Anabaptism: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

Baptism is for believers — and the sword is not for us.

The Reformation's radicals: baptism only on confessed faith, the church as a voluntary community separate from the state, and nonresistance even unto death. Persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike; ancestors of the Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites.

DeitiesOne God in three persons

Founded1525 CE · Zurich

FounderConrad Grebel and the Swiss Brethren

AfterlifeResurrection and judgment

TextsBible · Martyrs Mirror

The map

Anabaptism’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1517 CE Protestantism 1525 CE Anabaptism 1528 CE The Hutterites 1536 CE The Mennonites

Core Tenets

3 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

Baptize believers, not babies. The church is entered by choice — a confession no infant can make. Go deeper — context →

Church and state must part. The voluntary congregation owes Caesar taxes, not worship — a heresy in 1525, a constitution now. Go deeper — context →

Do not resist evil with the sword. Nonresistance taken literally: Anabaptists have died rather than kill in every century since. Go deeper — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

Believer's baptism. The act that named the movement — ana-baptism, baptized again — and, at the start, the act men drowned for. When once — on confession of faithWho the candidate and congregation Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

The Hutterites — Nobody owns anything. That is not a policy — it is the article of faith. The Mennonites — The largest Anabaptist body, and the one that stopped being plain. The Amish (Old Order) — The Ordnung is not a costume — it is a fence, and the district votes on where it runs. The Church of the Brethren — No force in religion, no creed but the New Testament, and the full love feast. The Brethren in Christ — Anabaptist bones, Pietist heart, Wesleyan pulse — and it argues with itself about which is load-bearing. The Bruderhof — Community of goods, started again in 1920 by people who had read about it. Christianity — 4 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 4 shared ideas, a different faith Hinduism — 3 shared ideas, a different faith Buddhism — 3 shared ideas, a different faith Branch Anabaptism — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what Anabaptism shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been