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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Core tenet of The Mennonites

Christians do not take up the sword — including for a just cause.

Schleitheim in 1527 put the sword outside the perfection of Christ, and Mennonites have paid for that in every century: migration to Prussia, then Russia, then the Americas, ahead of each state that decided pacifism was disloyalty. It is not withdrawal from suffering — Mennonite Central Committee has run relief in war zones since 1920.

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

Nonresistance is the doctrine that has cost Mennonites the most geography. They left the Low Countries for Prussia, Prussia for Russia at Catherine II's invitation in 1789 with an exemption from military service written into the charter, Russia for Kansas and Manitoba when the exemption was withdrawn in 1874, and Canada for Mexico, Paraguay and Bolivia in the 1920s when school laws tightened. In the United States in the First World War Mennonite conscientious objectors were imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth and Alcatraz, and two Hutterite brothers died in military custody in 1918. Out of the Second World War came Civilian Public Service and, from it, the modern Mennonite relief and mediation network. The doctrine is also internally contested: a substantial minority of North American Mennonites now serve in the armed forces, and the conferences argue about it.

From the sources — the passages this rests on; concise renderings, cited

The sword is ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ. It punishes and puts to death the wicked, and guards and protects the good. In the perfection of Christ, however, only the ban is used for a warning and for the excommunication of the one who has sinned.

The Schleitheim Confession (24 February 1527), Article VI, Of the Sword — trans. John C. Wenger, 1945

Agreed at Schleitheim in Schaffhausen and generally attributed to Michael Sattler, who was burned at Rottenburg three months later, on 20 May 1527.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
Turn the other cheek — and the argument about war. Christianity · precept Go deeper →
Dirk Willems turns back across the ice. The Amish (Old Order) · story Read it in full →
Ahimsa — do no harm. Hinduism · precept Go deeper →
Compassion extends to all sentient beings. Buddhism Go deeper →
Non-violence is the highest duty. Jainism Go deeper →
The Shoah broke something, and no answer has held. Judaism Go deeper →

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