Anabaptists and Baptists stem from different movements within Christianity. Most Anabaptists would be considered Armenian (ability to lose ones salvation) vs Baptists who would primarily be considered Calvanists (eternal security). There seems to be a misconception among many that the Baptists were an evolution of Anabaptism, but I have yet to seem historical evidence for this.

There are probably others on here that can do a much better job of explaining the differences.

I am a former military member who left as a Contentious Objector, so it rubs me the wrong way when I hear of Anabaptists who part from the teaching on non-resistance. Even so, I would be wrong to declare them not Anabaptist.

I would lean toward the view that all Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites, Brethren, etc are Anabaptist. It is just a title that helps define a belief structure. Hopefully our focus is more on following Christ than assigning titles.

Peace was half of a duology in the Mennonite Church in which I was raised. We were to be committed to peace and /justice./ Love of enemies, commitment to community and the poor, and communion with the outcast are all part of living a just life… but living a just life is not all there is to justice. One must also advocate for justice in the world outside the community and come to see all of society as one’s community in the same way that the parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us that everyone is our neighbor.

The Good Samaritan was not merely helping the poor, but assisting a victim of a great injustice and helping to right that justice in a peaceful and personal manner.

In my personal life, I have taken this to mean social justice and have drifted into a more Unitarian strain of Anabaptism which puts peace and justice first and proselytization a distant third or fourth. So while I identify as a Mennonite in the same way a friend of mine in Israel identifies as a ‘Jew’ despite very different religious thoughts than orthodox Judaism, I do not know if it is entirely honest to call myself a Mennonite.

At the same time, my entire view of the world has been so heavily colored by Mennonite beliefs that it is difficult to call myself anything else. I’ve called myself a ‘Christian Deist’, ‘a Unitarian Christian’, and a ’secular Mennonite’ and none of them fully capture what my spirituality means to me.

Yet I don’t think I’ll ever stop seeing myself as an Anabaptist, because of that commitment to peace and justice instilled in me in the Mennonite Church and my belief that the ceremony of baptism itself is a rite that reflects a change already accepted in the heart rather than a literal act of change/

On the commitment to peacemaking and justice I would still challenge you on that. As a Pastor, like yourself, it often FEELS like there’s a small percentage of my church members who actually care about this stuff. The numbers seem to tell a different story though. The way Conrad Kanagy, in Road Signs for the Journey, puts is is this:

“The findings in this chapter reveal several things about Mennonites today. First, members continue to embrace the unique witness to peace and social justice. Their commitment is also, at least at some level, connected to their understanding of Jesus. Concern for peacemaking does not seem to have eroded commitments to evangelism, outreach, and church planting as church-wide priorities. In fact, nearly three-quarters (73%) agree that both should be a priority, with only 18% believing that peacemaking and reconciliation should be a priority but not evangelism.”

Other statistics in that chapter also bear out that the majority of Mennonites in MCUSA still hold up peace as a high priority, maybe not as high as I would like but still way higher than other denominations. Also, don’t underestimate that our entire denominational orientation is one toward active nonviolence, peace, justice, anti-racism and a whole host of other things that are the definition of what it means to be Anabaptist, in the past and currently.

I don’t know what Mennonites you’ve been hanging around with, and I am truly sorry for the distorted impression they’ve given you, but before you dismiss the entire Mennonite church as being un-anabaptist, you might want to start hanging out with some better Mennonites first.

Maybe the difference comes in how you and I value the impact of the organized church. It sounds like you see the organized denomination, as a concept, as a liability to the understanding and perpetuation of Anabaptism. I see it as an asset. Yes there are issues, but there isn’t a group of believers in the world who doesn’t have issues. It’s organizations like denominations who do things like create seminaries and colleges where Anabaptism can be passed on and continue to grow in the next generation. As big and slow and sometimes off target they can be, they have played a vital role throughout history.

The other trend that Anabaptists have always had is that when two groups of people can’t agree on a particular issue, they will split into two groups rather than work through it and figure out how to live together. As you seek to get back to a better and lager definition of what it means to be Anabaptist, make sure you include people who you don’t agree with and who you might even think aren’t “real” Anabaptists. They have something valuable too.

