Celebrating 500 Years of Anabaptism

“The Martyrdom of Felix Manz” was the title of a blog post I made in January 2013. In that post, I noted that on January 21, 1525, “a group of people met in the house where Felix lived with his mother, and they formed a new faith fellowship” based on baptism after an open confession of faith in Jesus.

Today and in the weeks/months ahead, the 500^th anniversary of that January 21^st gathering is being widely celebrated by Anabaptists around the world. 

Anabaptist World Inc. is a “journalistic ministry serving the global Anabaptist movement.” Danielle Klotz, the Executive Director of that ministry, calls this month’s edition of that magazine a “special issue for a big milestone.” And indeed, a 500^th anniversary is a big milestone.*¹  

The combined membership of all Anabaptist churches comprises a very small percentage of Christians worldwide. According to the centerfold of the publication just mentioned, the “approximate number of baptized Anabaptist church members around the world is 2.13 million.”

Only 22 countries have more than 10,000 Anabaptist church members, and surprisingly, Ethiopia is the country with the most, nearly 515,000. The U.S. is next, with 456,000. It can be argued, though, that Anabaptists have had influence through the centuries that outstrip their relatively small membership.

Anabaptists are “the most radical reformers” in Protestant Christianity. The quoted words are the title of a major article in the above-mentioned magazine. The author, Anabaptist scholar Valerie G. Rempel, avers, “Appealing to scripture alone, Anabaptists broke with tradition to follow Jesus literally.”

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 with the ideas and activities of Martin Luther in Germany. In 1518, soon after becoming the priest of Grossmünster, the prestigious church in Zürich (Switzerland), Ulrich Zwingli began a similar reformation of the Roman Catholic Church there.

Both of those reformation movements, however, preserved the basic rituals of the Catholic Church. The sacrament of infant baptism was deemed especially important. But the Jesus-followers who met in sight of Grossmünster Church on 1/21/1525 could find no biblical support for such baptism.

Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel were young men who agreed with Zwingli’s reformation activities, but they thought his work was too slow. So, rejecting infant baptism (which they denied as being true baptism), the small group gathered in Manz’s home performed and accepted “believer’s baptism.”

Their “radical” reformation put them at odds with both the religious and civic leaders in Zürich —and they were soon considered heretics by both the church and the state. Manz was executed by drowning on January 5, 1527, and in the following years, thousands of Anabaptists were imprisoned or killed.^*2

From the beginning the Anabaptists emphasized discipleship. They believed that following Jesus meant living according to his teachings as found in the Gospels.*³ Jesus’ command, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:43) was taken literally. To kill in the name of Jesus was unthinkable.

There are many differences among Anabaptists today. Progressive Mennonite churches, such as the one I am a member of, are far different from the various conservative Mennonite groups and the Amish. But from the beginning until the present, pacifism has been a core belief of all types of Anabaptists.

As I wrote in a blog post in 2012 (see here), “I decided while still in high school that pacifism is the position I should espouse because of being a follower of Christ.” So, I was long a “closet Anabaptist” until joining Rainbow Mennonite Church in July 2012.

The Southern Baptist Convention (that I was closely related to for nearly 50 years) as well as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (that I was later a part of for over 10 years) agree with the Anabaptists on believer’s baptism, and until SBC’s swing toward fundamentalism, on the separation of church and state.

But neither of those Baptist groups endorses pacifism, and the former especially has traditionally emphasized the New Testament writings of the Apostle Paul (and the “Roman road”) even more than the four Gospels. They tended to proclaim the Gospel about Jesus more than the message of Jesus.

Currently, 500 years after its beginning, the Anabaptist understanding of the Christian faith is still badly needed—and maybe more so in the U.S. now than ever because of the growing emphasis on Christian nationalism in this country.  

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*¹ Dawn Araujo-Hawkins is one of the nine members of Anabaptist World’s Board of Directors. She is a member of Rainbow Mennonite Church, where June and I are also members.

*² The name “Anabaptist,” meaning “re-baptizer,” was initially used in derision of the first participants in the “radical reformation” which began in 1525. For more detailed information (and a couple of pictures) about the beginning of Anabaptism, I highly recommend “Five Centuries of the Radical Reformation” (see here), the Jan. 16 Substack post by Thinking Friend Brian Kaylor.

