Patricia Johns

The Ausbund hymn books are a precious Amish community commodity. They are collected after the church service and carefully packed away into the church wagon along with the benches. That wagon is then transported to the next farm that will host their service two weeks later.

Church for the Amish happens every two weeks on Service Sunday and is hosted on a different church member’s property each time. The other weekends are called Visiting Sundays, and people go to see family, or visit other Amish districts on those weekends.

The Ausbund–translated Paragon from the German–is a collection of very old hymns that were written between 1535-1540. A group of Anabaptists had been arrested and imprisoned in Passau, Bavaria. While they were incarcerated, they wrote a collection of 51 hymns. Many of the imprisoned Anabaptists whose hymns are still sung in Amish church gatherings today were martyred and did not survive the ordeal.

These hymns were written without notes or music–just words on a page with a notation that they should be sung to a certain tune that had been popular at the time.

Many more hymns were added to the Ausbund over the years, but the Amish still use the oldest versions of the hymn book which has 140 hymns all together. Many of the original tunes have been lost over time, but they still sing them to tunes that are probably similar, even if not exact.

You’ll see mention of the Ausbund in my books, and I’ve been reading the English translations of these old hymns. What an experience! The writers’ belief was strong and their faith was sure.

Happy reading!