Job losses force Hoosiers to choose money or tradition
By Tom Coyne • Associated Press • May 17, 2009
TOPEKA, Ind. -- A part-time construction job strengthened Orva Fry's financial foundation after he was laid off from a recreational vehicle factory. It also kept the 41-year-old Amish father of two on steady spiritual ground.
Another way to make ends meet that Fry briefly considered -- unemployment checks -- went against his faith, which shuns all forms of government assistance. That Fry even pondered signing up for jobless benefits illustrates a marked shift in this Northern Indiana Amish settlement, the nation's third-largest. Suffering steep unemployment following a decades-long shift from farming to factory work, a growing number of the area's 23,000 Amish are breaking with centuries of tradition and taking government help to stay afloat, church and economic leaders say. Bishops who once might have censured those who sought public assistance are reluctantly looking the other way. "We prefer to supply ourselves, but I told people that if they have no other option and no other way to make ends meet then they can take it," said Paul Hochstetler, bishop of an Amish district east of Goshen. Of more than two dozen Amish approached recently in Topeka, a town of 1,100 about 40 miles southeast of South Bend, only six would talk of the unemployment situation, and all were reluctant to be identified.
The unemployment rate in the Elkhart-Goshen metropolitan area approached 19 percent in March -- the most recent month for which data are available -- in large part due to the misfortune of RV factories that have laid off thousands of workers. It is the nation's fourth-highest unemployment rate and is up 13 points from March 2008, the country's largest increase.
The Amish's refusal to take assistance such as unemployment and welfare is shared by like-minded Anabaptist traditions that grew out of 16th-century German sects that sought to separate themselves from the world, said John Farina, an associate professor of religious studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. That would include Hutterians, the Church of the Brethren and the Church of the United Brethren.
At least, the Amish do not have the added financial burden of telephones, television and motor vehicles (and, therefore, do not have to budget for petrol). As for their refusal to take assistance such as unemployment, it is an indication that they do not consider themselves as part of everyday society.
