amish-questions

Asked by Dewey from OH Q: I saw an Amish man get out of a truck the other day at Walmart. That surprised me. There was an Englisch man driving, but it still seemed hypocritical. I thought the Amish weren’t allowed to ride in cars. A: Hi Dewey! Most Amish are allowed to ride in cars, but they are not allowed to own them. There is a big difference in the Amish viewpoint. Hiring an Englisch driver, or getting a neighbor to drive them to the store is not unusual nor frowned upon. They judge that a humane distance for a horse to pull a buggy is no more than ten miles. If the destination is further away than that, they nearly always hire a driver and leave their horse at home. Thanks for the question Dewey!  

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Asked by Alex from OH Q: A store clerk told me the other day that the Amish don’t have to pay taxes. That doesn’t seem fair. Why does the government let them get by with that? A: Hi Alex! That isn’t true, but your store clerk was voicing a common belief. The Amish pay all the same taxes as the rest of us—except for one. They are exempt from being taxed for Social Security. The government allows this because the Amish refuse to draw from it. They believe in the family and church taking care of one another instead of the government. Thanks for the question Alex!  

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Asked by Cora Q: I recently read a report on sexual abuse in the Amish family. How accurate is that account? A: Hi Cora–I don’t know which report you read, so I can’t address that one specifically, but sexual abuse definitely exists within the Amish culture. As far as I can find, there have been no studies to discern how prevalent it is, as in whether or not it is more or less prevalent than in the non-Amish population. Considering how private the Amish are I’m not sure such a study is possible. However, a downside of the huge extended families is that the opportunity for a sexual predator to find prey is probably easier than in more isolated communities. An outside social agency prepared a booklet about sexual abuse a while ago entitled Strong Families, Safe Children, which has been widely distributed by Amish church leaders. There are also booklets distributed about the explicit psychological damage that sexual abuse causes that has been widely distributed. An Amish periodical, Family Life, that is in nearly every Amish household I visit, has had many articles on abuse, trying to inform families and help victims. There have some solid attempts by some […]

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