Also, John Longhurst, an Anabaptist journalist who since 2003 has been the faith page columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press (the oldest newspaper in Western Canada), is the author of the informative Jan. 18 column, “2025 marks the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism.”

*³ Although Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran, his best-known book, known in English translation as The Cost of Discipleship, was first published in German (1n 1937) under the title Nachfolge, which literally means “following.” Since its publication in English translation in 1948, it has been highly appraised by Anabaptists as well as by many in other Christian denominations.

 

 

Punitive Justice vs. Restorative Justice

As you may or may not know, I was a sociology major in college and Criminology was one of the memorable courses I took as such. But that was a long time ago, and since then there has been an important change in emphasis (in some circles) from punitive justice to restorative justice. 

My Time in Jail/Prison

The first time I was ever in a prison was when my Criminology class at William Jewell College made a field trip to the United States Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. At that time, it was the largest maximum-security prison in the United States.

Even before that unforgettable experience, though, I was concerned about prisoners in local jails. While still in college, I became pastor of a small mission church, and soon I began taking high school kids from church to the Henry County (Mo.) jail to conduct monthly “jail services.”

Several years after going to Japan, I visited people I knew, or knew of, a few times in detention centers (jails), and then multiple times I went to several different detention centers and penitentiaries to visit one man charged and then convicted of murder.

Since retirement, I have visited one young man held, at separate times, in the Clay County Jail & Detention Center here in Liberty, Mo.

In all these cases, the prisoners were incarcerated as a form of punishment. They were the target of what is often called punitive justice. That is, they were being punished for breaking the law and committing crimes against society.

From the time I took the Criminology course to the present I have always thought that the primary purpose of incarceration ought to be rehabilitation, not punishment. Accordingly, I have long been an advocate of indeterminate sentences.

It has only been in recent years, however, that I began hearing/learning about an alternative to the traditional practice of “penal justice.” This innovative approach is called “restorative justice.”

Meet Howard Zehr

More than any other living person, the new and growing emphasis on restorative justice is due to the teaching and writing of Howard Zehr.

Zehr (b. 1944) is currently the Distinguished Professor of Restorative Justice at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. He is also the co-director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice.

Zehr has often been called the father—or the grandfather—of the restorative justice (RJ) movement. His first book introducing RJ was Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice (1990).

Now, The Little Book of Restorative Justice, Zehr’s book first published in 2002 with the revised and updated edition issued in 2015, is more widely known. The current Amazon.com website for the latter indicates that over 150,000 copies have been sold.

Zehr has been a lifelong Mennonite, and his work in developing the concept/practice of restorative justice is in keeping with central tenets of that form of the Christian faith.

The Goal of Restorative Justice

An editorial review of Zehr’s 2015 book states:

Restorative Justice, with its emphasis on identifying the justice needs of everyone involved in a crime, is a worldwide movement of growing influence that is helping victims and communities heal, while holding criminals accountable for their actions.

All the people I have visited in jails and prisons were incarcerated primarily for punitive purposes. They were there to see that “justice was done,” but that was only punitive justice. There was nothing being done, it seems, that would help victims and communities heal.

RJ, though, is designed to promote three interlinking goals: offender responsibility, victim reparation, and community reconciliation.

In my research for this article, I watched “How to Love Your Enemy: A Restorative Justice Story” (2020), a YouTube video of what has been done in Longmont, Colorado, a city of nearly 100,000 about thirty miles NNW of Denver. Their Community Restorative Justice program dates back to 1994.

Their website now states: “Longmont Community Justice Partnership provides restorative justice services to the Longmont community and offers training in restorative practices throughout Colorado and the United States.”

This is the type of program that needs to be encouraged and supported across the country. 

Learning from the Mennonites in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine has been the top news story for ten days now. This article, though, is primarily about the nineteenth-century Ukrainian Mennonites and their descendants—and about what Christians can (and should) learn from them. 

