A Brief History of the Anabaptists

Amish Buggy

Amish romances have been camped out on top of fiction sales charts for many years now. But how much does the ordinary reader really know about the Amish, what they believe, and why they live as they do? There’s a whole lot more to this plain Christian sect than their simple rural lifestyle and close-knit families and communities. Today I’m going to give you a crash course on the history of the Anabaptists, a group of Christian believers that includes not only the Amish, but also the Mennonites, Dunkards, Landmark Baptists, and Hutterites, as well as Beachy Amish and some Brethren groups.

During the Reformation, the word Anabaptist was applied to Christians who rejected infant baptism in favor of baptizing only those old enough to profess faith in Jesus Christ for themselves. The term, which means re-baptizer, was not complimentary, just as the label Christian was used in a negative sense when it was first applied to Jesus’ disciples. At the time of the Reformation infant baptism was the norm not only in the Roman Catholic Church, but also in Protestant denominations that had split away. That meant that most people who wished to make a confession of faith and be baptized as adults had already been baptized as infants, so they had to be re-baptized.

Menno Simons

The Anabaptists first emerged in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1525. Along with Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, Moravians, and a number of other denominations, this movement arose from the desire of many believers to return to the beliefs and practices of the apostolic first-century church. Anabaptists also believed in the separation of church and state and voluntary church membership. They regarded the Bible as their only rule for faith and life and demanded that believers live a holy life.

At that time in Europe people weren’t given a choice as to which denomination to join. They were enrolled as members in the official church of their country at birth. If you were born in a Catholic country, you were a Catholic. If your country was Lutheran, then you were a Lutheran. Rejecting the prevailing church and becoming an Anabaptist led to serious persecution if not a death sentence. Many believers were formally expelled from their country or forced to flee, only to face persecution from the church holding sway in the country to which they fled.

Jakob Ammann

In spite of opposition, the Anabaptist movement continued to spread in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. In 1536, a Dutch priest from Friesland named Menno Simons left the Catholic church and soon became an Anabaptist leader. He formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss Anabaptist founders, including the doctrine of nonresistance. Then in 1693, the Anabaptist preacher Jakob Ammann and his followers broke with the Swiss Brethren, led by Hans Reist, because of doctrinal issues that included matters of church discipline such as shunning, which Ammann supported and Reist did not. Ammann’s followers became known as Amish, while those who sided with Reist, along with the Dutch Anabaptists, eventually became known as Mennonites due to the leadership of Menno Simons.

During the 18th century, the continuing pressure of persecution in Europe led to the migration of many Anabaptists to the English colonies in North America, among them the Amish and Mennonites. Many members of these groups originally settled in Pennsylvania, where a large number of their communities are still located today.

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J. M. Hochstetler is the daughter of Mennonite farmers, an author, editor, and publisher, and a lifelong student of history. Her novel Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill Amish Series coauthored with bestselling author Bob Hostetler, won ForeWord Magazine’s 2014 INDYFAB Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Book 2, The Return, releases in Spring 2017. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year.