybill 2010; Donnermeyer et al. 2013). None belonged to Old Order Mennonite groups.
I conducted the interviews through a few different media. I met in-person with the 25 respondents who lived in and around Lancaster County, PA. I conducted 6 interviews via Skype and the rest on the telephone. My respondents lived in 16 different states at the time of interview. Telephone and Skype interviewing allowed me access to this geographic variety without being cost prohibitive. Research suggests that high quality data can be acquired through Skype and telephone interviews (Novick 2008), although there are some costs in terms of nonverbal cues (Aquilino 1994). Nonverbal cues are especially important among the Amish, who limit telephone and other communication technologies to varying degrees (Umble 1994). While there are no differences in interview length between the in-person and technology-mediated interviews (just under 2 h in length for both groups), lacking access to nonverbal cues likely shaped the information I gathered in the interviews, especially relating to embodiment. The impact on narrative identities was likely more minimal. Most of my telephone and Skype respondents had left their Amish communities many years ago (about 20 on average), and the most recent leavers, who left between 4 and 6 years before our interviews, had used cell phones regularly, if surreptitiously, before their religious exits. As a result, my respondents had likely developed a good deal of comfort with these communication technologies, which might have lessened some of the impact of the lack of nonverbal communication in the interviews.
Interviews covered a variety of topics, such as questions about respondents’ Amish upbringings, processes of exit, and experiences since leaving, including religious changes over time. A portion of each interview was devoted to identity and included questions about how respondents identified religiously and ethnically and labels that respondents used to describe themselves (Amish, ex-Amish, former Amish, English [a term the Amish use for the non-Amish], or something else). I also asked respondents different questions about their subjective senses of Amishness, Englishness, and Americanness (“To what extent do you feel Amish/English/American?”). While I devoted significant attention to identity in this one section of the interview, respondents often described their engagement with Amishness throughout the course of the interviews.
After completing the interviews, each recording was transcribed. Because the religious mobility literature suggests there are distinctions in religious identities between those who drop out and those who switch out of ethno-religious groups, I coded respondents who were affiliated with a non-Amish religious denomination or who described regular religious practice as religious switchers and those who did not align themselves with a particular religious tradition as religious dropouts. Among my respondents, the vast majority (52 of 59) had switched to a new religious denomination. All but one of these respondents claimed non-Amish Christian religious identities; the single remaining religious switcher identified as Unitarian. Because my sample is so heavily weighted towards religious switchers, I am unable to describe any meaningful distinctions between these categories. Moreover, my respondents’ current religious preference differ markedly from Davidman's (2014) former Haredi sample of “apostates” (p. 225), an issue that I will return to below. However, the inclusion of many religious switchers does allow me to probe claims that religious identities are mutually exclusive.
This analysis focuses on respondents’ answers to the identity questions and their descriptions of current Amish attachments and engagements throughout their interviews, including embodied ones. I have delved deeply into these narratives to examine respondents’ claims to and descriptions of their Amishness in their current lives, to identify patterns that emerge when respondents discuss their Amishness. I do not measure my respondents’ descriptions against any set of standards of Amish authenticity, but rather I allow my respondents themselves to construct their own understandings of Amishness. In attempting to make sense of these identity patterns, I compare them to Davidman's (2014) research on identities among former Haredi Jews to draw out similarities and differences between the ethno-religious groups. Finally, I engage in exploratory work to identify factors that may play a part in shaping individuals’ ethno-religious identities. Since previous research suggests that experiential and contextual factors are related to ethno-religious identities (Horowitz 2000; Alper and Olson 2013), I focus on those relevant to the former Amish case, including age at exit, time since exit, reasons for leaving, baptismal and shunning status, solo exit versus exit with family, current denomination, and current geographic location.
Results
All of my respondents discuss ways in which they are still connected to Amishness, after their exits. They do not make claims to any kind of Amish religious identity, but they also do not renounce their Amishness entirely, even when they have joined new religious denominations. Instead, almost all label themselves as “ex-Amish” or “former Amish” and demonstrate various ways in which they identify with Amishness. Although there is some slippage between categories, these identities tend to fall within three broad identity patterns: engaged Amishness, Amish rootedness, and marginalizing Amishness. I categorize narratives as revealing engaged Amishness when respondents describe (1) feeling Amish quite intensely and contentedly or (2) intentionally maintaining attachments to their Amishness. Respondents in the Amish rootedness category are those who (1) describe feeling minimally, though unproblematically, Amish and (2) do not reveal purposeful or active efforts to maintain their Amishness. Respondents in these first two identity categories reflect positively on their Amish identities; that is, they do not portray significant tension with non-Amish society resulting from their Amishness. In contrast, in the third category, marginalizing Amishness, respondents portray experiences of significant tension with non-Amish society resulting from their Amishness and varying levels of Amish engagement. Below, I provide a description of these patterns and highlight ways in which they align with and differ from Davidman's (2014) findings regarding former Haredi Jews.