Menno Simons (1496~1561)

The Background of the Mennonites

The small Christian denomination known as Mennonites (and there are several church organizations who use that name) grew out of the Anabaptist movement that began in Switzerland in 1525.

It was 495 years ago, on February 24, 1527, during an assembly of Anabaptists in the northern Swiss village of Schleitheim that a statement of the basic principles of the Anabaptists was adopted.

That statement, usually called the Schleitheim Confession, was the first Protestant confession of faith. The more widely-known Augsburg Confession of the Lutherans dates back to 1530.

Menno Simons was a Roman Catholic priest who left the Catholics and joined the Anabaptists in 1536. Simons, who was from the northmost part of the Netherlands, became such a strong leader that the name of the more than two million Mennonites in the world today comes from him.

For quite some time now, most Mennonites have not affirmed or followed all seven of the articles of the Schleitheim Confession.

The first and sixth articles, though, are still followed by most Mennonites today: the affirmation of believer’s baptism (i.e., the rejection of infant baptism) and the affirmation of pacifism or non-resistance (i.e., the rejection of “the sword.”

The Movement of the Mennonites to, and from, Ukraine

The early Anabaptists/Mennonites were regularly persecuted in western Europe, so even in the 17th century some migrated to what was to become the USA, and many others moved east to Prussia, largely to what is Poland today.

Catherine the Great became the Empress of Russia in 1762, and most of Ukraine fell under Russian rule during her reign. She soon invited people from Prussia (and elsewhere) to move to the Ukrainian area of Russia and to farm the unoccupied lands there.

Two of the incentives the Empress offered the Mennonites for settling in Ukraine were self-government and exemption from military service. Since they were pacifists, the latter was especially appealing to them. The largest colonies formed were Chortitza and Molotschna, founded in 1789 and 1803.

When a change in the Russian government threatened to end their military exemption, a Mennonite delegation traveled to St. Petersburg in 1871 to plead their case. When their appeals failed, a third of the Mennonite population—some 18,000 people—emigrated to the U.S. and Canada.

(Although it was first published in 1986, here is the link to “Mennonites Ingrained in Kansas,” an informative article in the Los Angeles Times.) *

Learning from the Mennonites

So, what can we learn from the Ukrainian Mennonites?

Obviously, right now, following their example and moving to other parts of the world where they will not have to fight is not a viable option for most Ukrainians—although, tragically, during these past ten days there have been more than 1,200,000 Ukrainians who have fled their homeland as refugees.

Still, the Ukrainian Mennonites of the past are a good example of the importance of some Christians being leaven in the world. The Anabaptists’ consistent advocacy for pacifism, often resulting in their considerable suffering, has not been widely followed but has often caused others to question violence/war.

There are few Mennonites in Ukraine today, just over 500 adherents in 11 congregations. But they are active advocates of peace and justice.**

And, who knows, perhaps they have had some influence on the Ukrainians who recently befriended a Russian soldier as seen in the following picture from the March 3 issue of Metro, the British newspaper. 

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* More details of the Mennonites in Ukraine and in North America are found in my 5/5/14 blog post titled “In Praise of Ukrainian Mennonites.” In that article, I relate how many of my current church friends, as well as my daughter-in-law, have close ancestors from Ukraine.

** Here is the link to an informative article about Mennonites in Ukraine, past and present, in the 2/22/22 online article in Anabaptist World.

The Hochstetler Massacre

September 19, 1757, was a terrible, terrible day for the Jacob Hochstetler family in Northkill, Pennsylvania. A new trilogy of historical novels brilliantly tells the story of the massacre that occurred then and the long-lasting repercussions of that tragedy.

The Facts

As the roadside marker indicates, the first Amish-Mennonite congregation in the U.S. was established by 1740 near Northkill Creek in Berks County, Pennsylvania, about 75 miles northwest of Philadelphia. (For some inexplicable reason the date seems to be off by ten days.)

The home of Jacob Hochstetler and his family in Northkill was attacked by a band of Delaware and Shawnee Indians on the night of Sept. 19, 1757. It was an unspeakable tragedy for the family. Jacob's wife, whose name is not known, and two of the children were killed; Jacob and two sons, Joseph and Christian, were taken as captives.

