Thirty years ago, Tricia and Bill Moser left their respective jobs as an occupational therapist and an architect in suburban Detroit to join a horse-and-buggy Amish community. The new book, “Becoming Amish,” written by Bill's childhood friend Jeff Smith, chronicles the Mosers' journey into, and eventually out of, a restrictive Amish community (they are now members of a Mennonite Amish community). Bill Moser and Jeff Smith speak with Here & Now's Robin Young.

Interview Highlights

On the Amish community:

Jeff: That was one of the most interesting things to me is how they defy the categories we like to use in general, the society. You think of the Amish as very conservative in dress, in lifestyle, but they refuse to fight in wars. Likewise, liberals would love the way that the communities work together and support one another and give freely of their labor and even of their money. But liberals would be repelled by say their stance against abortion or gay marriage. I guess what I found interesting about all that is that we live by kind of all these boundaries that are sometimes put on us and sometimes we don't always think about them, right? Looking at the Amish they sort of broke all that apart and remixed all those pieces.

On what it was like to transition to the Amish community:

Bill: Well, it wasn't frightening. It was actually pretty exciting, and probably one of the biggest reasons was we were pursuing spiritual goals, and we saw that they could be fulfilled in a community setting like that. So giving up things wasn't such a sacrifice compared to what we were gaining.

On different business practices in the Amish community:

Yeah, that's an interesting aspect of the sharing nature that we as Christians should be practicing, helping one another, not in competition to one another, and even non-Christians. You mentioned the pallet business. Another pallet company that was owned by Amish individuals, they literally gave us the money to get started, gave us the equipment, gave us the orders, just handed it to us on a platter to help us get started.

On seeing the Moser family's new house and life in the Amish community for the first time:

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I definitely thought, Bill, we have some catching up to do, I think. I don't know, at first, I didn't really know what to think but there was such a sense of peace around their home and it was such a beautiful moment and you could simply feel it. I don't know what all led to me feeling that, but there was just this beautiful sense of peace and spirituality around their family and their home and so I was very proud of them.