Engaged Amishness
A pattern that emerges from 17 respondents’ narratives reveals “engaged Amishness.” While almost all of these respondents are affiliated with new Christian denominations and make strong claims to non-Amish Christian identities, none of them explicitly identify any tension between their new religious beliefs and practices and their Amish identities; in fact, they tend not to express anxiety about their continuing Amishness. Instead, these narratives portray clear, strong, positive Amish attachments and/or intentional connections to the culture, although some acknowledge their Amish identities do not align with normative portrayals of Amishness.
Many engaged Amish respondents express intense and positive subjective connections to their Amish identities. For example, Lillian, who left the Amish with her husband and children 50 years ago and now attends an evangelical Christian church, reveals, “I identify very much with the Amish ladies…I really do identify myself as Amish. I so appreciate all that I've learned there. Oh, yeah.” Here Lillian unambiguously articulates her Amishness in a positive way. Many other engaged Amishness respondents portray highly valued identities that blend Amish and non-Amish elements, similar to some immigrants’ additive ethnic identities, which combine national origin and American elements (Rumbaut 1994). For example, James, a Mennonite who left the Amish over 50 years ago, considers himself “bicultural,” and describes his continuing Amishness as beneficial, especially in his interactions with others where it lends him “a kind of authenticity… that's kind of my Amishness coming through.” Engaged Amishness respondents like James consider their continuing Amishness an important and valuable part of themselves.
Along with this pattern of subjective meaning, many engaged Amishness respondents highlight ways in which they intentionally engage with Amishness. For example, some of these respondents have consumed scholarly and other research on the Amish, including Unser Leit, a nearly 1000-page history of the Amish (Beachy 2011), Kraybill's (1989) The Riddle of the Amish, and Weaver-Zercher's (2001) The Amish in the American Imagination. Other respondents express their connections to the Amish in their choices to live near the Amish. For example, Elmer, who left after baptism and currently attends a mainline Protestant church, reveals that, despite having moved away from his own Amish community, he decided to live near an Amish settlement because he “consciously choose[s] to keep the connection” to the Amish by living near them and regularly socializing with them. Elmer portrays his continuing engagement with Amishness as active and purposeful.
Additionally, engaged Amish respondents who are parents reveal that their continued Amish attachments shape their children's lives. For example, Mary, who left the Amish with her family for a mainline Protestant church, explains that her Amish background is “something I want to be able to pass on to the kids or show and explain to them, ‘This is where we came from; this is what it was about.’…[We] incorporate both sides as we raise our kids.” Mary and other engaged Amish respondents demonstrate their Amishness in the ways in which they intentionally maintain, and work to reproduce in their children, connections to their Amish heritage. They echo the desire to pass on some sort of identity attachment to their children that many Jewish and immigrant parents express (Bengtson 2013; Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 2001).
Some engaged respondents purposefully maintain their connections to their Amishness through embodied practices regarding dress. For example, Jonas, who left his Amish community about 20 years ago, reveals, “I recently bought…the traditional Amish winter coat that the men wear…They are hard to find, almost impossible. And I found it and I love it. So that's a way for me to walk down the street and say this is my background but yet I've emerged from that world.” While Jonas does not dress in an Amish way and currently attends a mainline Protestant church, he uses this coat as a means of announcing his Amishness, in embodied form, to others.
