Amana Church Society

General Information

The Amana Society is a religious group in east central Iowa, that is conservative in theology, pacifistic, and has a strong communal tradition. Its origins are to be found in German pietism of the early 1700s. Some 800 members of the group migrated to the United States in 1842, settling first in Ebenezer, NY, but moving later to Iowa. Initially the members held all property in common, but in 1932 they discarded many communal practices and formed a business corporation to take over the group's farmland and other productive properties. The Amana Society continues as a religious organization, with about 900 members; the business corporation engages in farming and manufactures kitchen appliances.

Conrad Wright

Bibliography
J Liffring - Zug, The Amana Colonies (1988).

The Amana Church Society

The Amana Church Society is a religious community in the United States. It began as an outgrowth of the religious reform movement Pietism begun in Germany in 1714 by Eberhard Ludwig Gruber and Johann Friedrich Rock, who withdrew from the German Lutheran Church in protest against its formalism. When the Pietists were persecuted as a religious minority, leading member Christian Metz and a number of others in search of religious freedom emigrated to the United States and purchased land there in 1842. More than 800 more Pietists followed, establishing six villages near Ebenezer, New York, and two in Canada. They set up communities specializing in agriculture and the weaving of cloth, and among the early internal rules of the group were bans forbidding members to send their children to public school, bear arms, or serve in war. No rite of baptism was observed.