This morning I read a section in The Amish Way discussing the prohibition of business on Sunday and it reminded me of a similar practice in the Holiness churches I grew up in. The Holiness people lived by a strict set of behavioral and clothing rules they called the holiness standards. Not Amish-level strict, but they made folks noticeable. These were (nearly) universal and violation of the standards was considered sin.
From Uncle Wendell’s latest: Since his return, Andy has lived his story and his family’s in that place for sixty years. The place as it was when he returned is no more. It is now, to him, a strange country with a familiar story surviving in it. Port William’s fatal mistake was its failure to value itself at the rate of its affection for itself. Gradually, it had learned to value itself as outsiders—as the nation–valued it: as a “no-where place,” a place at the end of the wrong direction.