In addition, a number of engaged Amishness respondents negotiate with normative conceptions regarding Amish identity and religious practice as they construct personally these meaningful identities. For example, Anna, a born-again Christian woman who left after baptism but remains deeply engaged with the Amish in her community, reveals, “You know, the strange thing is I still feel very much a part of the Amish even if I'm not Amish, I still feel Amish… I would still identify myself as Amish. But I know I'm not Amish. Not the way the Amish are Amish.” Here, Anna justifies her identity claim by drawing a distinction between the Amish and her own intensely personal Amish identity. A few other engaged Amishness respondents validate their identity claims by drawing connections to Jewish identities. For example, Reuben, a liberal Protestant man who left the Amish church he joined about 20 years ago, compares his identity to Jewish ones: “[T]here's a very widely established acceptance of Jewish people who are not necessarily Orthodox or particularly practicing Jewish, but they're still identified as Jews. And so I came to understand that that's what I need to do. I need to identify as an Amish person.” For Reuben and others who make this comparison, the Jewish case provides a useful analogy for shoring up claims to strongly felt Amish identities and redefining Amishness beyond religious belief and practice.
There are differences and similarities between engaged Amish and Jewish identities. The engaged Amishness pattern resembles patterns of high subjective engagement and cultural-communal engagement among Jewish Americans in Horowitz's (2000) research. Comparison with Davidman's (2014) research, reveals that both the engaged Amish and some former Haredi individuals deeply feel their ethno-religious identities of origin. Moreover, both groups make conscious choices to continue some practices from their ethno-religious upbringings, although my respondents’ practices are less of a ritualistic religious nature than Davidman's (2014). However, while Davidman (2014) suggests that her respondents largely maintain connections to their Haredi upbringings in spite of their efforts to construct new identities, engaged Amishness respondents appear more intentional in their efforts to make claims to their Amishness, perhaps because their identities are somewhat less rooted in bodily practices than former Haredi individuals (Davidman 2014). These former Amish individuals also seem to more content with their attachments to their embodied former ethno-religious identities than Davidman's (2014) former Orthodox Jewish respondents, who express more anxiety and ambivalence.
Amish Rootedness
Amish rootedness is the most common identity pattern I identified, emerging from 30 respondents’ narratives. Like all my respondents, most rootedness respondents are affiliated with non-Amish Christian denominations and claim Christian identities, which they do not portray as conflicting with their Amishness. Amishness is less central and intense to rootedness than engaged respondents. For rootedness respondents, Amishness is an undeniable, but unproblematic, fact of their origins rather than a purposeful or deeply meaningful expression of their true selves.
Many Amish rootedness respondents portray their Amishness as resulting from socialization. For example, Hannah, who left the Amish with her husband and children to attend an evangelical Christian church 25 years ago, explains, “I am a former Amish person. I will never get away from that… It will always be a part of me,” like the embodied skills and values she acquired through her upbringing, including sewing and honesty, respectively. Unlike engaged Amish respondents, she does not claim to be or feel Amish; instead, she claims a former Amish identity. Although she does not harbor negative feelings about her Amishness, Hannah implies that it is something she can never escape, even if she were to try. Like Hannah, many other Amish roots respondents portray their Amishness in terms of the various skills, styles, and values that they acquired from their Amish upbringings and that remain despite their religious exits.
For rootedness respondents, Amishness is automatic and habitual. For example, Melvin, who left with his family about 15 years ago after being saved, explains that even though he is no longer subject to an Amish Ordnung, he still does not spend money on Sundays. Melvin states, “I don't know why we [Melvin and his wife] feel that way,” since their new religious beliefs do not prohibit this act. But he is not bothered by this residual Amishness; instead, he treats this habit as an interesting holdover from his past—something he imagines will “tickle” people. Rootedness respondents do not portray such practices as intentional efforts to retain their Amish connections but still see the Amish in them. These habits are embodied remnants of their Amishness, embedded in them through socialization but lacking in significant personal meaning.
Rootedness respondents’ Amish pasts remain a part of them, but they emphasize that their choices and intentional actions are no longer religiously Amish. For example, Clara, my youngest respondent, left her Amish church with her family while still a child to attend an evangelical Christian church and describes herself in this way:
I had this saying… “I want Amish to be who I am, not what I do,” meaning that it is where I come from and it is a big part of what makes me me, but it's not how I choose to live anymore… I would consider myself Amish because that's my roots, but I don't consider myself a practicing Amish person. That's different. So if someone comes up and ask me are you Amish? I would say no, I'm ex-Amish. But if someone calls me an Amish girl, that is me because it's where I come from.
Similarly, in her narrative, Frieda, a devout evangelical Christian who left the Amish as a young woman about 20 years ago, also distinguishes between religious and other components of Amishness: “For those of us who leave, the culture and being raised there is always going to be a part of who we are. We're just no longer practicing the religion.” In fact, Frieda compares Amishness with an ethnic identity:
So the thing is, an Italian American, for example, or a Hispanic or Latino or whatever, like they have—their culture comes with them. The way they do things, their culture comes with them. So what are we supposed to call ourselves, Amish Americans? I don't know…When people think about the Amish, they think of them as a religious sect more than a culture, but it really is both.
