Cory Anderson
Cory Anderson is revolutionizing research about North America's religiously strict ethnic populations--including the Amish and Mennonites--through invigorating theoretical debates, extensive literature reviews, new research networks and institutions (e.g. co-establishing journal and professional association), and development of extensive demographic and qualitative databases. His research is relevant for how we understand the relationship between these rapidly growing sectarian populations and larger Western society. Visit the Journal of Amish & Plain Anabaptist Studies and the Amish & Plain Anabaptist Studies Association websites (links below).
less
InterestsView All (13)
Uploads
Population
Health
Amish Studies
History: The Amish formed in the late 1600s as an Anabaptist branch in the Swiss–German–French border region. These were a new wave of converts who challenged the established Swiss Brethren (Mennonite) churches’ laxity toward the Dordrecht religious articles agreed on with the Dutch Mennonites in 1632. Points of difference included the ...
History: The Amish formed in the late 1600s as an Anabaptist branch in the Swiss–German–French border region. These were a new wave of converts who challenged the established Swiss Brethren (Mennonite) churches’ laxity toward the Dordrecht religious articles agreed on with the Dutch Mennonites in 1632. Points of difference included the ...
The first study focuses on migration motivations. Rational choice theory is the dominant perspective in understanding migration causation: actors migrate to achieve personal ends at as low a cost as possible. Some migration may be motivated by values, such as religiously based migration. This study proposes a theory of religiously motivated migration. Inasmuch as values are derived from groups, religions with strong membership cohesion must maintain this cohesion in the face of emigration so members continue acting on value-based demands. Religious cohesion is maintained through community-level migration and affiliation-level networks, which both provide members with unbroken religious systemic integration after emigration. Three religious reasons for migration are identified: sacred command, context conducive for religious practice, and awareness of potential membership losses from religious competition. This theory is demonstrated through the case of domestic and international Amish-Mennonite migration.
The second study focuses on subgroup tensions over assimilation. While numerous ethnic groups have assimilated into the American mainstream, the Amish church has embraced cultural and structural separatism on religious grounds. Elements of their cultural system are not just demarcations of social identity but direct members’ social ties, values, and interests inward, permitting the perpetuation of group socialization. However, some members may perceive a level of assimilation desirable and so pursue structural power and mobilization of external cultural resources. Because structural and cultural assimilation reinforce one another, when one weakens, the other may follow and further weaken the first. Separatist-assimilationist conflicts have dotted Amish history, most notably when progressively-oriented Amish-Mennonites have withdrawn from the Old Order Amish. While two past Amish-Mennonite movements assimilated over several generations, the most recent movement, the Beachy Amish- Mennonites, still retain a partially separate identity, though with some difficulty. Inasmuch as separatism must be maintained across generations, the orientation of Beachy young adults is of particular interest. This study investigates the social structure of a Beachy young adult network to determine what kinds of people occupy positions of power and its implications for assimilation of a third Amish-Mennonite movement. The results indicate that those who attempt to alter the content of, rather than replace and negate, separatist practices occupy positions of power, suggesting a third actor type in the separatist-assimilation conflict: revisionists.
The third study focuses on mainstream Americans seeking to join the plain Anabaptists. For all the liberties granted Westerners, a small but regular stream of people seek to join seemingly austere plain Anabaptist sects (Amish, Mennonites, etc.). What are these “outsiders” seeking? I developed a survey to explore this question and posted it on a prominent Anabaptist website, offering outside seekers information about nearby churches in exchange for their time. Usable responses numbered 1,074 over two years. Evangelicals, Baptists, females, people in the Midwest and South, and the young were overrepresented. Strongest attractions include devout Christianity, strong community, and modesty. A factor analysis of 17 sources of information suggests groupings by mediated and direct information sources. A factor analysis of 21 attractions suggests six types of seeker interest, characterized by emphases on family, femininity, religious conviction, primitivism, social support, and returning to the group. Relationships between the six attraction factors and information sources, age and gender, U.S. region, and religious background and explored through regression analyses.
This essay explores how evangelicalism has changed married Beachy Amish-Mennonite women’s roles in terms of personal religiosity, the church community, family, and individual pursuits. It focuses especially on the valued contributions of Beachy Amish-Mennonite women and the ways in which evangelicalism has devalued certain contributions while providing other opportunities for women. To this end, I examine three sets of books written by Beachy Amish-Mennonite women which lay out different paths to finding meaningful contributions for married women, as well as outlining the ultimate direction for the integration and stability of the social units of church community, family, and individual. These books treat the role of the married woman as an aggregate of roles, not the least of which is mother and wife. Within the dense community structure of the Amish tradition, individuals have less ability to differentiate and compartmentalize roles. According to Enninger, the role of married women is symbolically (visually, with dress and grooming) constructed as a total role, as divorce, broken families, or childless couples are more the exception than the norm. In this essay, I employ Enninger’s findings, and treat the role of the married woman as an aggregate of roles rather than focusing exclusively on motherhood, since motherhood cannot be extracted cleanly from the other roles of wife, homemaker, and other untitled identities.