Several months later, Jacob was able to escape from the Indian settlement and to return home. Joseph was 15 when captured and while completely resistant to his captors at first, he gradually assimilated into the Indian community and was reluctant to return to his Amish home when he had the chance to do that several years later.

Christian was captured when he was 11. He had the hardest time going back home when freed and becoming a member of the Amish community again.  

Plaque at the original Hochstetler homestead.

The Trilogy

Ervin Stutzman is the author the “Return to Northkill” trilogy, consisting of Jacob’s Choice (2014), Joseph’s Dilemma (2015), and Christian’s Hope (2016). They are engaging historical novels by an author who comes from the Amish tradition.

On the first Sunday I attended Rainbow Mennonite Church in 2011, I met Clif Hostetler and he has been a good friend (and soon became a Thinking Friend) ever since. Jacob Hochstetler was Clif’s 5^th great-grandfather. (The original German name was shortened by many of Jacob’s descendants.)

(Clif loaned me Stutzman’s books, and I enjoyed reading all three of them between April 2016 and January of this year.)

Author Stutzman (b. 1953) was born into an Amish home in Iowa and was baptized in an Amish community in Kansas. He later joined a Mennonite church. Stutzman, who earned a Ph.D. at Temple University, has been the executive director of Mennonite Church USA since 2010—and he is also a descendant of Jacob Hochstetler.

The Lessons

There is room to mention briefly only two of several “lessons” that can be learned from the Hochstetler massacre and its repercussions.

(1) The choice referred to in the first book of the trilogy is primarily about whether Jacob and his sons would use firearms to shoot the attacking Indians. The sons thought they should. Jacob’s choice was to remain true to the Anabaptist teaching of nonviolence. 

In Stutzman’s novel, Jacob tells God in prayer before the attack, 

This farm belongs to you. My family belongs to you. And if people come to take them from me, I will not take up arms against them. I will be faithful to you as my Savior and Lord. You alone are my defense (p. 72). 

Clearly, that choice resulted in the tragic slaughter of Jacob’s wife and two of his children. Many would say it was a foolish choice. But if he had killed some of the Indians then, it is quite likely that a later raid would have resulted in him and all his children being killed.

(2) The Indian way of life is attractively narrated. Far from picturing the Native Americans as “savages,” Stutzman portrays Indian culture in an appealing way that fosters harmony rather than animosity. These books promote deeper understanding of, and harmony with, others (“the other”) as well as nonviolence.

I Pledge Allegiance . . . .

Well, yesterday was another Fourth of July celebration here in the U.S. And tomorrow there will also be lots of patriotic talk in many churches across the land.

By the end of the day on Sunday, many people in the country will have pledged allegiance to the U.S. flag over the three-day weekend.

But that will not be the case for the people at Rainbow Mennonite Church (RMC), at least on Sunday —or for the people in most Mennonite churches across the nation, I assume.

Like the Quakers and other smaller Anabaptists groups, such as the Church of the Brethren, Mennonites are not big on pledges of allegiance.

The sermon at RMC will not be a particularly patriotic one either. I should know, for I am the one who will be preaching.

Our pastor and several others from the congregation will be in Waxahachie, Texas, for the Mennonite USA Western District Conference Annual Assembly. So I will be preaching in place of Pastor Ruth.

The Anabaptists from their beginning in the sixteenth century have generally been opposed to taking oaths. And a pledge of allegiance has often been considered a type of oath.

It was/is different among Southern Baptists. I know because I was an SB church member for twenty years, and also a (part-time) SB pastor for eight years, before going to Japan in 1966.

During those years I was involved, in one way or another, in Vacation Bible School activities almost every summer.

It may have been different in other denominations, but in SB churches the daily VBS program started with a procession. All the children and teachers marched into the church auditorium following three older children bearing the American flag, the Christian flag, and the Bible.

And then the pledge of allegiance was said—to the American flag, to the Christian flag, and to the Bible, always in that order. Following that, the American flag was placed in front of the church—always on its right, the place of honor, as stipulated by the flag code.

