The Amish and Their Neighbors
Session 2
Thursday, June 2, 2022 • 3:30–5:00 pm
A. Panel: Government Officials Engage with the Amish
Ray D'Agostino (Chairman, Lancaster [PA] County Commissioners)
Russell C. Redding (Secretary of Agriculture, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania)
Tom Tillett (District Chief of Staff, U.S. Representative Joe Pitts, 1997–2017)
Three officials with federal, state, county, and municipal experience will discuss working with members of Amish and other Plain community members on issues of common concern. Topics to be considered: What issues have been important to Plain community members and how are their concerns both different from and the same as those of their neighbors? Why are some issues quickly resolved and other seem to defy easy resolution? What do Amish constituents expect or want from government? What approaches or strategies have worked well when interacting with Plain constituents? As Amish and other Plain populations continue to grow and expand into new areas, what issues, conflicts, and benefits do you foresee for our civic life together?
B. Papers: Recent Studies in Settlement and Population Growth
Amish Populations Pyramids: Demographic Patterns across Affiliations in the Holmes County, Ohio, Amish Settlement
Rachel E. Stein
Corey J. Colyer
Katie E. Corcoran
Annette M. Mackay
Research indicates demographic trends within the Amish community remain stable over time, even with the rapid growth of the Amish population. Much of the research on demographic trends, however, does not make distinctions across affiliations. We use the 2020 Ohio Amish Directory for Holmes County and vicinity to construct age-sex population pyramids for Old Order churches, Dan churches, and New Order churches to examine differences in population distribution and membership across affiliations. Population pyramids are useful to demonstrate whether a population is growing, shrinking, or remaining stable. Sociologists of religion note that strict churches, groups with greater separation from the outside world, tend to grow at faster rates than more progressive churches. We examine how affiliation might influence retention in the Holmes County settlement.
Rachel E. Stein received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Akron. She is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University. Her research focuses on community building and health in Old Order Amish communities. Her current work explores how the Amish and Mennonite communities are experiencing the ongoing pandemic, how preventive health care decisions vary across Amish affiliations, how reproductive choices impact maternal health, and how visiting practices strengthen the Amish community and contribute to its growth.
Corey J. Colyer received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University and is an associate professor of sociology at West Virginia University. His research concentrates on cultural processes and structural mechanisms of social institutions. Theoretically, he draws heavily on the notion of negotiated orders, in which human action takes place within groups (of varying sizes and shapes), which structures and constrains it. Institutionally mediated ideas pass through network chains, and ideas require institutions inhabited by people to resonate and persist. This framework is broadly applicable to criminal justice processes, social control decision making, and worldview or sense-making practices (which includes religion).
Katie E. Corcoran received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington and is an associate professor of sociology at West Virginia University. Her research cuts across many subareas including congregational dynamics, religion and health, religion and civic engagement, religious emotion, religious knowledge, and religion and crime. She recently published High on God: How Megachurches Won the Heart of America (Oxford University Press, 2020, with James K. Wellman Jr. and Kate Stockly). Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the International Research Network for the Study of Belief and Science.
Annette M. Mackay, M.A., is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University. Her expertise is in quantitative methods and spatial analysis. Her research interests are neighborhood gentrification, religion in community, community development, and public policy.
A Demographic Profile of the Michigan Amish
Joseph F. Donnermeyer
As the Amish population and the number of settlements grew throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, the number of settlement directories likewise expanded. Some directories report only on family characteristics of single communities or a cluster of Amish communities sharing a similar church discipline (i.e., Ordnung). However, there are a few directories that include all or nearly all settlements in the same state. The Michigan directory, published by Abana Books, is one such example. The purpose of this presentation is to present a demographic profile of the Amish, based on this 2019 Michigan Amish directory. This directory includes nearly all settlements in the Wolverine state, from large to small and from recently founded to those much older. The profile compares statistics for month and day of marriage, age of marriage for husband and wife, spacing of children, and occupational status of men by age of settlement, size of settlement, and by various affiliations, including Old Order, Swartzentruber, Swiss, and conservative groups originating from the Kenton/Hardin County, Ohio, Amish.
Joseph F. Donnermeyer is a professor emeritus in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at The Ohio State University. Although a criminologist for most of his academic career, he has a deep and continuing interest in the social, cultural, and economic changes affecting the Amish. Specifically, his Amish research examines the demographic dimensions of the Amish, including population growth, settlement expansion, and occupational change. Through much of his career, he annually taught “Amish Society,” a rural sociology course. He has published two books and numerous peer-reviewed book chapters and journal articles about the Amish. Donnermeyer cofounded and serves as coeditor of the Journal of Plain Anabaptist Communities, which is part of the digital library at The Ohio State University.
A Demographic Profile of the Elkhart-Lagrange-Noble Counties (Indiana) Old Order Amish Settlement
Thomas J. Meyers
In social science it is rare to have complete population data for any human group. With the publication of Amish directories, it is possible to create a nearly complete demographic profile of a settlement at any moment in time and to plot changes over time in many areas of Amish life. The first Indiana Amish Directory, with data about Amish people living in Elkhart, Lagrange, and Noble Counties, was published in 1970. Since that time, there have been seven subsequent editions. With these directories as the principal source of data, this paper will provide a general description of membership, household, district and settlement size, birth rates, family names, occupations of heads of households, and both migration into and emigration out of the Elkhart-Lagrange-Noble County settlement. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence will be provided to describe variations in family size, church membership by age, gender, and occupation. Elkhart-Lagrange has been among the very small number of settlements with employment in industry as the principal occupation for heads of households. Special attention to the impact of employment in factories is a focus of this paper.
Thomas J. Meyers was a professor of sociology and director of international education at Goshen College, and the college’s associate academic dean, until his retirement in 2019. He earned a Ph.D. at Boston University. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Nairobi, Kenya in 1993–1994. He has studied Amish society for more than 30 years and has published numerous articles, book chapters, and books on Amish life, including coauthored volumes Plain Diversity: Amish Cultures and Identities (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) and An Amish Patchwork: Old Order Amish in the Modern World (Indiana University Press, 2005), as well as numerous book chapters and articles on Amish schooling and occupational change.
C. Panel: Project Hoffnung: Celebrating 25 Years of Delivering Hope to Amish Women in the Fight against Breast Cancer
Melissa K. Thomas
Since 1997, Project Hoffnung (“Hope” in German) has provided access to culturally sensitive health care and education for Amish and Mennonite women in the fight against breast cancer. After the first epidemiologic study estimating breast cancer incidence and mortality rates among two of the world’s largest Amish settlements showed that Amish women were dying at much higher rates of breast cancer when compared to white women at local, state, and national levels, the need for a community-led initiative was established. By connecting with community members and leaders from diverse church districts throughout Ohio and surrounding states, a four-pronged approach was developed to address the burden of breast cancer. The approach included the following initiatives: development of the first breast cancer education program for Amish and Mennonite communities, a culturally competent training program for health care systems and agencies, access to women’s health care services in some of the most resource-starved sections, and a research plan aimed at uncovering the “why” behind the breast cancer disparities.
This session will provide an overview of key outcomes in research and best practices over the 25-year history of Project Hoffnung and share lessons learned along the way. We anticipate that several members of the Plain community will be a part of the panel and share their experiences and input.
Melissa K. Thomas is an assistant professor in the Department of Primary Care at Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine in Athens, Ohio. The founding director of the nonprofit Center for Appalachia Research in Cancer Education (CARE), Thomas has worked on addressing health disparities through community-engaged research and outreach models for over 20 years, with a specific emphasis in rural and Appalachia Ohio and including Ohio’s Amish communities.