MOLINE, Ill. — The Amish Incident: Wisconsin vs. Yoder, produced by Mid-America Emmy nominated filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films, will be presented at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 29 for a special Wisconsin Humanities free online screening via Facebook. A Q&A session with the Rundles and Dr. Shawn Peters, author of The Yoder Case, will follow the film. Viewers can attend the event at 

https://www.facebook.com/Fourth-Wall-Films-173844695995934.

The Amish Incident: Wisconsin vs. Yoder explores the battle over education and parental rights that emerged from a small Amish community near New Glarus. The 1968 conflict began when Amish parents removed their children from public schools over a state law compelling education beyond the eighth grade. Three Amish fathers were convicted and fined for truancy violations. As a rule, the Amish do not “go to law” to resolve legal conflicts, but with help offered by an outside legal team, the subsequent trial and appeals culminated in a dramatic 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision that defined how Wisconsin and other states facilitate education for Amish children.

The film follows the award-winning The Amish Incident: Rural Conflict and Compromise (part one in the two-part series), and blends newly discovered historic photographs and archival materials with on-camera interviews with Shawn Francis Peters, PhD, (The Yoder Case: Religious Freedom, Education, and Parental Rights), nationally-recognized Amish historian Mark DeWalt, PhD (Amish Education in the Unites States and Canada), and local historian Kim D. Tschudy (New Glarus: Images of America), to tell a fascinating and important true story of a monumental courtroom clash over education and religious freedom.

“For me, when I’ve thought about this case, one of the reasons I really got drawn into it was it kind of turns our understanding of landmark cases on its head. We think about victory, and vindication, and fame and this is very complicated in a lot of ways. Part of the legacy of this case is actually what happened to the New Glarus Amish and Jonas Yoder,” said author Dr. Shawn Peters, who teaches Integrated Liberal Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is an internationally-recognized expert on religious liberty issues.

Filming took place in New Glarus, Monroe and Madison.