WITH DRUG ARRESTS, URBAN GRIT SMUDGES AMISH LIFE

Alleged ring linking 2 of their young men to gang shocks spartan farming
community.

GAP, Pa.--Abram Stoltzfus drank his share of beer as a young man, a taste
of temptation that is a rite of passage even in a place as mythically moral
as Amish country. But selling cocaine? Mingling with a motorcycle gang
called the Pagans? With bikers known as "Twisted" and "Fathead"? "I guess
it goes to show you we're human beings, just like everyone else,"
Stoltzfus, 34, said as he stood on the stoop of his immaculate white
farmhouse. "These things are going to happen. It's sad."

Stoltzfus and other Amish residents of this eastern Pennsylvania town
picked up their newspapers Wednesday morning and read about two of their
own, young Amish men from Gap with the most common last name in
town--Stoltzfus. Young men reared in a strict but increasingly threatened
culture in which people abstain from material pleasures and adhere to a
spartan life of decency and faith.

These two young men, however, were indicted in federal court in
Philadelphia on Tuesday on charges that they bought cocaine and
methamphetamine from members of another local subculture--the Pagans--and
then sold them to youths at Amish hoedowns in Gap and other Lancaster
County communities. According to the indictment, they were cogs in a drug
ring that united two seemingly incompatible cultures for five years. Abner
Stoltzfus, 24, and Abner King Stoltzfus, 23,--who are not related to each
other or to Abram Stoltzfus--were at home with their families not
commenting while awaiting arraignment next week on charges that could send
them to prison for life. Eight Pagans were also indicted.

At the time of the alleged drug dealing, both men were in a period of their
lives that the Amish call a "timeout," when young men are encouraged to sow
their wild oats before deciding whether to rejoin the faith for the rest of
their lives.

"I'm not suggesting that the Amish hierarchy condones drug use or anything
like that, but they're going through a period of time when they are allowed
to be rebellious," said John Pyfer, the lawyer for Abner Stoltzfus, who
added that his client will plead not guilty.

The parents of the two are members of the Old Order Amish, the most
orthodox branch of the faith. "They're bearing up," Pyfer said. "They're
having difficulty understanding it. These are people who are intensely
private," he said. "They do not want to be photographed. They do not want
their problems aired in public."

The indictment of two Amish men on charges of pushing drugs on Amish kids
is particularly jolting because many Americans consider the Amish something
of a national treasure, a plain-living, hard-working and God-fearing people
who eschew such luxuries as cars, electricity and colorful clothing in
favor of family and faith. Yet people who study the Amish culture, and even
the normally reticent Amish themselves, say it's getting harder for members
of this Anabaptist religious sect to maintain their lifestyle, particularly
in a place like Lancaster County, where suburban sprawl and outlet malls
are leaving too little land for the Amish to farm and too little room on
the road for their horse-drawn buggies.

"It's a big myth of Amish society being perfect, a bunch of puritans living
an idyllic life out in the country," said Daniel Lee, a Penn State
University professor of the sociology of religion who has researched the
Amish. "To put it plainly, they are very normal people."

They are normal people whose lifestyle is nevertheless under siege. "As we
make it harder and harder for the Amish to isolate themselves, they become
more like this," said Lee.

The Amish sect was founded in the 17th century by Jacob Amman, a Swiss
Mennonite bishop who believed that the faith was too liberal. They settled
in this country shortly thereafter, mainly in Pennsylvania. But the sprawl
from the cities and the dwindling farmland have driven many to the West, as
well as Canada and Mexico. There are an estimated 150,000 Amish in North
America.

Many who have remained in the Northeast have prospered by increasingly
moving into trades, such as cabinetmaking, or welding and construction.
Amish-built deck furniture, for example, is almost a staple of backyards
across the Northeast. Amish grocery stores have a cachet among upscale
young professionals who have moved out to the country.

But the subsequent increase in contact has also made them more susceptible
to outside influences. "I personally believe that the lifestyle is in
danger," said Abram Stoltzfus, who said he's worried about the future
facing his four preteen children.

"There's just a lot more [non-Amish] people about than there were years ago."

And where there are people, there are drugs, said Gap District Magistrate
Isaac Stoltzfus, whose parents left the Amish faith when he was a baby 46
years ago. "I think it's also an indication of the size of the drug
problem," he said.

He isn't seeing more Amish in the criminal justice system, he said, except
for underage drinkers. But he said the Amish seem more willing to press
charges against people who have wronged them than they have in the past.

"Here's a culture that I came from, and I'd like to protect it as much as I
would my children," Isaac Stoltzfus said. "It's the sort of culture that we
all sort of yearn for."

Abram Stoltzfus said he drank during his timeout when he was a young man,
but he came back to the faith and hasn't touched a drop since. Lee said he
met Amish people who smoked pot in the 1960s during their timeouts, then
returned to the faith. Drugs don't have the stigma inside Amish society
because they're so rarely encountered.

"These kids aren't used to sleeping with the devil," Isaac Stoltzfus said.
"They're used to Sunday afternoons playing baseball, the hoedowns and maybe
some beer drinking."

One of the myths of the Amish is that they eschew all technology, yet a gas
grill alongside an Amish farmhouse is not an uncommon site. Some have
telephones, but keep them out of the house in backyard sheds.

But technology can also be seductive. A boyhood acquaintance of his
father's, "a little Amish boy" named Gideon Miller, was apparently so
fascinated by the planes that flew overhead that he grew up to be an
airline pilot and was killed aboard TWA Flight 800, which blew up off Long
Island.

With so many young men forced to move closer to non-Amish society, it's not
surprising that some of them succumb to the modern world.

"Kids get out a little more, they're off working for bosses with
extended-cab pickup trucks and cell phones," Isaac Stoltzfus said.

"There's got to be temptation."

Amish crime isn't unheard of. Three years ago, a teenage farmhand in
Maryland killed a woman, beat her children and then shot himself. Two years
earlier, an Amish man murdered his wife in Pennsylvania. And Canadian
authorities report that members of the related Mennonite faith were among
the main suppliers of marijuana to that country, easily passing through
customs because they looked so harmless.

Copyright Los Angeles Times

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)