Smart Talk: Renegade Amish: Beard Cutting, Hate Crimes, and the Trial of the Bergholz Barbers
Photo by AP Photo Scott R. Galvin
Freeman Burkholder carries his son to the school house for a ceremony to mark the end of the school year Tuesday, April 9, 2013 in Bergholz, Ohio. Burkholder, and 13 others from this tight-knit community in rural eastern Ohio went to prison on hate crimes convictions for hair- and beard-cutting attacks against fellow Amish.
What to look for on Smart Talk Monday, September 22, 2014:
The words hate crimes and Amish aren’t often seen in the same sentence.
The Amish in Central Pennsylvania and everywhere else for that matter are pacifists who don’t believe in violence.
However, hate crimes and violence became part of the discussion when a clan of Amish in Ohio took it upon themselves to lash out at other Amish who they thought had strayed away from the Amish way of life and religious beliefs.
They did so by cutting the beards and hair of the Amish people they disagreed with.
Most of the attackers were related to Bishop Samuel Mullet who prosecutors accused of being the mastermind of the attacks.
A new book — Renegade Amish: Beard Cutting, Hate Crimes, and the Trial of the Bergholz Barbers — chronicles the unusual case and subsequent trial.
The book’s author, Dr. Donald Kraybill, the Senior Fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, appears on Monday’s Smart Talk to tell the story.
Just three weeks ago, a federal appeals court overturned a hate crime convictions — the most serious of the charges against the defendants. The court concluded instructions to the jury were in error.
During the trial a significant question was whether hate crimes could be committed against victims who are of the same religion as the perpratrators.
It’s a subject we’ll discuss on the program.
Dr. Donald Kraybill, the Senior Fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College.