Unlike engaged Amishness respondents, rootedness respondents do not reveal any intentions to express their Amish identities through their dress. For example, Steve, who left the Amish several years ago for a conservative Mennonite-like group but recently joined a Christian mega-church, reports, “I still dress differently than most people, maybe. I don't know. Actually, I'd say my wardrobe is still pretty plain, some of my wardrobe. I don't think about it much. I just wear the clothes I have.” Steve suggests that his “plain” dress is not a purposeful expression of Amishness but rather the practical outcome of his accumulation of clothes over time that is not particularly meaningful to him.
Amish rootedness respondents’ narratives echo research on Jewish identities. Like some of Horowitz's (2000) respondents, these former Amish respondents describe their ethno-religious identities as “a fact of their origins but not something in which to revel” (p. 80). Like Davidman's (2014) Haredi respondents, rootedness respondents’ ethno-religious identities are largely engrained and habitual rather than purposeful or intended, located in values and embodied in the skills and styles they acquired during their upbringings, which resurface in their lives, at times, in surprising ways. However, Davidman's (2014) Haredi respondents tend to express more ambivalence regarding their engrained styles than Amish rootedness respondents. Furthermore, while some rootedness respondents engage in Amish practices out of habit, most make efforts to differentiate religious components of their identities, which they have discarded, from cultural ones, which remain. Davidman's respondents (2014) appear more comfortable maintaining some ethno-religious rituals from their upbringings, although in “new, syncretic” form (p. 190), perhaps because, unlike most of my former Amish respondents, they have not joined new religious groups.
Marginalizing Amishness
The 12 respondents who fall into this final identity pattern all highlight moments of significant tension between their Amishness and non-Amish social worlds. While there is some variation in the degree to which these respondents claim Amishness, they all describe feeling like Robert Park's (1928) “marginal man,” situated between two cultures, while not belonging to either one. This category is somewhat different from another group of former ethno-religious individuals, “Marginal Saints,” who are members of Mormon churches with low levels of belief and communal identification on the margins of their Mormon communities (Bahr and Albrecht 1989). My respondents are not so much on the margins of Amish churches, although they report that some former Amish are; instead, they describe themselves as feeling on the margins of non-Amish society. This is true even though they appear to be quite well integrated into their non-Amish communities, and most describe strong commitment to their new churches. This tension, then, does not stem from the acquisition of a new religious identity but rather from the ways in which their Amish upbringings shape their habits, skills, styles, and forms of knowledge differently from non-Amish society.
Marginalizing Amishness respondents tend to describe themselves as neither Amish nor “English” (non-Amish) and reside uncomfortably between these two identities. For example, Freeman, who left the Amish with his wife 25 years ago to join a Baptist church, reflects, “When we leave the Amish, we are no longer identified as Amish. In our minds, we're outsiders to the English. So we really don't fit in with English people and so we're kind of halfway in between…We don't belong to anybody. We're just kind of nobodies.” Marginalizing Amishness respondents, like Freeman, struggle to find an identity between these two categories, despite outside appearances. They experience discomfort and alienation precisely because they cannot easily discard their Amishness when they take on new religious identities and engage in new religious practice.
Marginalizing Amishness respondents emphasize how their Amishness conflicts with mainstream American ways and distances them from others in their embodied interactions. For example, Rebecca, who left after baptism more than 15 years ago and now attends a mainline Protestant church, describes feeling “stuck between both worlds” because of her somewhat Amish style of comportment: “I talk pretty quiet and there's a lot of times where I'm asked a question and I take a lot of time to think about it before I answer. English people take that as I don't know the answer or I didn't understand the question. That can be frustrating sometimes…In that sense, I guess, I don't always feel I belong.” These kinds of interactions serve as continual reminders that Rebecca is different from the English and make her feel disconnected. Marginalizing Amishness respondents’ narratives, then, reveal that their continuing Amishness is strongly felt in part because it does not always position them positively in American society. Instead, their engrained Amish styles and backgrounds exclude them from being truly “English.”
