In relation to mainstream society, the Amish have struggled to remain separate. This separation is apparent in the majority of Amish daily life. Aspects in Amish life and history including their organizational patterns, rejection of modernity, educational systems, and their struggle for religious freedom are some the reasons this religious minority has been pushed outside the mainstream.
             The Amish organizational pattern is one aspect that separates them from mainstream society. They live on their own private land interspersed with non-Amish neighbors. They have an informal set of levels in which they live – settlement, district, and affiliation. A settlement is a general geographical area where families live in proximity and can vary greatly in size. A typical church district will consist of 25 to 35 families. This is the basic social unit within a settlement. Some settlements consist of one church district, whereas others may contain up to 100 congregations. Church districts which are "in fellowship" with each other will make up an affiliation. Congregations in the same affiliation with each other will share the same church practices and ministers can be exchanged between them. These affiliations can stretch across several states, however, in some cases, several affiliations will exist side by side in the same geographical settlement. Of the over 900 Amish congregations in North America, everyday practices vary greatly between them. The mainstream world, however, commonly does not recognize these differences because they are hidden behind the distinctive markers of the Amish lifestyle. Things such as the Pennsylvania German dialect, the refusal to use electricity from public utility lines, beards for men and plain dress have been common identifiers of the Amish religion and have remained so without a nationalized structure to link the 900 plus congregations (Kraybill, The Amish Encounter with Modernity).
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