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By E. Ralph Hostetter
October 12, 2006
A crime, so heinous as to be beyond comprehension, was committed in the little community of Nickel Mines in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. What makes this crime so monstrous is the fact that it was committed against the most innocent of innocents, 10 little Amish girls, in the privacy of their one-room schoolhouse.
This was not a drive-by shooting but a carefully planned act of mass homicide with the deliberate intent of first sexually molesting the little girls, followed by their murders.
School shootings have become almost commonplace in America for the most part. Until recent years they have occurred in urban areas or heavily populated regions of the country. Americans abhor these senseless killings and plan ways to prevent them.
What is so different about this crime against 10 little Amish schoolgirls, from what I have observed, is that the nation universally is grieving, not only for the lost innocents, but for their families as well.
The Amish are the old order of Mennonite Christians. They are known as the "gentle" people in the communities in which they live and farm. They seek no notoriety. They are a very private people. They reside in the privacy of their homes and families with their Bible and their God.
They prefer to live in communities in which other Amish families live. Lancaster County became the home of the first Amish settlers in America, arriving in the first decade of the 1700s. It is the third largest such community in the United States, with a population of some 20,000 to 30,000 people.
The Amish people don't have the same need for organized government as does the average American. Their constitution is their Bible.
They are not a dependent people. Their welfare program and social security system is their extended family. Their insurance provider is their extended community. If a barn is burned with the loss of farm animals neighbors will rebuild the barn within a matter of weeks. Construction may take no longer than a day. Neighbors will each bring an animal to replace the lost livestock. Their wealth is in their families, particularly their children, their homes and farm property. Their animals provide their transportation and pull their plows and harvesters.
The quality of Amish parenthood was revealed in the moral strength of their children during that fatal crisis in the one-room school.
"Shoot me first." These startling words are said to have come from 13-year-old Marian Fisher, the oldest girl of the 10 victims, as she confronted the gunman. Marian's request was followed by "Shoot me second," said to have come from her baby sister, Barbie, who survived the massacre.
Rita Rhoads, a midwife who had helped at the birth of two of the victims, told ABC News' Law and Justice unit that she learned of the child's plea from the Fisher Family. Rhoads added, "They were amazing, absolutely amazing. There was a tremendous amount of calm and courage in that schoolroom. The faith of their fathers was embedded in them."
Marian Fisher was one of the first to die. Her bravery well could be interpreted as the supreme sacrifice of her life offered to save the lives of the other children.
A person could ask, "If this be the moral strength of their children, what be the moral strength of the entire community?" That strength was demonstrated in the aftermath of a loss so great that ordinary individuals would find difficult to comprehend.
The immediate watchword from the Amish community was forgiveness, the most magnanimous gesture imaginable under the circumstances.
Within hours of the tragedy, calls and visits were made by community members offering forgiveness to Marie Roberts, widow of the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, who had just taken the lives of five and critically wounded five others of their own children before he took his own life.
Daniel Esh, a 57-year-old Amish artist and woodworker whose three grandnephews had been in the school, said of the Roberts Family, according to the Associated Press, "I hope they stay around here, and they'll have a lot of friends and a lot of support."
As might be expected, substantial contributions are pouring in to help the victims' families with medical and other expenses. At the same time, collections are being made within the Amish community to aid the Widow Roberts and her three children.
There are many lessons America can learn from this tragedy. The strong Christian faith of the Amish, the Christian faith of our forefathers, stand out in stark relief against secular inroads that have made America spiritually weak. America’s greatest challenges are yet to come. The graveyard of failed powers is replete with those nations whose moral fabric was too threadbare to resist the enemy.
Christian understanding has been replaced by the rhetoric of hate, which permeates America’s political fiber today. We need to reverse the secular trends prevalent in America today and replace them with the spiritual values of our Forefathers.
E. Ralph Hostetter, a prominent businessman and publisher, also is an award-winning columnist and Vice Chairman of the Free Congress Foundation. He welcomes email comments at eralphhostetter@yahoo.com.
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