Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court sent a case concerning a group of Minnesota Amish back to the state’s Court of Appeals. The group, known as the Swartzentruber Amish, sued southeast Minnesota’s Fillmore County over its requirement that most homes have modern septic systems to deal with greywater, which is water used for things like baths, dishes and other cleaning.
Brian Lipford, the attorney representing the Swartzentruber Amish in the case, says the group believes that the septic requirement violates their religious freedom.
The Supreme Court’s ruling came in the wake of another religious freedom case — that one about a Philadelphia-based Catholic foster care agency — with both cases hinging on the application of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which protects the religious use of land.
While the case is just the latest of several going back to the 1970s that have focused on how the Amish relate to their larger communities in the United States, it also served to highlight the growing presence of Amish in different parts of Minnesota.
The Amish are now one of the fastest growing religious groups in the United States, said Edsel Burdge, a researcher at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania — growth that has been felt in several parts of Minnesota. Though their overall numbers remain small — there are a little fewer than 5,000 Amish in Minnesota today — the population in the state has grown by more than 230 percent over the last 20 years, according to data gathered by the Young Center.
Amish 101
Immigrating mainly from Switzerland and Germany, the Amish’s presence in America goes back to the 1700s. Part of the Anabaptist movement — a radical element of the Protestant Reformation — the Amish are closely related to Mennonites, with both practicing adult baptism and both believing that religion should be completely separate from state interference.
Though the Amish tend to be more conservative than Mennonites — especially when it comes to the use of technology — their opinions on modern practices and “worldly” goods can vary widely depending on each settlements’ beliefs and regulations. Those settlements, groups of like-minded Amish that contain a number of individual families, function like small towns or villages, growing and splitting off into many settlements over time.
After originally settling in the eastern U.S., the Amish moved westward as communities grew, especially during the second half of the 20th century. Minnesota’s first recorded Amish population arrived in 1973 in Todd County, about 151 miles northwest of the Twin Cities.
In recent decades, the Amish have continued to grow and spread, in part due to their practice of having large families but also because of high retention rates; the Young Center estimates that 85 percent of Amish youth eventually join the church. “It’s not uncommon for them to have 10 to 12 children, and they grow up and get married,” said Sheila Craig, president of the Preston Historical Society in Fillmore County, home to several Amish settlements.
When Amish settlements grow to be larger than about 40 families, they split off to create new settlements, according to research done by Cory Anderson, a rural sociologist at Pennsylvania State University, while a report by David Luthy, an Amish historian, found that new Amish settlements are created every three weeks in the United States.
The Amish in Minnesota
That growth rate means the Amish tend to run out of space quickly, and the spread westward has been driven by the need for affordable farmland — one of the reasons they ended up in Minnesota. “They would choose our smaller, old farms that nobody wanted anymore,” said Craig. “The Amish would come and use that spot because it would have a well and they need the water [but] they don’t use electricity.”
Minnesota’s Amish settlements tend to be more conservative than Amish who live farther east when it comes to the use of so-called “worldly goods,” but views about the use of technology also vary widely among communities.
Amish settlements look to church leaders to decide what can and can not be used. While some communities completely ban things like computers and cellphones, others are fine with members having a presence on social media platforms. Though now deleted, the TikTok account of Mervin Kinsinger, a 25-year-old Amish man from Pennsylvania, once had 57,000 followers, who were treated to Kinsinger showing off his horse, buggy and karaoke skills. In one TikTok, he could be seen singing Weird Al Yankovic’s song “Amish Paradise” to a cheering crowd.
In traveling to settlements across the U.S. for his research, Anderson said his gets very different reactions as an outsider, depending on a community’s beliefs and culture. “I get a very warm reception that’s like, ‘Who’s this? Come on in, sit down! Can you stay a while? Talk for a while? Do you have a place to sleep? Why don’t pull out a bench and put some pillows on, you can sleep in the living room tonight,’” he said. “Then I get other ones where people will just flat out ignore me.”
The group at the center of the case against Fillmore County, the Swartzentruber Amish, tend to use as little technology as they can. “They’re very old fashioned,” Burdge said. “They are much more restrictive in technology kinds of things than some other Amish would be.”
The regulation of vehicle use is another point of contention within Amish settlements. “Amish churches ended up rejecting ownership and operation of automobiles,” said Anderson. “There are a few churches that allow ownership of automobiles, but you can’t drive it. So they actually hire people to drive their vehicles. Then there’s another Amish church where they’re allowed to drive it as long as they don’t own it.”
Horse and buggy vehicles remain the main mode of transportation for Amish in Minnesota, though the Amish in Fillmore County who work construction jobs are known to hire drivers when they need to transport materials or get to a site quickly.
But while the Amish may live vastly different lives from their “English” neighbors, they are often very much part of their communities. “They interact with us,” said Craig. “They come into the grocery store and buy what they need. They go to the feed store and they work closely with the lumberyards.”
