America’s Amish EXPLOSION: Why the tech-free, buggy-riding population has DOUBLED since 2000 and could reach 1 million this century

America’s low-tech Amish sect has doubled in size since 2000 and will reach 1 million members this century as it spreads far beyond its Pennsylvania heart, according to new investigation sample.

Steven Nolt, an expert on the Amish, told DailyMail.com that their US population of 378,000 was doubling every 20 years, thanks to families with many children more often sticking to the faith.

Amish communities have spread beyond their traditional areas of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, with nascent outposts as far away as Maine, Florida, New Mexico, Texas and Idaho, Nolt said.

The expansion underscores the rigidity of a group that eschews technology to focus on family time, even as modern America grapples with cell phones and social media that can harm children’s mental health.

Still, the group remains haunted by the fugitives’ revelations about an ultra-conservative Christian lifestyle, including most recently by adherent-turned-stripper Naomi Swartzentruber, 43.

“We can anticipate 1 million Amish well before the end of the century,” Nolt, professor of history and Anabaptist studies and director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, told DailyMail.com.

He foresaw further Amish expansion into the rural areas of the Mountain West and Southeast.

“There will be more Amish living in more places, with new neighbors,” he said.

‘That raises the possibility of possible misunderstandings. But also the possibility of keeping some rural areas alive and populated in the face of the rural depopulation expected in the next 50 years.’

The Amish, a Christian sect who immigrated to the United States from Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, typically refuse to drive cars, use computers or connect to a public electricity supply.

They speak a German dialect and travel in horse-drawn carriages through their mostly rural towns.

At a time when other ethnic and religious groups fear dilution through intermarriage, the Amish have increased their numbers by marrying within the group and teaching their children in Amish-only schools.

Their population growth rate has accelerated in the last 20 years because they have an average of five or six children per family, they have done a better job of retaining their young, and they live longer, healthier lives.

One-tenth of Amish families in the heart of Pennsylvania have 10 or more children, far above the 1.9 children of the average American family.

Birth control and abortion are frowned upon.

Unlike other religious groups, the Amish do not convert, so population growth comes from children.

According to Nolt, nearly 90 percent of Amish children remain within the church.

‘The 10-15 percent who don’t join rarely flee; “They just never come together, maybe they drift away or just choose a different life path within the same geographic community as their family,” he said.

The group’s estimated North American population was 384,290 last year, an increase of 116 percent since 2000.

That includes 6,100 in Canada.

Amish numbers more than doubled in 10 states and there was an 82 percent increase in the number of Amish communities across the United States.

There are currently Amish communities in 32 US states.

New outposts often emerge because members spot a deal for agricultural land (the group’s economic mainstay) and are willing to relocate.

They can grow quickly thanks to strong community ties.

Since 2000, settlements have emerged in six new states: Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.

At the same time, Minnesota’s Amish population has increased by 230 percent.

In New York it has more than quadrupled, going from 4,505 to around 21,230 people.

Although agriculture is a mainstay, many members work in construction, carpentry, blacksmithing or start small businesses.

A community that started in Brownington, Vermont (30 minutes from the Canadian border) in 2013 is said to be thriving now.

But the group’s traditional customs are not to everyone’s liking.

Their clothing is characterized by straw hats and suspenders for men and caps and long dresses for women.

They largely avoid marrying outside their community because they know that doing so would mean being expelled from the church.

Politically, the Amish lean strongly Republican.

Members have been seen at Donald Trump rallies in Pennsylvania, some even decorating their strollers with campaign signs.

Swartzentruber recently revealed life within a community he fled when he was 17 years old.

The 43-year-old grew up in one of the largest and most conservative subgroups of the Amish, known as the Swartzentrubers.

She had to follow strict rules about how to dress and who she could talk to.

At the age of five, he was expected to wake up at five in the morning to help on the Michigan farm.

By the time she was 14, school was no longer considered a priority and she instead left her education behind to cook, clean, and do housework full-time.

“We would get up at dawn and work all day until the sun went down,” he said.

“Women were expected to cook, clean and do laundry, while men would do all the farming.”

However, her life as a housewife became too mundane for her and she found herself wishing she could try the world outside the settlement.

“There wasn’t much time to play and we had to dress modestly,” he said.

‘When I asked my parents why we had to dress up and work, they said it was ‘our way’.

Soon enough, she began rebelling in small ways, wearing lingerie under her dresses, listening to the radio through her neighbor’s window, and even secretly dating non-Amish boys, known as “English” men.

Naomi explained: “I started to feel very rebellious – I decided I wanted to get a job, find an English guy and dress however I wanted.”