A number of respondents describe their Amishness as marginalizing because of their lack of knowledge about American popular culture. While almost all of my respondents were only minimally exposed to American popular culture while growing up, not all of them describe this lack of exposure as problematic or marginalizing. Yet, this group of respondents emphasizes the distance that this lack of knowledge creates between them and the non-Amish. For example, Leah, who left the Amish before baptism about 15 years ago and attends a mainline Protestant church, recalls that, in one of her first college classes, the professor asked students to write down the names of all seven dwarfs from Snow White, as a memory exercise. She reveals, “Well, I had no idea what he was talking about…We weren't graded on it, but it was just a ‘in your face’ thing not—like you're not quite like everyone else.” Others talk about how their lack of popular cultural exposure limits their ability to connect with others. These experiences powerfully reinforce their distinctiveness, and create a sense of Otherness and continued separation from mainstream American society.
For some marginalizing Amishness respondents, dress plays a part in the tension they feel with non-Amish society. For example, in our in-person interview, I asked Aaron, who left his Old Order church for an Amish Mennonite church with his wife and children about 40 years ago, when he changed his hair and dress. Clearly annoyed, he reports, “A lot of people ask me if I'm Amish. You say I have a different [non-Amish] haircut. That's what I think, too. I don't know why they think I'm Amish. I really don't. I have English shoes, English pants, English shirt, English haircut, and I don't get it. I simply don't understand it.” Despite Aaron's conviction that his presentation of self is “English,” the regular questioning about his Amishness helps to position him as not-English. He explains, “I guess I feel out of place wherever I am… Do I feel English? I don't know. Not really. I guess not if people ask me if I'm Amish all the time.” Aaron's narrative clearly exposes some of the constraints within which he constructs his former Amish identity. For Aaron and some other marginalizing Amishness respondents, their embodied styles appear to unintentionally signal Amishness to others in their interactions. For these former Amish individuals, those who respond to these signals serve to emphasize their status as Other.
While Horowitz (2000) does not identify a pattern of marginalizing Jewish identities, Davidman's (2014) respondents clearly express marginalization in their narratives. For example, for some former Haredi Jews, deeply inscribed Orthodox ideas about modesty create significant tensions with non-Orthodox society. Davidman's (2014) research also reveals the difficulties that her respondents faced in interactions with other relating in good part to their styles of interaction and their lack of knowledge about the larger society around them, echoing my respondents.
Identity Patterns
While respondents’ narratives provide evidence of variation in their identities, I am cautious in describing relationships between these patterns and other factors given my non-representative sample. I do, however, draw attention to some patterns in my sample. Given previous research that reveals variation in Jewish identities patterns by a number of different experiential and contextual factors (Horowitz 2000; Alper and Olson 2013), I look into a variety of different factors, such as, reasons for leaving, including whether one left because of an Ordnung violation; current geographic residence near Amish community of origin; shunning status; current denomination; leaving alone or with a family member; and years since leaving. There are some small differences in these factors; however, variation in identity pattern by baptismal status stands out most clearly among my respondents, although this variation still should be interpreted with caution. More specifically, while about half of Amish roots respondents and marginalizing Amishness respondents were baptized into Amish churches before their exits, almost all of the engaged Amishness respondents were baptized before leaving. Since those who leave after baptism tend to be older than those who leave before it, there is similarly some evidence among my respondents that those who left at older ages may have maintained stronger Amish identities. This pattern does not map directly onto shunning status because some of my respondents left communities with idiosyncratic shunning rules and others were able to get the shunning “lifted.” The baptismal status and age patterns suggest that choosing to be baptized or living longer in an Amish community may increase the intensity of these respondents’ connections to the Amish and lead to greater continuing subjective attachments to one's family, friends, and community of origin.
Discussion
While scholarship has provided rich insight into Jewish identities, that these insights have not been extended more broadly is problematic. The focus on Jewishness as unique isolates the study of this group from other religious scholarship and hinders development of new approaches in the sociology of religion. The present study, then, attempts to bridge this gap by making use of innovations from the study of Jewish identity in an exploration of religious identities among an ethno-religious Christian group, the Amish. By examining my respondents’ narratives of religious exit and identity, I allow them to portray their own understandings of their Amishness in their current non-Amish social contexts. While not representative of the former Amish population as a whole, these results suggest that at least some former Amish individuals remain connected to their ethno-religious group of origin despite their religious exits and new religious practice, in contrast to assumptions in some of the religious mobility literature (e.g., Iannaccone 1990; Sherkat 2001; Sherkat and Wilson 1995; Stark and Finke 2000).
