Amish Keep in Touch Through Newspaper

Drew Leifheit, Voice of America
May 17, 2001

SUGARCREEK, OHIO -- The Amish are one of the most recognizable religious groups in the United States. They live simply, the way their ancestors did more than 200 years ago, shunning electricity, cars, telephones and even brightly-colored clothing.

Originally from Switzerland, they fled Europe in the 1700s and 1800s for the New World to escape religious persecution. Today, the Amish and the less strict Mennonite sect live mostly in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. But their communities are also scattered across the globe. Even without modern communication technology, all of those folks have kept in touch for more than a century, thanks to a rural Ohio newspaper.

The small town of Sugarcreek, Ohio is home to a significant Amish population. It's not unusual to see a bearded man in a tall hat and overalls driving his horse-drawn buggy down Main Street, past the Swiss chalet styled shops and restaurants.

Sugarcreek is also the home of the Budget, a newspaper that's been published for 111 years. While the paper's local edition covers news pretty much like any small-town daily, the Budget's national edition with its block letter masthead and abundant text is quite different. Take a close look and you see it's basically a collection of published letters from Amish and Mennonites living all over the globe.

Keith Rathbun is the Budget's assistant publisher. He said each weekly issue of the paper contains about 450 dispatches from the paper's nearly 600 correspondents. "It's an amazing workforce," Mr. Rathbun said. "We have a bigger staff than the New York Times."

Most of the letters, though, are messages to the correspondents' friends in nearby communities or as far away as Ukraine, Kenya, or Nicaragua. Mr. Rathbun explained that the newspaper supplies each writer or 'scribe' with pen and paper, postage and envelopes, and a free subscription to the paper in exchange for the dispatches. "It's just like what's going on in their community, who came to visit, weddings and what went on at church that week," Mr. Rathbun said.

Mr. Rathbun said most dispatches start with a description of the latest weather conditions. After the weather recap, most of the dispatches in a recent issue of the Budget go on to recount everyday happenings, like the health of an ailing relative or visits from family and friends:

"Shelbyville, Missouri, 4104 Highway T; The evening of March 20 was an eventful evening. As I came into the house I notice the gray hairs of an obviously non-Mennonite woman protruding above the back of my chair. The neighbor lady had returned from her trip to Arizona four days before she was expected, and she found herself locked out of her house. She made arrangements with our phone for someone to bring her the keys. Her ride (and keys) arrived and my wife escorted her to the door."

While the Budget contains a multitude of sometimes colorful, sometimes mundane anecdotes, American media culture hasn't made its way onto the paper's front page. There is a conspicuous absence of anything in the paper about American spy planes in China or presidential vote recounts in Florida. And Keith Rathbun said that, for the most part, the Amish don't deal with controversy in the newspaper but handle things privately or in church.

But one controversial topic which scribes have addressed in the pages of the Budget is the infringement of technology on the low-tech Amish lifestyle:

"Aylmer, Ontario; June 11, 1986- At the same meeting at Elmos, another topic was presented for us to think about, and that is the long-range effects of the computer age on our churches, and what we ought to be doing to steer clear of the dangers. The question was raised as to how an earlier generation was able to sense the profound effect the automobile would have on society and on the churches, so that it was decided not to allow the ownership of cars. Are we in the same point today in the computer revolution, having already accepted their forerunner, the calculators?"

While some scribes do use fax machines or e-mail to forward their dispatches to the paper, Keith Rathbun doesn't think the Internet will change the Amish lifestyle all that much. "It won't be a large part of the Amish community," Mr. Rathbun said. "People say 'well, it will in time.' It's the 21st century and the Amish are still living back in the 1900's and 1800's in a lot of their ways. They're plain people and they're not quick to accept change."

And, the publisher said, why should they? Keith Rathbun said that for the Amish and Mennonite community the Budget serves as a form of communication just like the Internet only much slower.

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