Amish

Member of a Christian group originally based on the Mennonite Church, found today in the USA and Canada. The Amish are distinctive for their adherence to pre-20th-century dress and a simple lifestyle, making little use of modern inventions as these are perceived to destroy community ties or create unnecessary and divisive wealth.

Traditionally, the Amish live in German-speaking, semiclosed rural communities based on an agrarian economy. They are pacifists whose main concern is freedom to worship God, known to them through piety and personal religious experience. They hold to adult baptism and a literal reading of the Bible. If a member is cast out from the church they may be ‘shunned’ by the rest of the community.

The beliefs held by the Amish include the objection to insurance, as they believe life and death are gifts given by God, and should not be gambled with. In the USA self-employed members of the Amish communities do not pay Social Security tax for this reason. They also often object to education in high schools, with some Amish parents being jailed rather than sending their children to these schools.

When the Anabaptist movement of the 16th century was suppressed, Anabaptist communities fled into remote areas. The Amish Church was formed 1693–97 after a split away from the Swiss and Alsatian Mennonites, who were in turn a splinter group of the Anabaptists. The Amish were named after their leader, Swiss bishop Jakob Amman (c. 1644–c. 1730), who set very strict standards and rejected the Mennonite Church as too secular. The Amish were persecuted until the early 19th century, and many migrated to North America, and there are now no Amish communities in Europe. There are about fifty Amish settlements in the USA and Canada, with the largest communities found in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.