Like Jews, the former Amish do not make identity claims in a social vacuum; instead, they are shaped by understandings of Amishness in their social contexts. In their former Amish communities, adult baptism and remaining in good standing with one's church are required to be recognized as truly Amish. Yet, scholars acknowledge that Amishness also involves an ethnic group-like sense of peoplehood, resulting from participation in a culture with many overlapping social ties and engagement in shared cultural conversations (Hostetler 1993; Nolt and Meyers 2007; Weaver-Zercher 2001). At the same time, those who leave confront their former Amish communities’ potentially negative reactions to their exits and understandings of Amish identities in their new non-Amish social contexts, which are shaped in part by media portrayals of the Amish and former Amish as something like cultural oddities, as times romanticized, at times ridiculed (Umble and Weaver-Zercher 2008; Weaver-Zercher 2001). These various conceptualizations of Amishness may constrain the former Amish's claims to Amish identities in some ways but also provide them with various materials, other than religious belief and practice, from which to reconstruct these identities in their new social worlds.
While my respondents’ identities do not meet narrow definitions of “true” Amish identity, in their narratives, they assert continuing connections to their ethno-religious identities in their new contextual settings. For them, Amishness is multilayered, and, like other ethno-religious identities, includes community connections and, at times embodied, cultural habits, skills, and styles. The former Amish make use of these elements of Amish identity in their varying claims to Amishness, even though their beliefs, churches, and denominations have changed. This variation is in line with research on Jewish identities (Horowitz 2000), including former Ultra-Orthodox ones (Davidman 2014).
I note three different patterns of Amish identities among my respondents. First, some former Amish individuals’ narratives reveal that their Amishness is deeply personally meaningful and valuable to them or is evident in their intentional choices to engage with Amishness. These engaged Amishness respondents recognize that their identities are not normative Amish ones, and they employ various narrative strategies to make such claims. Some respondents allude to immigrant ethnic identities, suggesting that they have combined elements of their Amish backgrounds with elements from their non-Amish context into a new form, similar to some immigrants’ additive ethnic identities (Rumbaut 1994). Others work to redefine boundaries and borders between Amishness and the Amish in their narratives. Some respondents draw parallels between their own Amish identities and Jewish ones to support their identity claims.
Second, rootedness respondents construct their Amishness as an undeniable cultural foundation, which resides in their automatic habits, skills, and styles. Like engaged Amish respondents, these respondents also narratively justify their claims to Amish identity but rootedness respondents do so by narratively separating religious elements of Amishness, which they deny, from cultural elements, which they suggest are engrained in them but not purposefully enacted. Even the respondent who compares her ethno-religious identity to immigrants’ identities describes “culture” as something that passively “comes with” these border crossers, rather than the more active and additive conceptualization of Amishness among engaged Amish respondents. The distinctions rootedness respondents construct between habit and intention help to create sharper lines between their new religious identities and their claims to Amishness.
Third, marginalizing Amishness respondents portray Amishness as inescapable because it separates them from mainstream American society and marks them as Other, even as they reside in non-Amish social, cultural, and religious communities. These respondents describe interactions in which their Amish habits, skills, and styles position them as outside the mainstream and lead them to feel culturally backward or out of touch. These regular reminders of their difference make difficult claims to non-Amishness. While engaged and rootedness respondents make efforts to narratively negotiate their claims to Amishness with broad socially constructed notions of Amish identities, marginalizing Amishness respondents highlight ways in which day to day interactions reinforce their Amishness.
Comparing former Amish identity patterns and Jewish identities reveals some similarities. Former Amish identities align with the Jewish identities based on subjective meaning, cultural-communal engagement, and other forms of ethno-religious connection that Horowitz (2000) identifies in her research. Comparison of the former Amish and former Haredi (Davidman 2014) cases also reveals a number of similarities in these groups’ ethno-religious identities, even though Davidman's (2014) and my research have different foci—embodied identity and patterns of narrative identity, respectively. First, some former Amish, especially those whom I categorize as “engaged,” and many former Haredi individuals deeply feel their ethno-religious identities. Second, engaged former Amish and former Haredi individuals purposefully perform practices from their upbringings, although these practices appear to be related to religious rituals much more often among former Haredi than former Amish individuals (Davidman 2014). At the same time, many former Haredi and Amish rootedness respondents describe their ethno-religious identities as automatic and habitual, deeply embedded in them and inescapable. Finally, some former Amish, the marginalized, and many former Haredi describe significant tension between their new lives and their former ethno-religious groups’ embodied practices and values.
