c. 2006 Religion News Service

NICKEL MINES, Pa. _ Five schoolgirls are murdered in their quaint, quiet hamlet. A community that shuns attention as a matter of religious principle suddenly finds itself in the media glare.

How will the Amish cope?

That question hangs in the air over Nickel Mines as the Amish begin the ritual of grieving the deaths of the five young girls and the process of forgiving the man who shot them on Monday (Oct. 2), all while under the curious gaze of more than 100 print, TV, Internet and radio journalists.

“This is difficult,” Jacob King, an Amish farmer, said as he passed through the country crossroads just up the hill from the West Nickel Mine Amish School. King was on his way to pay respects to one of the families who had lost a daughter there Monday. He nodded toward the satellite trucks and the power cords and the tripods. “This makes it more difficult.”

As difficult as it might be for the camera-shy Amish to have to stare down dozens of cameras at their darkest hour, they may be better equipped culturally and religiously than other communities to deal with the mayhem Charles Carl Roberts IV sowed in one of their one-room schoolhouses.

One thing that works in their favor is a long history of coming to the aid of families in need, said Donald Kraybill, a sociology professor at Elizabethtown College and an expert on the Lancaster Amish.

Another is their huge support system. The average Lancaster County Amishman has between 75 and 80 cousins, most of whom live very close by, Kraybill said.

“They will just surround them with love and care,” he said as he stood on Mine Road, just up the hill from the schoolhouse.

And lastly, the Amish will find some comfort in their religious beliefs. They will see the murders as God’s providence, Kraybill said. They may not understand why the killings happened, but they will accept it was God’s will.

The first public signs of mourning rituals were found Tuesday on farms surrounding the country crossroads known as the village of Nickel Mine. Not far from the school, the family of Mary Liz and Lina Miller received callers.

The sisters, 7 and 8, lived through the shooting Monday but died overnight in the hospital.

Hours later, a flat, horse-drawn wagon arrived at the farm with chairs that will be used for a funeral service later in the week. Relatives, friends and neighbors drove out to comfort the girls’ parents. They lined up their horses and buggies on the front lawn and carried food down to where the family was gathered.

This sort of ritualized visitation usually takes place for two days before a funeral.

Most of the Amish have kept away from the media. When a reporter and photographer stood out by Mine Road and watched the Millers’ guests arrive, a non-Amish friend was sent out to ask them to leave.

“By cultural understanding, they’re not inclined to speak,” said Kraybill, the Elizabethtown professor. “Their grief is nobody else’s business. That would be their position.”

For all the efforts of the Amish to wall off the outside world, they have strong connections to the non-Amish towns that contain their communities. They are friends and neighbors to the non-Amish people whose homes line the streets around their farms.

They knew Charlie Roberts as the friendly-enough truck driver who came around every night to collect the milk from their cows.

“These children knew the man very well,” Jacob Fisher Jr., a 23-year-old dairy farmer, said through the screen door of his home across the street from where Roberts lived. “They knew who it was. It’s hard for us to believe he could do something like this.”

Those existing ties are likely to keep the shooting from causing fissures in the relationship between the Amish and the “English,” as the Amish tend to call non-Amish of all nationalities.

“We are a very close community,” said the Rev. Douglas Hileman, pastor of the Middle Octorara Presbyterian Church, where Roberts’ wife was leading a prayer group Monday morning while her husband was making last-minute preparations for taking over the schoolhouse.

“We know our English and Amish neighbors. Many people know each other very well, and we share each other’s pain.”

KRE/JL END FEENEY

(Tom Feeney writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. Ralph Ortega contributed to this report.)

Editors: To obtain photos of from the Amish school shooting, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.