The Old Beachy Amish or Old Beachy Amish Mennonites, also called Midwest Beachy Amish Mennonites, are a Plain, car-driving Beachy Amish group, that preserves the old ways of the Beachy Amish including the German language. They live in Kentucky and Illinois. They are part of the Amish Mennonite movement in a broader sense, but they are not an organized denomination.
History
In 1927 the Beachy church emerged from a division in the RiverOld Order Amish congregation in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Bishop Moses M. Beachy led the new congregation during that time and his name became associated with this faction. The Beachys favored a milder discipline for members whose only offense was transferring membership to other Anabaptist churches, specifically the conservative Amish Mennonite congregation that broke away from Moses Beachy's congregation in 1895. The majority of the Beachy Amish transformed into Evangelical churches between 1946 and 1977. The Old Beachy Amish who wanted to preserve the old ways of Beachy Amish resisted this change and subsequently formed new congregations in the late 1960s by withdrawal from existing Beachy Amish congregation. From the around 1970 until the early 1990s the center of the Old Beachy Amish was in Paris, Tennessee. Because of internal tensions concerning the use of English, there was a massive exodus from Paris, mostly in the years 1991 and 1992. By 2000, the Old Beachys had completely left the Paris region.
As descendants from the Old Order Amish, the Old Beachy Amish are an Anabaptist Christian group in the tradition of the Radical Reformation of the early 16th century. In contrast to other Beachy Amish they have retained the Pennsylvania German language, which they also use for church service and which is an important factor of their distinctive identity. They have dress standards as strict as or stricter than many Old Order Amish. They use cars, electricity, and telephone but require the cars to be black and do not allow microwaves and answering machines. The use of tape and CD players and computers is tightly restricted. According to Donald Kraybill the Old Beachy Amish are similar in lifestyle to the Old Order Amish.
