The Mennonites

Denomination·Founded 1536 CE·Around 1.44 million baptized members in the 110 national churches that belong to Mennonite World Conference, in about 10,400 congregations across 61 countries, as of the November 2025 census. MWC puts the wider Anabaptist family, including bodies outside its membership, at 2.03 million baptized in 87 countries. Roughly 84 percent of MWC members are African, Asian or Latin American. Baptized members only — children are not counted.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → Anabaptism → The Mennonites

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Overview Belief 3How to Live 1Practice 1Stories & Scripture 1Community 1 You × The Mennonites Discussion
Core tenet of The Mennonites

Baptism is a vow, so it cannot be given to an infant.

The Anabaptist objection was never mainly about water. It was that a church of everyone born in the parish is not a church, and that a promise made on your behalf before you can speak is not a promise. Baptising adults was a capital crime in the Holy Roman Empire from 1529.

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Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The first rebaptisms took place in Zurich on 21 January 1525, when Conrad Grebel poured water over Georg Blaurock from a dipper in a private house. Within four years the Diet of Speyer had made rebaptism punishable by death across the Empire, reviving a sixth-century law against the Donatists, and both Catholic and Protestant authorities used it. The Anabaptist argument was ecclesiological before it was sacramental: if the church is everyone baptised as a baby in a given territory, the church and the state are the same institution and the church cannot say no to the prince. Mennonites baptise by pouring rather than immersion, following Menno; the Mennonite Brethren, formed in Russia in 1860, immerse, which was one of the causes of that split.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The golden calf. Judaism · story Read it in full →
A vow made in an Atlantic storm. The Christadelphians · story Read it in full →
Savitri follows Death, and argues. Hinduism · story Read it in full →
No one made this, and no one is running it. Buddhism Go deeper →
The Tirthankaras cannot help you. Jainism Go deeper →
There is a judgment, and something is at stake in it. Christianity Go deeper →

The conversation

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Where next

Christians do not take up the sword — including for a just cause. →the next passage in The Mennonites The Mennonites's Belief roomback up one layer Propose a change to this claimone button — it routes to the review pool Branch with this claim changeddisagreement here never has to become an edit war — it becomes a founding

Numbers count Panfaith activity only — never real-world adherence.

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