Celebrating 500 Years of the Anabaptist Movement – Part 3

As noted in part 1 and part 2 of this essay, 2025 marks the 500 year celebration of Anabaptism. It was in January, 1525, that George Blaurock, a former Catholic priest, was baptized by Conrad Grebel in a “believer’s baptism” (ana-baptist—to be baptized again) in the home of Felix Manz in Zurich, Switzerland. Anabaptists were soon persecuted. Many were martyred.

They proposed a challenge not just to the church (primarily Roman Catholic but also Lutheran and Reformed) but also to the state.

Today’s direct descendants of the Anabaptists are the Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites, but many groups have been strongly influenced by Anabaptist doctrine. These groups today include Brethren, Baptists, Quakers, and nearly all independent churches. Any group emphasizing believers’ baptism has been influenced by Anabaptism.

Anabaptists developed and lived out a sectarian doctrine of the church. Consider the characteristics of Catholic and Sectarian doctrines of the Church:

Despite nearly 90 years in Methodism, I still testify to the influence of the Anabaptists through my mother’s Mennonite heritage and Amish neighbors. I wrote the following for my Christmas letter several weeks ago:

During most of the year I tend to gravitate toward Romans and Galatians when I quote Scripture aloud during my morning walk/jog. These represent the essence of evangelical doctrine and I seek to let my world know about that, my world at that time being mostly squirrels and crows. This usually scares the dogs away but two months ago one was evidently incensed by my religious convictions because she ran out and slashed me to the tune of 12 stitches. So I bear my scars for the cause of Christ.

But during Advent I shift to passages like Isaiah 40 and Luke 1. In Luke I especially like Mary’s song of praise, the Magnificat (44-65), particularly the parts about sending the rich away empty, putting down the mighty from their thrones, scattering the proud in the imagination of their hearts, and filling the hungry with good things. Is this our understanding of religion? Criticism of the rich, the mighty, the proud, and attention to the “hungry.” So I am reminded to support the Rescue Mission, not throw anything away out of my refrigerator, and pick the tomatoes out of my garden, and pay attention to persons I often neglect. It also reinforces my prejudices against culture’s obsession with power and fashion and ostentatious living, things reflected in such journals such as Town and Country, Fortune, Harper’s Bazaar, and People. I subscribe to magazines like those so I know what to rail against. (And also because they are cheap.)

My Christian (Methodist) faith, influenced by the Anabaptists, leads to convictions that my guiding principles in life are not to be based on culture, such as fashions, politics, sports, social media, entertainment, or any kind of ostentatious living, but on relationships, on family, on community, and my church community. After I have spent time among the Amish I have been known to comment that Amish girls are more beautiful than other girls. Why? Because theirs is a natural beauty, not altered by tattoos or nose rings or purple hair or false eyelashes or Botox or black stuff around the eyes or by hairdressers or expensive clothes or by jewelry. I have subscribed to Time magazine for nearly 65 years and admit to being increasingly depressed by what I would interpret as an increasing de-emphasis on all things religious or even moral, and an increasing obsession with secular culture. Time is known for its issues on the 100 most influential people in the world, or the 40 most influential persons under 30 or 100 of the world’s next rising stars. They feature other lists emphasizing not moral and religious living or contributions of good in the world, but on rank and standing in cultural realms of entertainment, art, fashion or politics.

Time published a tribute to Jimmy Carter (January 27 issue) and his influence for good in the world, but never mentioned his Christian faith, or his relationship to the church (except to say he quit the Southern Baptist Convention over its view of Scripture). The same disregard for religion can also be said for magazines like Forbes, which ranks the wealthiest people. I read these articles and ask, “Does this knowledge of who the wealthiest people are in any way make the world a better place to live?”

And, if true that Anabaptist faith is in tension with culture, what about politics? Governments are necessary to maintain order but governments, at least in the Anabaptist view, are part of the world order, and therefore suspect. Anabaptists, whether evangelical or progressive in theology, would be united in their distaste for ideologies such as Christian Nationalism or MAGA. Our goal in life is to strengthen the people of God, not nations.

I would argue that the influence of Anabaptism goes far beyond Mennonites and Amish. Any church that emphasizes believer’s baptism has been influenced by Anabaptism. Any group that emphasizes the purity of the church over its unity has been influenced by Anabaptism. If there really are 20,000 different Christian sects or denominations (I once read 40,000) in the world, it reflects a doctrine of the church influenced by Anabaptism. Dispensational fundamentalism (for good or for not-so-good), with its view of an apostate church, has been influenced by Anabaptism.

A comment about the decline of Christianity in Europe and North America: It has been well documented that the West is presently in a period of religious—or at least church attendance—decline. Attendance is down and more people identify as non-religious or “nones.”

But, further interpretation is needed. It can be argued that church attendance is down in proportion to the degree in which a church or a denomination reflects the secular culture in which it lives. Thus, church attendance is down particularly among the mainline Protestant churches, such as the United Methodists, the Disciples of Christ, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Lutheran Church ELCA, the Episcopal Church, and the American Baptists (the so-called Seven Sisters of Mainline Protestantism). The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) recorded nearly 2 million members in the mid-1960s. By 2021 it could count only 281,348 members and 97,402 in Sunday attendance. The United Church of Christ, perhaps the most liberal of the mainline churches, counted 2,246,610 members and 8,184 churches in 1960. By 2022 those numbers had declined to 713,296 members (a 67% drop) and 4,603 churches. Mainline denomination membership, which once could boast of representing more than 50% of America’s churchgoing Protestants, now, at least according to one source, represents only 17% of American Protestantism.

Meanwhile, churches influenced by Anabaptism thrive, or at least appear to be holding their own. I use my own city, Kokomo, IN, (pop. 45,000) as an example. The Kokomo area once boasted 13 United Methodist congregations. It now totals five, none of which averages over 150 in weekly worship.

At the same time other churches, independent churches, evangelical churches, or—to put it another way—churches that in one way or another have been influenced by Anabaptism, appear to be doing well. I travel a section of road (Indiana SR 26) south and west of Kokomo, numerous times. In one section of four miles, I can pass nine churches in which the average Sunday morning attendance is about 5,000 persons (unofficial stats, mostly word of mouth and hearsay). None of the churches are mainline; they are independent Christian, non-denominational, Wesleyan, Assemblies, Free Methodist, Church of God, former Baptist. None of the nine are fully committed to infant baptism (even those with a Methodist background like Wesleyans, have given up on infant baptism). Most emphasize a Christian lifestyle and stated tensions with “worldliness.”

If this is so in mid-America, how much is it so in areas where Christianity is flourishing? Pentecostals now represent about a third of the world’s Protestants. There are now more Mennonites in Africa than in America. There are now more Methodists in Africa than in America.

This is not to say that the Anabaptist influence on Christianity is without problems (material for another article) but it is to say that all who name the name of Christ can be thankful and celebrate the 500^th anniversary this year of Anabaptism.