Devil's Playground

The primary rite of passage celebrated in the Amish community is wrenching. Boys and girls raised in the insular Amish world are turned loose at the age of 16 to experience the secular world. This "English" world they call the Devil's Playground. The rite of passage, referred to as Rumspringa, or "running around," releases these teenagers from all Amish religious and cultural restrictions for periods that range from just a few months to several years.

Winner of numerous film festival awards, Devil's Playground is the first film to really get inside the Amish community. The film's release radically altered the secular world view of this American religious subculture, so deeply rooted in 18th-century religious tradition. The film follows four Amish teens with no curfews and restrictions on their whereabouts through Rumspringa as they attempt to decide whether to be baptized in the Amish church, a lifelong commitment, or to leave the community. They are keenly aware that if they choose the church and then change their minds, they will be shunned. "If you've joined the church and then leave, they will shun you," one teenager says. "The shunning for them is their last way of showing you that they love you. They think that you're breaking your promise to the Amish church. They're afraid for your soul."

It is striking that the large majority of these children choose to return to an Amish way of life.