“Excess deaths” is a means to estimate the lethality of COVID-19 (directly and indirectly). Assessing “excess death” in closed religious communities provides information on how COVID-19 impacted these communities. We use obituary information published in an Amish/Mennonite newspaper to examine excess death among the Amish/Mennonites in 2020. Our results indicate the Amish/Mennonite excess death rates are similar to the national trends in the USA. The excess death rate for Amish/Mennonites spiked with a 125% increase in November 2020. The impact of COVID-19 on this closed religious community highlights the need to consider religion to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Across the globe, governments restricted social life to slow the spread of COVID-19. Several conservative Protestant sects resisted these policies in the United States. We do not yet know if theology shaped the resistance or if it was more a product of a polarized national political context. We argue that the country context likely shapes how conservative Protestants’ moral worldview affects their perceptions of the pandemic and government restrictions. Countries implementing more regulations, those with limited access to healthcare, food, and other essential services, and those with past histories of epidemics may all shape residents’ perceptions. Drawing on the case of American Amish and Mennonite missionaries stationed abroad, we content-analyzed accounts of the pandemic from an international Amish and Mennonite correspondence newspaper. We found that the missionaries’ perceptions of the pandemic and governmental restrictions differ from those of their U.S. counterparts, which suggests that context likely shapes how religious moral worldviews express themselves concerning public health interventions.

Research indicates demographic trends within the Amish community remain stable over time, even as Amish populations proliferate. However, most of the research on demographic trends fails to examine variation across affiliations. We use data from Ohio Amish Directory, Holmes County and Vicinity, 2010 to construct age-sex population pyramids for three different affiliations. Population pyramids render the growth, decline, and stability of populations visible. Andy Weaver (or Dan) and Old Order churches present expanding pyramids implying rapid growth, while New Order churches render a stationary pyramid indicating slower growth. Sociologists of religion consistently find that strict churches, cultivating separation from the outside world, tend to grow faster than those that foster accommodation with the outside world. We argue that the data presented in this article suggests a similar dynamic at work in Plain Anabaptist communities.