Culture Speech Outline
Specific Goal: Inform about the Amish lifestyle and culture.
Introduction
Imagine your life without electricity, a formal education past eighth grade, or blue jeans. Sounds pretty tough, right? This is a simple way to explain the lifestyle of the Amish communities that are scattered throughout North America. For most of us, the Amish are a group of people that are mysterious, like a letter that contains no return address and appears in the mail one day.
Most people seem to know very little about the Amish besides their antique clothing and horse-drawn modes of transportation. To understand the Amish better, some key concepts include the history of the Amish, their rules of discipline, and their roles as members of a community and as individuals.
Body
Main Point 1: The history of the Amish
According to Civilization in the West, the Mennonites, believers in practicing adult baptism, arose from the Protestant Reformation.
The Encyclopedia Britannica reports that a Mennonite named Jakob Ammann became worried that the Mennonites were becoming too worldly. He led a band of followers who became known as the Amish in the late 1600s.
The Amish migrated to North America beginning in the 1720s, mostly settling in Pennsylvania, according to Encyclopedia of American Religious History.
Main Point 2: Amish discipline and classic lifestyle
According to Teen Life Among the Amish and Other Alternative Communities, the Ordnung is the basis for Amish order. It translates from German to mean “order and discipline”. a. The Ordnung is the unwritten code of order, which describes the Amish necessity of separating themselves from the modern world. b. Ordnung sets the guidelines for appearance, use of technology, language, and church practices. 1. The unique appearance of the Amish is known as plain, with styles most of us associate with period movies and history.