Anabaptists

At a glance

Anabaptist means “rebaptizer”: Catholic and magisterial Protestant authorities treated adult baptism of people already baptized as infants as a second baptism. The groups themselves said they were administering the first true baptism, because they denied that infant baptism counted.

The family includes Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, and related peace churches. English Baptists arise a century later from Separatism; they share believer’s baptism and often a free-church instinct, not a common founding in Zurich in 1525.

They refused a state church in which a prince’s baptism made a whole city Christian. Catholic and Protestant magistrates killed many of them for that refusal.

Origin and history

In Zurich, Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and George Blaurock broke with Zwingli over the pace of reform and infant baptism. On 21 January 1525 they baptized one another. The Schleitheim Confession (1527), associated with Michael Sattler, named believer’s baptism, the ban, the Lord’s Supper, separation from the world, shepherds, the sword, and the oath.

Magistrates in Catholic and Protestant territories executed Anabaptists as rebels against the baptismal order of Christendom. The Münster Rebellion (1534–1535) was a violent, millenarian episode that peaceful Anabaptists later rejected; it still stained the name. Menno Simons (1496–1561), a Frisian priest who joined the movement in 1536, gathered the peaceful Dutch stream that came to be called Mennonite.

Jakob Ammann’s dispute with Swiss Mennonites over shunning (1693) produced the Amish. Hutterites, from Jakob Hutter in Moravia, practiced community of goods. Later centuries brought Russian Mennonite migrations, North American settlements, and a spectrum from Old Order horse-and-buggy communities to urban Mennonite churches that look evangelical.

• 1525 — First adult baptisms in Zurich
• 1527 — Schleitheim Confession; Sattler executed
• 1534–1535 — Münster Rebellion
• 1536–1561 — Menno Simons leads a peaceful Dutch stream
• 1693 — Amish division under Jakob Ammann
• 18th–21st c. — Migrations to North America; Old Order and modern Mennonite streams

Key figures

Grebel, Manz, Blaurock, and Sattler belong to the Swiss beginning. Menno Simons named the largest surviving family. Jakob Hutter and Jakob Ammann mark communal and Old Order branches. The Martyrs Mirror (1660) still shapes Mennonite memory of persecution.

• Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock — Zurich 1525
• Michael Sattler — Schleitheim
• Menno Simons (1496–1561) — Mennonites
• Jakob Hutter — Hutterites
• Jakob Ammann — Amish

Theology and beliefs

Classic Anabaptist teaching holds that baptism follows personal repentance, that the church is a visible body of the committed, and that disciples take Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as a rule of life. Many refuse military service, civic oaths, and lawsuits. The ban (shunning) disciplines members. The Lord’s Supper is typically a memorial meal of the gathered faithful, not a Catholic sacrifice.

Scripture is the rule; infant baptism and state churches are read as Constantinian fall. Soteriology is usually Arminian in later Mennonite life, with a strong accent on following Jesus rather than on forensic slogans. Old Order groups keep separation in dress, technology, and schooling as a hedge against the world.

• Believer’s baptism; rejection of infant baptism
• Church as gathered disciples, not a parish of a Christian state
• Often pacifism, no oaths, simple living
• Ban / shunning in stricter groups
• Memorial Lord’s Supper in most streams

• Schleitheim Confession

  Article 1, Baptism (24 February 1527)

  Article 6, The Sword

  “Baptism shall be given to all those who have learned repentance and amendment of life, and who believe truly that their sins are taken away by Christ, and to all those who walk in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and wish to be buried with Him in death, so that they may be resurrected with Him, and to all those who with this significance request it of us and demand it for themselves. This excludes all infant baptism, the highest and chief abomination of the pope.”

  Baptism

  Suggest a correction

  “The government magistracy is according to the flesh, but the Christians’ is according to the Spirit; their houses and dwelling remain in this world, but the Christians’ are in heaven; their citizenship is in this world, but the Christians’ citizenship is in heaven.”

  The sword

  Suggest a correction

Practices and worship

Worship ranges from unadorned hymn-singing in High German or Pennsylvania Dutch to ordinary evangelical services in English. Footwashing appears in some fellowships. Mutual aid, plain dress, and farming communities are famous in Old Order life; they are not universal. Hutterite colonies still hold property in common.

• Simple services; sermon and hymnody
• Adult baptism after a public commitment
• Mutual aid; in Hutterite colonies, community of goods
• Old Order limits on technology and schooling

Scripture they cite

Anabaptists cite the order of the Great Commission, make disciples and then baptize, and the sermons in Acts in which baptism follows repentance. The Schleitheim Confession treats Matthew 18 as the rule for a disciplined congregation, and the Sermon on the Mount as the rule for the sword and the oath: “Do not resist an evildoer,” and “Do not swear at all.”

They read infant baptism as a later custom of the empire, not as a command of the apostles.

• Matthew 28:19

  “Go,and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”

• Acts 2:38

  “Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins,”

• Matthew 5:33–48
• Matthew 18:15–18

Where Catholic teaching differs

By the third century the Church baptized infants and explained the practice by original sin. The Catholic Church still does. Anabaptist churches baptize only those who repent in person, and they understand the church as a body of people who have made that choice.

Catholic teaching permits just defense and an oath in court. Classic Anabaptist confessions refuse both the sword and the oath. Dignitatis Humanae agrees with them that the state should not impose baptism. It does not adopt their account of the sacrament.

In conversation

Ask which community: Old Order Amish, a Mennonite conference, a Hutterite colony, or a city Mennonite church. They share a history and do not live the same way. English Baptists are a later movement. Do not use the Münster rebellion of 1534 as a portrait of Menno Simons, who opposed it.

• Zurich, 21 January 1525, is the usual first baptism.
• Schleitheim (1527) is the early confession.
• Martyrs Mirror (1660) is the book of memory.

Common misconceptions

Sources

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