America’s Amish EXPLOSION: Why the buggy-riding, non-tech population has DOUBLE in size since 2000 and could hit a million this century

America’s low-tech Amish sect has doubled in size since 2000 and will hit 1 million members this century as it spreads far beyond its Pennsylvania heartland, new research shows.

Steven Nolt, an expert on the Amish, told DailyMail.com that its 378,000-person American population doubles every 20 years, thanks to families with lots of children, who mostly hold on to the faith.

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

The expansion underscores the tenacity 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.

Yet the group continues to be dogged by revelations from refugees about an ultra-conservative Christian lifestyle, most recently including follower-turned-stripper Naomi Swartzentruber, 43.

“We can foresee 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 across the rural Mountain West and Southeast.

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

“It allows for a potential misunderstanding. But also the possibility of keeping some rural areas alive and populated in the face of the otherwise predicted depopulation of rural areas in the next 50 years.’

The Amish, a Christian sect that migrated to the United States from Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, typically refuse to drive cars, use computers or connect to a public electric utility.

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

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

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

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

Contraception 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 stay in the church.

“The 10-15 percent who are not involved rarely run away; they just never join – maybe drift away, or simply choose a different life path within the same geographical community as their family,’ he said.

The group’s estimated North American population was 384,290 last year, a 116 percent jump from 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 now Amish communities in 32 US states.

New outposts often spring up because members discover a deal on farmland – the group’s economic mainstay – and are willing to relocate.

They can grow quickly thanks to strong community ties.

Settlements have emerged since 2000 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, growing from 4,505 to about 21,230 people.

Although agriculture is a mainstay, many members work in construction, woodworking, 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 ways are not loved by everyone.

Their dress is characterized by straw hats and suspenders for men and bonnets and long dresses for women.

They largely avoid marrying outside their community because they know it would mean being kicked out of the church.

Politically, the Amish lean heavily Republican.

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

Swartzentruber recently lifted the lid on life in a community she fled when she was 17.

The 43-year-old was raised in one of the largest and most conservative subgroups of the Amish, known as the Swartzentruber.

She had to follow strict rules about how she dressed and who she was allowed to talk to.

At age five, she was expected to wake up at 5 to help on the farm in Michigan.

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

“We got up at dawn and worked all day until the sun went down,” she said.

‘Women would be expected to cook, clean and wash clothes – while men would do all the farming.’

However, her household life became too mundane for her, and she found herself wishing she could taste the world outside the settlement.

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

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

Soon enough, she began to rebel in small ways by 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 really rebellious – I decided I wanted to get a job, find an English boy and wear whatever I wanted.’