Anabaptists
The Anabaptists were so named because of their practice of insisting on believers’ baptism, even for those who had been baptized before as infants. Anabaptism means “to be baptized again.”Scholars disagree about the precise origin of the Anabaptist movements, but they mainly appeared in the sixteenth century in northern Europe, especially Germany and the Netherlands, as well as in what is now the Czech Republic.
The Mennonites, named for their founder Menno Simons (a former Roman Catholic priest who joined the Anabaptist movement after the death of his pacifist Anabaptist brother), exist in multiple denominations in North America. Among the major denominations of the Radical Reformation, the Mennonites are largely regarded as the most conservative and most closely following the theology of the original Anabaptists. Among other distinctives, Mennonites tend to be pacifists.
One of the branches of the Mennonites is the Amish, who exist in several small denominations in the United States. Named for their founder Jacob Amman, the Amish were originally part of a movement to reform the Mennonite church. The Amish wanted the Mennonites to include the practice of shunning, social avoidance of those who had been baptized into the church but subsequently left. They also wanted to hold communion more often. Eventually, the Amish tended to withdraw themselves almost entirely from the world at large, based on the biblical call to be separate from “the world.”
The Amish insist on simple living as part of the spiritual life, which usually includes a rejection of most modern technology. Their commitment to this principle is such that there are often dissensions over apparently trivial issues, such as how many buttons on one’s shirt constitute vanity. The Amish now exist almost entirely in the United States and Canada, and while most speak English, they also speak a dialect of Old German that is often called Pennsylvania Dutch.
A group similar to the Amish who do not practice the same sort of deliberate separatism are the Hutterites. Hutterites are also committed to simple living but, unlike the Amish, they will often wear vibrant colors. Although they are unlikely to own televisions or most entertainment devices, they do not reject most modern technology as the Amish do. Like the Amish, the Hutterites speak their own dialect of German among themselves and live in communal colonies.
The Brethren are represented by numerous denominations both in the United States and abroad. Their theology is conservatively Anabaptist, and they have a number of distinctive practices. When they baptize, they do so by triple immersion (which is what the Orthodox do, as well). They also will accompany the reception of communion by a love feast, a common meal, a practice in the ancient Church that was originally connected with the Eucharist. They practice a ritual footwashing before receiving communion. In most respects, the Brethren denominations are quite similar to mainstream conservative Protestants.
The Moravians as a distinct community actually predate even the Magisterial Reformation, having their genesis in the teachings of Jan Hus, a fourteenth-century Roman Catholic priest and reformer in Bohemia and Moravia who wanted the church to conduct services in the local language (Czech), give the laity communion in both kinds (both the Body and Blood—practice at the time was to give the laity the Body only), and eliminate the teachings on purgatory and indulgences. Hus himself was eventually burned at the stake for heresy, but within about fifty years after his death, his followers organized themselves into a group called the Unitas Fratrum (“United Brethren,” also “Bohemian Brethren”), who operated at first within the Roman Catholic Church. After the onset of the Reformation in Germany, the Hussites began to interact with Reformation theology and came to be similar to most believers in the Anabaptist movement. The Moravians, quite notably for the Orthodox, did not use the Filioque in the Nicene Creed. They both influenced and were influenced by the groups that became the Brethren, and they had two major settlements in North America—Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Salem, North Carolina (also called “Wachovia”).
Damick, Fr Andrew Stephen (2011-11-22). Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Exploring Belief Systems through the Lens of the Ancient Christian Faith (Kindle Locations 1670-1672). Conciliar Press. Kindle Edition.
(daca se doreste pot traduce; imi cer scuze ptr. off-topic, insa mi s-a parut interesante aceste informatii despre Anabaptisti)
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