Mennonites

History

The Mennonite story began in 1525, in Zurich, Switzerland, when a group of young radicals secretly baptized each other. In 16th-century Europe, baptizing an adult was a defiant act of civil disobedience—a capital crime that could lead to execution. The young reformers were soon nicknamed “Anabaptists,” meaning “rebaptizers,” because they had already been baptized as infants in the Catholic Church. They refused to baptize their babies, raised questions about the mass, scorned the use of images, and criticized the morality of church officials. The Anabaptist refusal to baptize infants, swear oaths of allegiance, or follow the dictates of established tradition incensed political and religious authorities.

Leaders of the new movement were promptly arrested, imprisoned, and banned from several cities and regions. Within 4 months of the first rebaptism, the first Anabaptist was killed for sedition, and the “heretics” began to flee for their lives. Meetings were often held secretly and in secluded places to avoid detection. Thousands of Anabaptists were imprisoned, tortured, branded, burned, and drowned. Nevertheless, Anabaptism mushroomed in many areas of Europe. Stories of the harsh persecution can be found in the Martyrs Mirror, a book of some 1,100 pages, which chronicles the bloody carnage.

Anabaptism surfaced in the Netherlands about 1530. Menno Simons, a Dutch Catholic priest, had growing sympathies for Anabaptist convictions. He joined the movement in 1536 and soon became a leader and writer with a sizable following. As early as 1545, some followers of Menno were called “Mennists,” and, by 1550, they were the dominant group of Anabaptists in North Germany and Holland. Anabaptists in other areas soon carried the Mennonite name as they migrated to Prussia, Russia, and, eventually, North America.

Swiss and South German Mennonites settled in Pennsylvania throughout the 18th century and soon became known as outstanding farmers. They gradually moved westward and southward with the frontier, settling in Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and other states, as well as in Ontario, Canada. Mennonites with Dutch-Russian roots came in later waves of immigration in the 1870s and settled in the Great Plains, the far West, and Canada.

Old Order, Transitional, and Assimilated Mennonites

In terms of assimilation into U.S. society, there are three broad types of Mennonites: Old Order (10%), transitional (20%), and assimilated (70%). On the traditional end, the Old Order groups preserve and perpetuate many older Mennonite customs. At the other end of the spectrum are assimilated Mennonites, who have absorbed mainstream values in the United States related to dress, technology, and lifestyle. In the [Page 889]middle are the conservative groups that are in transition. They drive cars but still wear plain clothing and embrace conservative standards and church practices.

...