10

The Mennonite Quarterly Review

themselves like non-Amish. Young women are much more likely to
continue to wear cape dresses and prayer coverings, which make them
more noticeable and therefore "different" in the English-speaking
world. Without these obvious boundary markers young men may more
readily blend into modern society.

Informants also note that since 1972 there has been no threat of a
military draft and conscription. In the past, for some young Amish men
the choice to remain Amish was clearly related to the draft. In fact,
when hostilities broke out in the Middle East in the fall and winter of
1990-1991 and Amish youths feared a potential return to conscription,
the number joining the church in the Elkhart-LaGrange community
increased significantly. As Table 6 demonstrates, in the year following
the outbreak of the Gulf war the number of males who were baptized
increased by 277%. Females also appeared to have had some fears of
being drafted. However, the increase in female baptisms was less
dramatic--from 143 to 227, an increase of 59%.

TABLE 6. NUMBER OF BAPTISMS IN THE ELKHART-LAGRANGE
SETTLEMENTINTWOSUCCESSIVEYEARS^a
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MalesFemalesTotal

Sept. 1989 - Aug. 199082143225
Sept. 1990 - Aug. 1991309227536
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a_{The data for this Table are taken from those years' issues of Die Blatte ,}²⁵_{a local}
Amish publication.

Contact with Urban Communities

The increase in population density of the Elkhart-LaGrange
settlement has led to much more contact with the non-Amish people of
the towns within the settlement's boundaries. In this study those
churches which border the towns of Goshen, LaGrange, Middlebury,
Topeka, and Shipshewana were separated from the rest of the
districts. Table 7 demonstrates more defection among those
congregations which border small towns than among those in more rural
areas. Clearly, the boundary between the Amish and the non-Amish
community is harder to maintain in more urban areas, even if the towns



25_{. Die Blatte(Middlebury, Ind.), 1989-1991.}