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Summary
- There are no Black Amish communities. Black Amish people are very rare, and most who have grown up Amish came into Amish families through adoption.
- About 421,200 Amish lived in North America in June 2026, by the Young Center’s estimate, and their growth is “almost entirely from within the Amish community.”
- The Amish descend from Swiss and Alsatian Anabaptists who followed Jakob Ammann from 1693 and came to North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- The Amish do not seek converts, but “several dozen outside people have joined the Amish” by learning Pennsylvania German, accepting the Ordnung and being baptized.
- Erik Wesner of Amish America, citing the study An Amish Paradox (2010), tells of an Amish couple who “adopted four biracial children” and an unmarried Amish woman who adopted an African American child.
- About 45 percent of the 2.03 million baptized believers in the worldwide Anabaptist family live in Africa, and Ethiopia’s Meserete Kristos Church is the largest national body.
- The African American Mennonite Association, formed in 1982 from the 1971 Black Caucus, is part of Mennonite Church USA.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture: no passage is quoted; the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is referred to. King James Version. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5-7&version=KJV
- Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, Elizabethtown College. “Amish Population Profile, 2026.” https://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/statistics/amish-population-profile-2026/
- Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. “Frequently Asked Questions” (Amish Studies). https://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/frequently-asked-questions/
- Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. “Amish Origins.” https://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/history/amish-origins/
- Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. “Beliefs,” “Religious Rituals” and “Regulations.” https://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/religion/beliefs/ ; https://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/religion/religious-rituals/ ; https://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/cultural-practices/regulations/
- Erik Wesner. “Black Amish Communities: Do They Actually Exist? (Debunking Claims).” Amish America, July 2023. https://amishamerica.com/?p=83433
- Charles E. Hurst and David L. McConnell. An Amish Paradox: Diversity and Change in the World’s Largest Amish Community. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010 (pages 101 and 268, as cited by Amish America). https://muse.jhu.edu/book/334
- Ben Goossen. “Immigrants from former Soviet Union challenge German secularism.” Mennonite World Review, 17 March 2014 (Anabaptist World). https://anabaptistworld.org/?p=1018
- Mennonite World Conference. “Membership, map and statistics.” https://mwc-cmm.org/en/membership-map-and-statistics
- “Editorial.” Anabaptist Witness (issue on the Meserete Kristos Church, Ethiopia). https://www.anabaptistwitness.org/journal_entry/editorial-6/
- Mennonite Church USA. “Black History in the Mennonite Church” (African American Mennonite history timeline). https://www.mennoniteusa.org/resource-portal/resource/african-american-mennonite-history-timeline/
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