Amish, COVID-19: It’s complicated
The signs posted outside of Lehman’s Hardware store make it clear: “No mask, no entry.”
Inside, both customers and employees are in compliance.
Well, almost everyone. As a pair of young Amish men entered to browse last week, they were approached by an employee because they weren’t wearing masks.
“You have to wear a mask; it’s a state law,” the worker said.
Slightly startled, the young men wordlessly took the masks she handed them and put them on. But it wasn’t long before they had them in hand again, prompting the store to announce over the intercom that masks must be worn.
Religious and cultural beliefs
It’s a common issue in the heart of Ohio’s Amish country, specifically in Wayne and Holmes counties — the Amish are largely reluctant to mask. For them, it’s a matter of religious and cultural beliefs, including a healthy suspicion of others and government, experts say.
“There’s an association between wearing them and fear,” said Dr. Cory Anderson, a National Institutes of Health-sponsored researcher in population health at Pennsylvania State University. “As a people, they have a value orientation toward minimizing problems. They try to portray that all is at peace and rest. They’re willing to make masks — they’re not necessarily willing to wear them.”
Anderson is a member of the Amish-Mennonite community living in Holmes County and founding publisher of the Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies. Co-author of a report published in Social Science and Medicine, Anderson said the Amish response to coronavirus has been a focal point of his most recent research.
He said numerous factors must be examined when it comes to why so many Amish have been against following COVID-19 policies such as wearing face masks.
He added that it’s difficult to document.
“I’ve been in the process of systematically collecting sources from Amish newspapers to get a sense,” he said. “It can be a little difficult to distill. Anecdotally, if you come into Wayne or Holmes County, you will find very little compliance. Why is that? I guess there are two levels to the question.
“On the one hand, in Holmes and Wayne, where 50% of the population in Holmes is Amish or Mennonite, we look at a dynamic that transcends this particular religion and ethnic group, and look at the community as a whole. Even among the nonAmish population here, there is quite a bit of agreement to disregard the approach to masking and social-distancing. There is something going on at a community level.”
Business factor
Anderson added that Holmes and Wayne counties have strong business cultures that emphasize handsoff deregulation and autonomy.
“It’s very characteristically libertarian here, not in the political party sense, but that mentality is here,” Anderson said. “Part of that probably is due to the Amish and Mennonite theology.”
Religious persecution in Europe in the 1700s prompted an Amish and Mennonite migration to America.
“There’s this narrative within the culture of a history of persecution at the hand of outsiders, especially the state,” he said. “It creates this suspicion of outsiders coming in and telling us what to do.”
Spread
In May, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention reported an outbreak of COVID-19 among Ohio’s Amish community in Wayne County — home to one of America’s largest Amish settlements. Neighboring Holmes County also has a large population, with more than 30,000 Amish spread across the two rural counties.
One of the factors cited in the report is that the Amish community’s emphasis on communal living was a factor in the spread.
Around Kidron, few people want to address the issue — even those wearing masks.
Lehman’s store manager
Chris Hess said the business is vigilant about its mask policy, adding that people comply “for the most part.”
“We follow the state recommendations for the protection of our employees and customers,” he said. “Some people do get confused. And we have asked some people to leave.”
Hess said Lehman’s, which attracts both Amish and nonAmish customers, has had their policy in place since the fall.
“Customers have been more compliant than in the past,” he said.
Way of life
University of Missouri Professor Caroline Brock spent 18 months in Wooster doing research on the Amish way of life.
“With the Amish in general there is a lot of diversity of response on issues based on geography, settlement differences etcetera, so it is challenging to make blanketed statements,” she said.
“I think they are influenced to some degree by their rural neighbors so issues with lack of compliance issues that may carry over from what we know about rural English folks. Lots of rural people are not complying that go well beyond the Amish. They don’t always get on board right away with a changing public policy environment, especially one based on guidelines that shift as we learn more in terms of the science beyond COVID.”
Anderson said another dynamic is the region’s tourism and wood-based manufacturing industries.
“When it comes to policy, they’re very much self-regulating,” he said.
Uneven public policy
Anderson said initially uneven public policies only increased skepticism among the Amish.
“Right at the beginning of the pandemic there was fairly strong compliance,” he said. “Most Amish and Mennonites in Holmes and Wayne were willing to work with authorities. This was especially apparent, as they were willing to close businesses and church services. That’s phenomenal. Strangers telling you to stop having church cuts at the very heart of who they are. It was really amazing they were willing to do that.”
Anderson cited a New York Times article published in April about how the Amish rallied to make masks. But enthusiasm faded, he said, as the issue of mandatory masking and social distancing came to the forefront.
“The Amish have a very localized power structure,” Anderson explained. “You can find at any church, there’s some issue of tension of over what will or won’t be allowed. Opinions over how we should do things spread very quickly especially when something new comes around. When opinion leaders swing their weight in terms of a new issue. If an opinion is for or against a change, you see it.”
Why then, did the opinion swing so heavily against it?
“There’s no one answer that applies to every individual,” Anderson said. “But there are some major themes: They never had a chance to develop a sense of ownership over these practices. They want to make sure their way of doing it is ‘Our way of doing it.’”
Anderson added that the Amish have fads and fashions like any group.
“The Amish want very much to own what they’re doing,” he said. “There’s also a fear that if they accept an external way, it’s going to disrupt the power structure of the local pecking order.”
Change in dress
Anderson stressed that Amish dress is nuanced and that individual attention is not welcome or encouraged.
“A mask is a huge change in appearance,” he said. “There’s a follow-up fear that if they accept what an outside entity says, it also justifies that power to intervene in their lives, and ‘We don’t know what they’re gonna do.’”
There’s deep cultural resistance to masks, Anderson said.
“There’s an association between wearing them and fear,” he said. “As a people, they have a value orientation toward minimizing problems. They try to portray that all is at peace and rest. They’re willing to make masks — they’re not necessarily willing to wear them.”