The Subtext: Who Gets to Judge You? Suddenly Amish and the Myth of the Unjudged Self

Six 'English' strangers try to go Amish for a month, surfacing big questions about autonomy, conformity, vanity, and discernment.

This week we're talking about TLC's Suddenly Amish, a (very scripted) reality show where six outsiders spend a month living in an Amish community to see if they could actually join the church. Lee and Savannah use Suddenly Amish as a foundation for conversations around appearance and vanity, the "if it doesn't affect you, why does it matter" ethic of modern individualism, what Christian teaching has to say about all this, and whether any real community can exist without asking you to give up a little bit of yourself.

Things we mentioned in this episode:

A Beginner's Guide to Dying by Simon Boas (amzn.to/4xIUx49)

Suddenly Amish on HBO Max (hbomax.com/show/dfe5d6c1-d8de-43d9-9c67-fb73ff…)

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