Amish breaking tradition in struggling economy

By Dustin Grove (grove@wsbt.com)

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In this April 17, 2009 photo, a bicyclist travels past a the Newmar motorcoach plant in Nappanee, Ind. The Amish, like everyone else in these troubled times, are struggling to make ends meet. The Amish settlement in northern Indiana is the third largest in the nation behind settlements in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Indiana settlement sprawls across Elkhart and LaGrange counties, which both have unemployment rates of 18 percent. (AP Photo/Joe Raymond)

By Beth Boehne

Story Created: May 11, 2009 at 3:33 PM EST

Story Updated: May 14, 2009 at 11:20 PM EST

It's another sign of the struggling economy.

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Some of northern Indiana's Amish are breaking with long-held tradition and accepting help from the government.

Over the last few decades, the Amish community has shifted away from farming to factory work in the RV industry.

Now that many of those factories have closed or downsized, many Amish workers are laid off.

Some have filed for state unemployment benefits. They’re eligible because their employers paid into the program when they were employed; but church leaders say government assistance goes against their religious traditions.

Church leaders would typically censure Amish members for getting outside help, but, in light of the economy, they’re now looking the other way.

“In many ways this really is unprecedented for the Amish,” said Goshen College history professor Steve Nolt, an expert on Amish history and culture. “In the past if an Amish man working in a factory had lost his job, there would've been other jobs he would've turn to other family members to turn to and certainly there still is some of that going on. The Amish community is also working very hard to take care of their own members. But the scale of what's happening now is what's unprecedented. There are so many Amish church districts with so many men who are unemployed that in a few cases, they have they've said it's OK as a temporary measure to accept unemployment.”

About 23,000 Amish people live in northern Indiana’s LaGrange and Elkhart counties. They make up the third largest Amish settlement in the country.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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