Yet, there are also differences in former Amish and former Haredi identities, which appear to result in part from the different constraints these former ethno-religious individuals encounter as they construct their identities. First, my former Amish respondents appear to make more efforts to narratively justify their former ethno-religious identities than former Haredi Jews (Davidman 2014), although there is some variation by identity pattern in how they go about justifying their claims. This narrative justification may be the result of the high level of denominational switching among my former Amish respondents, compared with Davidman's (2014) who have dropped out of Orthodox Jewish practice without joining another Jewish religious group or a non-Jewish tradition. Joining a new religious denomination creates potential conflicts with a former religious identity in terms of belief, practice, and community identification (Sherkat and Wilson 1995). While my respondents do not cease all identification with their Amish identities, as religious mobility researchers tend to assume (e.g., Iannaccone 1990; Sherkat 2001; Sherkat and Wilson 1995; Stark and Finke 2000), their narratives do suggest that asserting continuing claims to their former ethno-religious identities in the face of new religious belief and practice requires explanation of their continuing ethno-religious identity attachments. This narrative justification may be especially important for the former Amish, who, on their religious exits, appear to enter a social context with a narrower range of identity options for those who leave behind the horse and buggy (Anderson 2011; Kraybill 2010; Donnermeyer et al. 2013; Waldrep 2008). In contrast, former Ultra-Orthodox individuals enter a context in which individuals commonly make claims to Jewish identities without religious belief and practice (Horowitz 2000); therefore, they may not need to engage in this particular kind of narrative justification.
Second, while Davidman (2014) reports considerable ambivalence among her former Haredi Jewish respondents regarding their ethno-religious pasts, my respondents’ descriptions, though existing across a range, skew more positively. It may be that the former Amish have access to more positive portrayals of their former ethno-religious groups than Ultra-Orthodox Jews (Weaver-Zercher 2001; Rubel 2009); therefore, the former Amish can draw on these positive narratives, among others, while constructing their own sense of Amishness. Davidman's (2014) respondents also appear to have experienced substantial trauma during their childhoods. While some of my respondents describe similar situations, such trauma appears to be less prevalent among my respondents. Moreover, there is some evidence that institutional differences relating to adult baptism may also play a role. Among my respondents, while those who were baptized expressed identities that lined up with each of the three patterns, very few unbaptized respondents fit into the engaged Amishness pattern, the most intensive and positive of the patterns. Those former Amish who left before adult baptism were never fully committed members of their Amish churches. After their exits, then, they might be less likely to be strongly connected to their Amishness than some of those who did join their Amish churches. While those who were baptized express varying Amish identities, they appear to have greater potential for deeper attachments to their Amishness, perhaps due to the stronger commitments they made in their baptisms or the longer time they spent developing connections to their Amish family, friends, and community. In contrast, former Haredi Jews do not have this kind of community-sanctioned choice to fully join or leave their communities. Therefore, they may lack the level of positive connection found among those Amish who previously self-selected into full membership in their ethno-religious group.
Overall, the comparison of former Amish and former Haredi Jews reveals that, in constructing their own identities, these individuals engage with understandings of their ethno-religious groups in their social worlds. While ethno-religious groups share some similarities, it appears that a variety of factors, including their religious and familial contexts before exit along with their current social context and broadly shared ideas about the groups themselves, shape the ways in which former members remake their identities.
Finally, I find that, in attempting to make sense of the variation in identities among my former Amish respondents, baptismal status stands out as a possible explanatory factor. As I noted above, almost all of those in the engaged Amishness pattern were baptized, compared with about half of Amish rootedness and marginalizing Amishness respondents. In addition to the different levels of commitment that may come from baptism, individuals may, in part, make sense of their previous baptismal commitment by highlighting their continuing, though non-normative engagement to some parts of it. Moreover, since individuals who leave after baptism are likely to be older than those who leave before it, it may be that the more time one spends in an Amish community the more intense and subjectively meaningful one's connections are to that community, including friends, family, and culture, even when these connections have been disrupted through exiting. There is some support for this line of reasoning in research on various measures of immigrant acculturation (Rumbaut 2004). Still, given this small, non-statistically representative sample, it is not possible to make strong claims regarding these relationships.
