Amish: Remain or Leave?

11

seem quite rural.

Living close to town leads to much more informal contact with
English society. In particular, informants have mentioned Amish
children's increased contact with non-Amish. As one person said of
those living near towns, "After school, when the children have nothing
to do, they go into town."

Table 7.RETENTION AND DEFECTION BY RESIDENCE^a
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Town RuralTotal
N=592N=1916N=2508
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Amish Retention

80%

86%

85%

Amish Defection20%14%15%
Total100%100%100%
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Chi Sq.= 14.63P < .001
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a_{The population of towns in this area of Indiana has grown rapidly in the post-}
World War II era; hence this portion of the analysis included only those persons
under the age of 40.

Even though Shipshewana is scarcely more than a village, the
congregations which are most urban are those in the Shipshewana
area. In one of the districts in this community as many as one-third of

the families live in town;²⁶some members even live in apartment
buildings.

Each summer Shipshewana has a thriving tourist industry,
attracting hundreds of thousands of people to its shops and markets. As
Table 8 demonstrates, the cluster of churches around it has a much
higher defection rate than do churches located on the edges of other
towns. More than twice the percentages leave the Amish in the
Shipshewana area than in other communities.

One important symbolic separator of the two worlds in which the

26_{. Topeka is the only other town with Old Order members living within the town}
proper.