U.S. News

Electric bikes have become ubiquitous in the world’s second-largest Amish settlement, routinely flying past the horse-dawn buggies that have trundled across the hilly countryside here for two centuries. Not everyone is rolling with it.

The angst voiced by some Amish isn’t about the motors that propel e-bikes to nearly 30 miles an hour. It’s about the mobility the bikes enable, and the implications of that independence.

“We could easily end up with not having many Amish people around anymore,” said Mart Miller, a 67-year-old market worker who is the bishop of a church district, akin to a parish, that rejects e-bikes.

Many Amish e-bike enthusiasts, by contrast, see them as tools to make life easier without harming the insular Christian society known for its plain dress, prohibition of cars and wariness of new technology.

The bikes have transformed the community of more than 40,000 people in and around Holmes County. Men, women and teenagers are on the go from before dawn to after dark, often pulling children in trailers. Charging stations abound at businesses alongside hitching posts.