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Amish

Diasporic, Religious and Modern Social Formations

The Amish are a traditionalist Anabaptist Christian religious and cultural community originating from Swiss and South German Mennonite settlers who emigrated to North America beginning in the eighteenth century, distinguished by deliberate limits on the adoption of modern technology (including, in most communities, the private ownership of automobiles and connection to the public electric grid) understood by the community as supporting separation from the wider world (Gelassenheit) rather than as a rejection of technology as such. Amish social life is organized around local church districts, plain dress, and a rite of passage (rumspringa) during which adolescents experience the wider world before choosing baptism into the church as adults, a genuinely optional choice within the community's own theology. Amish communities are among the fastest-growing religious populations in North America by birth rate, owing to large family size and a documented, though not universal, retention rate among those raised in the community. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own account
Religious and cultural subculture 1
Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own account
North America (concentrated in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana in the United States, with communities in several other U.S. states and Ontario, Canada) 1
Population EstimateSourced to the subject's own account
approximately 380,000 to 390,000 1
Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own account
Pennsylvania German (Pennsylvania Dutch) and English 1
Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own account
Historically and predominantly still today, agrarian farming, alongside a substantial and well-documented modern presence in small-scale craft trades (woodworking, construction) that accommodate the community's restrictions on certain technologies. 1
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Amish
WikipediaIntroduction
Quote, Introduction
The Amish, formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss and Alsatian origins.
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