Again, I’m not trying to attack you. I really do think you’ve got something here and I still want to encourage this work. Keep it up. And, hey, someone else chime in here. I always hold out the possibility that I could be full of it, even when I say something as though I actually know it’s true. Hopefully ours won’t be the only two voices in this.

As far as the rest,you are correct, I am not talking about historic Anabaptism as a continuing stream, but current Anabaptism as it exists now, as a cross-denominational movement. Although I would argue that early Anabaptists were concerned about mutual aid and the persecution of the true church, which reflects my last two points. I understand that I might offend some Mennonites with my final paragraph, but the fact is that most Mennonites do not hold strictly to a peace stance or are really concerned about mutual aid or community. Mennonite PASTORS are, for the most part, concerned about such things, but the majority of congregants are not.

My main point is that we do not want to lock anabaptism into a denomination, but rather see it as something that exists in many places, at many times. And, I believe, that anabaptists are almost always a minority amidst the Christian streams, even though they can focus on the biblical Jesus more than other groups.

By the way, here’s my attempt at doing a similar thing. Hope it helps

http://mennoshirts.com/mennoshirts/Mennonite_Info.html

Overall it’s pretty good. In the intro, my personal bias is that it’s worth noting that 16th ce. Anabaptism arose naturally on it’s own all over europe. Menno Simons himself was dutch, don’ forget that influence. H.S. Bender is the historian who argued that all Anabaptists came from the Swiss in Zurich. Since then, C.A. Snyder has quite successfully shown that the movement had a wide variety of originating points that emerged equally. I’m not sure how important that really is for what you’re doing, but it’s one of my pet peeves.

On Point 1 - Anabaptists are not “Jesus only”, we’re Jesus centered. We read everything else in the Bible through the lens of Jesus. There are some groups who want to do away with the whole OT and Paul, we’re not them. That’s worth being clear on. I think you get to that point later in your description, but it doesn’t appear to start out that way.

Point 6 and 7 might be representative of current Anabaptists, but it probably wouldn’t be very accurate to describe the 16th Ce. Anabaptists. Yes the were radical for proposing that they take care of everyone in the church, but many were still pretty self protectionist and didn’t really reach out to a lot of people outside their own group. It does help that they would have been among the poor and outcast, but they would have also been very much against Jews and other outcast groups as well. Also, along with all of the other things you’ve mentioned, early Anabaptists would have had a strong focus on the active movement of the spirit and the real presence of God in the gathered body of believers. I’ve even heard them described as the Pentecostals of the 1500’s. Modern Anbapatists are more concerned with things like discipleship than they were.

In your last paragraph - Perhaps you’re using Anabaptist to describe something different that what I might be talking about. Your categorizing Mennonites compared to Anabaptists seems a bit off to me. From a historical perspective, the category Anabaptist means two things. First it is used to describe the groups of people who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is also currently used to describe the descendants of those groups along with others who have joined since then. Mennonites are one branch on the tree of Anabaptism, if you will. the Church of the Brethren is another branch that started in the early 1700’s, but would still be well within the larger category of Anabaptism. Currently, places like England have seen a spontaneous resurgence of Anabaptism by people who have stumbled upon that time in history and who have sought to begin again in the current day.

My biggest issue is when you say that “There are many Anabaptists within Mennonite groups, but they usually are a minority of them” I’m assuming you mean that there are a minority of “Anabaptists in within Mennonite groups”. While I might have my theological questions about specific people, The Mennonite church, and other Anabaptist denominations, are a key part of the stream of Anabaptism and to dismiss them so easily is not legitimate. To be fair, I may not understand what you’re trying to say clearly enough. Perhaps I don’t fully understand what you mean by “Anabaptist”. The way it’s stated now is problematic though.

Overall, I really want to encourage you in this endeavor. While I do believe that life and faith are more complicated than a bumper sticker, I also find myself struggling to concisely respond when someone asks, “so what is a Mennonite?” And I’m a pastor, it seems like I should know how to do this kind of thing. Anyways, keep up the good work, it’s desperately needed.