Romanticizing the "Plain."

Kay Stoner writes to KillingtheBuddha today to comment on my article last week about Republican talk of converting to the Anabaptist faith (Amish, Mennonite) to avoid the health care mandate.

There are a couple of ironies in the Republican comments that I get to in my piece, but Stoner emphasizes yet another: romanticizing "plain" life. Oh the simple life, oh the tax exemptions, some say.

Growing up in Lancaster County, PA, as I did, or in the community as Stoner did, one can't help but note the romance for the "plain" life that makes the Anabaptists a tourist attraction. People come from far and wide to buy Amish quilts and preserves and to gawk at the funny farms and dress of the throw-back Amish.

Stoner's point that Anabaptists have segregated themselves from the rest of society for a reason is apt. They themselves haven't glorified simple life; they just know that religious tolerance requires separation of church and state. And they learned this lesson through centuries of persecution.

So the next time you hear religious groups working to enforce their beliefs via federal or state laws, in violation of the Establishment clause, think of the Anabaptists and their hard-learned lesson about the necessity of separation of church and state. While it's fun to romanticize a separatist culture, understanding the theological underpinnings of their faith is a vital lesson to us all about the great laws that protect religious tolerance in the US.