Limitations and Directions for Future Research
While this study provides a number of insights into questions of religious identity, its focus on former members of a unique ethno-religious group potentially limits its application to other cases. Future research, then, should examine the extent to which members of other ethno-religious groups maintain their religious identities after switching. Given recent research providing evidence of a cultural Catholic identity among individuals with non-Catholic (primarily Protestant) denominational preferences (Pew 2015), a deeper examination of identities among former Catholics case may be a fruitful next step.
This examination also relies on the notion in the literature that ethno-religious identities are unique and, therefore, likely to be more persistent than other ones after religious exit (Harrison and Lazerwitz 1982; Sandomirsky and Wilson 1990; Sherkat and Wilson 1995). However, Amish and Haredi Jewish individuals not only belong to ethno-religious groups with overlapping social ties that work to separate them from mainstream society but also experience intensive socialization (Kraybill et al. 2013; Davidman 2014). It is unclear if intensive socialization alone, outside of an ethno-religious context, may similarly shape individuals’ religious identities. Future research on individuals who exit religious groups into which they have been intensively socialized can help shed light on this question.
In addition, while Davidman's (2014) research provides a rich case for comparison, our goals and aims and forms of collecting data vary, thereby limiting the comparison in some ways. For example, my focus on three different largely narrative identity patterns compared with Davidman's (2014) more general overview of embodied forms of identity among her respondents may have amplified differences between these cases. Moreover, although almost all of my respondents have joined new religious groups, Davidman's (2014) are “apostates” (p. 225). It is unclear how the comparison between these two cases may have differed if our samples had more varied current religious preferences. Future research that incorporates a comparative element into its design can provide more appropriate comparisons and more clearly reveal the kinds of factors that influence holdover ethno-religious identities in different ways.
Relatedly, my engagement with issues of embodied identity, which Davidman's (2014) analysis clearly reveals is an essential part of ethno-religious identities, is quite minimal. This limitation results in part from my reliance on telephone and Skype interviews, which limits my access to information about respondents’ bodies. Moreover, as I am not an insider to the Amish, in contrast to Davidman (2014) who is formerly Modern Orthodox, I likely missed out on potential linguistic cues and other forms of embodied identity among my respondents. Future researchers should keep in mind the importance of bodies in the formation of identities, along with the kinds of background knowledge that may be required to identify embodied practices, and bring these issues more to the center of identity studies (Ammerman 2003; Davidman 2014).
Finally, my small and statistically non-representative sample does not permit me to draw strong conclusions regarding factors that relate to the different identity patterns I identify here. While finding a statistically representative sample of former Amish individuals poses a serious challenge, representative studies of other, larger ethno-religious groups are possible. Horowitz's (2000) mixed method examination of Jewish identity among individuals in the greater New York City area provides a useful model for further exploration of identity variation and the factors associated with it among former ethno-religious groups members.
Conclusion
Altogether, the present study suggests that ethno-religious identities may persist, in changed form, after religious exit and joining a new religious group and that religious, cultural, and social factors may play a part in shaping variations in holdover identities across different ethno-religious groups. Moreover, this study supports the conceptualization of religious identities as complex, multilayered, and involving more than just religious belief and practice, including individuals’ bodies (Cadge and Davidman 2006; Davidman 2014; Ammerman 2003). Individuals construct religious identities in interaction with existing notions about religious groups more generally and understandings of their own particular groups within their broader social contexts (Cadge and Davidman 2006; Ammerman 2003).
The results of this study suggest that sociologists of religion can gain new insights into long-standing questions by looking more broadly across their area of study and the discipline in general. The present study helps demonstrate how the nuanced and in-depth approaches from research on American Jewry can contribute to the study of other religious groups, particularly relating to questions surrounding meanings and experiences of religious identity, as scholars have suggested (Hartman and Kaufman 2006). In addition, given the ways in which my respondents’ narratives echoed research on immigrant identity, this research suggests that the extensive scholarship on immigrant ethnic identity may yield additional fruitful insights to the study of ethno-religious border crossers. As there has been increased attention to religion in migration and assimilation experiences (see, e.g., Levitt 2007; Yang and Ebaugh 2001), it may also be useful to consider further the ways in which migration and ethno-religious mobility involve similar social processes. While scholars across the academy call for research that spans across different disciplines, this study serves as a reminder for sociologists to consider the benefits to be gained by bringing together complementary subfields within the discipline to advance our understanding of the social world.