Leaving the Amish

Abstract

Contrary to the persistent myth that they are dying out, the Amish population in North America continues to grow at a rapid pace. Numbering over 330,000 in thirty-one states and four Canadian provinces, the Amish population doubles every twenty years (Young Center 2018; Donnermeyer et al. 2013). While over 60 percent of the Amish still reside in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, home to the four largest Amish settlements, population pressures are increasingly resulting in out-migration to areas where land prices are more affordable. Because the Amish do not actively seek converts, this population surge is a result of two major forces—large family sizes and a high retention rate. Though family size differs by affiliation, Amish families still average approximately five children. At the same time, the retention rate is at an all-time high. Fully 85 percent of Amish youth get down on their knees in front of their congregation and pledge to uphold the Ordnung, or unwritten code of conduct, of their local church district (Kraybill, Johnson-Weiner, and Nolt 2013). Less visible in this overall picture are the approximately 15 percent of Amish youth who leave the community. Like other Anabaptist groups, the Amish require youth to make a conscious decision to join the church at some point after they reach “the age of accountability,” usually age sixteen, and enter the period known as rumspringa, where parental supervision is relaxed. The focus on adult baptism arose during the Radical Reformation in the early 1500s as a sign that believers had made a “conscious decision to follow Christ and form a church apart from the state” (Nolt 2003: 12). Because the state church used infant baptism as a means of controlling the population, however, it saw adult baptism as a grave threat to its legitimacy. The persecution of Anabaptists over the next century—as many as 2500 were killed—was a key factor in their subsequent migration to the U.S. in the 1700s (followed by another wave in the 1800s) at the invitation of the Quaker governor of Pennsylvania, William Penn (Kraybill, Johnson-Weiner and Nolt 2013: 24). Because adult baptism remains a cornerstone tenet of the Amish faith, the individuals who decide not to join the church, or who join but later decide to leave, provide a useful mirror on the rapidly changing relationship between the Amish and the outside world.