Perhaps there was little problem with pledging the Christian flag—other than it taking second place to the American flag. Of course, there is a problem when the pledge to one flag conflicts with the pledge to the other.

Back in 2004, two Mennonite college professors penned a “Christian Pledge of Allegiance.” From the beginning of the Iraq War the year before, there were reports of children and youth in public schools being pressured to participate in saying the pledge of allegiance to the American flag.

June Alliman Yoder and Nelson Kraybill thought it was important for Christians of all ages to have an alternative statement that expressed allegiance to Jesus Christ. Here is what they came up with:

I pledge allegiance to Jesus Christ,

and to God’s kingdom for which he died—

one Spirit-led people the world over,

indivisible, with love and justice for all.

I had not seen this pledge until a couple of weeks ago, but I like it.

Personally, I haven’t said the pledge of allegiance to the American flag for years. As a Christian, I give my allegiance to Jesus, who said that no one can serve two masters (see Matthew 6:24).

But I am convinced that such a stance is not anti-patriotic. In fact, pledging allegiance to Jesus and following his teaching should do more to help the people of the country, and the world, than repeating the words of a pledge.

That’s how I see it. What about you?

In Praise of Ukrainian Mennonites

The beleaguered country of Ukraine continues to be much in the news, and no one knows what is going to happen there.

In March I wrote an article titled “What about Crimea?” Of course, Ukraine was mentioned several times in that article. But this time I am writing about events in Ukraine in the 18^th and 19^th centuries and not about the current turmoil there.

In the article about Crimea, I mentioned Catherine the Great, who was the Empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. (I mentioned her because she annexed Crimea to Russia in 1783.)

Soon after becoming Empress, Catherine issued a manifesto in 1763 inviting Europeans to move to the Ukrainian area of Russia and to farm the unoccupied agricultural lands there.

Many Europeans moved east to do just that, including many Mennonite Christians from the country we now know as Poland.

In 1787 two Mennonites from Prussia (Poland) visited Russia and were even able to meet with the Empress.

Catherine promised that if they moved to Ukraine, each family would be given 175 acres of free land and they all would be given special privileges, including religious freedom, exemption from military service, and the right to establish their own schools and teach in their own language (Low German).

That sounded good to them, so their migration to Ukraine began. In 1789, 228 families formed the first colony there, about 125 miles north of Crimea.

The second wave of migration was in 1803-04, two years after Alexander, Catherine’s grandson, had become Emperor of Russia. That colony, Molotschna, was less than 100 miles from Crimea. It became the largest Mennonite colony in Ukraine.

By 1806 there were 365 families living in Molotschna. In the years that followed, others families from Prussia joined them. During their journey there in 1820-21, one group met Emperor Alexander, who wished them well (wohl in German). Consequently, they decided to name their new village Alexanderwohl.

In 1870, the Russian government issued a proclamation stating its intention to end by 1880 all special privileges granted to the Mennonites. Alarmed at the possibility of losing those privileges, especially their military exemption, many of them decided to migrate to the United States.

Among them was the entire congregation of the Alexanderwohl church, who in 1874 migrated to Marion County, Kansas.

A couple of years ago, as June and I were driving south from Abilene to Newton, Kansas, we came upon the largest open country church building we had ever seen. It turned out to be the building of the Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church, which was constructed in 1886. (It has been remodeled and added on to at various times through the years.)

As you know, a lot of winter wheat is grown in Kansas. But you may not know that it was the Ukrainian Mennonites who first began to grow wheat there, having carried wheat seed with them when they migrated to Kansas in the 1870s.

Many of our church friends now are descendants of those Mennonites who came to Kansas from Ukraine.

Also, some of you know our oldest son Keith and his wife Brenda. Brenda’s mother was from a Mennonite family, and all eight of her great-grandparents lived in the Molotschna colony in Ukraine, although their families migrated to Minnesota rather than to Kansas.

Largely because of the strong desire to maintain their pacifistic beliefs, many Mennonites migrated to Ukraine and then later from Ukraine to the United States and elsewhere. For that reason, among others, it seems to me that the Ukrainian Mennonites are praiseworthy indeed.