Description

If You Give an Amish Man Electric illustrates how the tug of convenience conflicts with the pull of church teaching. It shows that the Amish desire convenience just like us. Any of us want to make life easier or more convenient, to eliminate unnecessary hard work. The problem for the Amish is that they have constraints placed on them by their church. This book shows the great lengths some Amish have gone to, to access the usefulness of electricity while staying below the radar or within the limits of their church.
Some of the stories may seem to paint the Amish as ignorant. This is not ignorance so much as having grown up living without modern conveniences that the rest of us have taken for granted for seventy-five years. Many of the Amish contractors I work for are extremely knowledgeable about construction and even the electrical needs of a building and how long it will take. This comes from years of experience, but they do their job, and I do mine.
This book is only about my experiences with the Amish who live in the Eastern Lancaster and Western Chester County area of Pennsylvania. Some consider this area to be more liberal, and the churches will allow more modern ways than in other areas of the country. If you travel to southern Lancaster County or Belleville, Pennsylvania, the churches seem to be much stricter. This book is a sneak peek into a part of Amish life that is rarely mentioned openly.