National Emergency Alert Test Causes Group of Amish Men To Be "Shunned"
The alert outed them as owners of smartphones.
Amidst all the chatter on social media regarding this week’s national emergency alert test, included in the accounts of unfortunate reactions to the test is an account regarding a group of Amish men. According to reports based on an account by ex-Amish TikToker Eli Yoder, following FEMA’s October 4 test, several Amish men were “shunned’ by the church after the alert outed them as owners of smartphones.
Yoder shared, “Several Amish men got shunned by the Amish Church for having smartphones in their pocket when the emergency alert system went off.” He noted that he has helped “quite a few Amish men” get a hold of a device in the past and those men told him about the result of the alert. “[They] said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna have to lay low for a while, I just got shunned,’…’we had our phones on vibrate and it still went off.’”
While some Amish communities have begun to embrace technology and do not consider technology evil in itself, the group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss-German and Alsatian origins do have negative views on the personal use of tech. The group believes if left untamed, technology will undermine their traditions and accelerate assimilation into the surrounding society with the introduction of foreign values into their culture.
For those unaware, while “shunning” does not mean a member is ousted from the Amish community, they are being punished to reinforce the rules of the church.
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