The Supreme Court decision is worth a read. It’s unbelievable how inflexible Fillmore County and the PCA have been in this case. Typical of the nanny state bureaucracy that is taking over the country.
I know, right? Some overbearing state legislatures have gone so far as to ban municipalities from establishing their own minimum wage ordinances. And the dictatorial Texas state government has told counties they can only have one ballot drop box, even Harris County, with its five million citizens.
Nanny State indeed.
Personally, I welcome the advent of the nanny state. I’ve already got my own nap-time mat. I’m just waiting for my tax dollars to provide much needed better tasting paste and dipping crayons, instead of wasting them on greed, malfeasance, and maintaining the panicked, dwindling, white patriarchy.
Edits: also remedial spelling and English grammar picture books.
Man, the absurdity of anti-government Republican partisanship really can reach into any nook or cranny of any discussion. Here we have a community that applies ten times more restrictions to it’s members than any State Government in the US, and these dunderheads want to claim that protecting water quality is an example of nanny state oppression?
You either can’t even own a car, or if you do you can’t drive it in one of these communities… but the State is the big bad oppressor in this scenario? Whether or not you can have a cell phone, or an Instagram account depends on the ruling of unelected elders… but state is the big nanny here?
The same people who wail at the suggestion of giving Muslims a prayer space in the public schools cry the big crocodile tears when Amish are required to follow the same environment regulation everyone else is has to follow… because THAT’S their idea of religious freedom… pfff.
I got nothing the Amish as long as they don’t create or contribute to problems outside their communities. But these facile complaints about guvmint that pretend to be support for religious freedom are simply ridiculous.
It may just be me but I think if you have a headline discussing population growth within a certain religious community you might want spend a few words discussing the nature of that growth. Is this simply birth rates within the community, or people “joining” the Amish for instance?
And it’s interesting that someone who decides to write about this decides that the status of court challenges is more important than something like the status of women and the patriarchal structure of these communities. For instance, getting back to the population growth… maybe a word or two about whether or not Amish women can use birth control of any kind might be something to talk about? If this population growth has something to do with women in this community having the status of walking incubators… that might be just interesting to talk about as whether or not Amish have to have septic systems don’t you think?
You can be Amish if you want but the idea that these communities are bastions of personal freedom being trod upon by the nanny state is more than a little weird.
Paul, believe it or not, not everyone is like you. Other people may not value what you value; and they may value things you do not. It is entirely possible that there are women who enjoy having large families.
I’m not aware that anyone is held captive in Amish communities.
“Paul, believe it or not, not everyone is like you. Other people may not value what you value; and they may value things you do not. It is entirely possible that there are women who enjoy having large families.”
Yes, thank you Frank. I had no idea there are different perspectives.
I do however know several women who have have large families and appear to rather enjoy it… voluntarily. The question in any scenario like this is what happens when a woman in the community DOESN’T want to have babies and big families? Don’t you think this subject is at least as worthy of exploration, specially if these women are responsible for the Amish population boom, and whether nor not Amish have to septic systems?
No one is saying that nobody should be Amish, and it’s safe to assume that a majority of Amish are Amish voluntarily… however the fact remains that being Amish requires strict adherence to rather dictatorial conditions, so the idea that these community are little pockets of libertarian freedom in midst of a dictatorial nanny regime is simply whacked.
Another fact is that while these communities may have their own values… they still rely on public infrastructure and resources, roads, water, etc. Requiring adherence to the same laws that govern anyone else using those resources isn’t oppression, it’s simply a condition of citizenship. You can live in a gated community and drive around in a golf cart within the gates of that community; but if you drive to work outside that community you need to leave the golf cart in the driveway. This doesn’t make a victim of the nanny state. Water is a public resource. The water you tap into with your well, or draw out of a river or lake, doesn’t belong to you exclusively. And water tables and sources you contaminate with waste water likewise flow well beyond the boundaries of your own land or home. Do I even need to explain this?
I am waiting for a response here from the Amish community
🙂
I wonder if Walz will mandate the Amish to use electric vehicles in place of their polluting horses.
Your right to practice your religion ends before it hits the water supply. Plus, I’m pretty sure that contaminating a water supply is not an explicit part of the religious practice. The issue here is whether they will be forced to comply with “technology” that enables clean water. This seems to be the same question as to whether they can be forced to use “technology” to make their carriages more visible at night. The answer is yes. I imagine that if any of these laws were appealed to the SCOTUS, they would refuse to take it up, essentially leaving it to the states, which have all said that public safety is more important than religious freedom, so long as the laws surrounding the public safety are flexible. That is, while the Amish buggies are not required to include a reflective orange triangle in most states, they MUST include retroreflective tape (thanks 3M!), typically outlining the buggy, that makes them visible at night. Pretty sure that retroreflective tape is more modern than septic tank technology. If they can provide a reasonable alternative that achieves the same function (not substandard function) as the required septic tank, then there might be an argument that they can use that alternative.