Mennonites are Anabaptists named after Menno Simons, known for peace, simple living and service.
Menno Simons, a Dutch priest, left the Catholic Church in 1536 and gathered the scattered, peaceful Anabaptists of the Low Countries and northern Germany; they took his name. Mennonites spread to Prussia, Russia and the Americas and, in the twentieth century, to Africa and Asia.
The tree's references for this branch: Britannica: Mennonite · Britannica: Menno Simons · Wikipedia: Mennonites.
Lineage: Israel and Judah: the First Temple›Second Temple Judaism›The early, undivided Church›Catholic Church›Reformed (Zwingli, Calvin)›Anabaptist›Mennonite
Branches that grew from it: Amish (1693).
Mennonites are the Anabaptists who took their name from Menno Simons, a Dutch priest who joined them in 1536 and gathered the scattered, peaceful congregations after the disaster at Münster. They are known for refusing to fight and for turning up wherever there is a disaster.
Menno left his parish in Friesland at forty, after years of doubt about infant baptism and after his own brother was killed among a group of armed radicals 6,5. He spent the rest of his life travelling in hiding, writing and organising, with a price on his head, and what he gathered was the wing of Anabaptism that had renounced the sword entirely 6,5. Those congregations wrote their beliefs down at Dordrecht in 1632 in eighteen articles: believers' baptism, footwashing, nonresistance, refusal of oaths, and the ban with avoidance of the excommunicated, a confession the Amish still use 15,5.
What follows is a history of moving. Pressed in the Low Countries, Mennonites went to Prussia; invited by Catherine the Great with promises of land and exemption from military service, thousands went to the Russian empire from 1789 and built prosperous colonies there 9,5. When those exemptions were withdrawn, many left again, for Kansas and Manitoba in the 1870s, taking their hard winter wheat with them 9,5. Soviet collectivisation, famine and deportation scattered the rest, and further groups went to Mexico, Paraguay, Bolivia and Belize, where their colonies remain 9,10,5. Each move was made to keep the same two things: the right not to bear arms, and the freedom to run their own communities and schools 5,9.
See it on the family treeMennonites hold what Anabaptists hold: baptism on confession of faith, a church of people who have chosen it, and a refusal to use violence. What is distinctive is how thoroughly the peace conviction has been turned into practical service.
The Dordrecht Confession sets out the older shape, and modern bodies have their own confessions in the same line, with discipleship, community and peace at the centre 15,2,3. Nonresistance is the load-bearing conviction: Mennonites are one of the historic peace churches, alongside Quakers and the Brethren, and their members have taken conscientious objection, alternative service and prison rather than military service in every modern war 11,5,2.
Service is the other half of it. The Mennonite Central Committee, formed in 1920 to feed Mennonites starving in Soviet Ukraine, became a relief and development agency working in dozens of countries for anyone in need, and it is how most people outside the church have heard of Mennonites at all 7,4,5. Congregations govern themselves, ministers are often chosen from within, and mutual aid, the congregation paying a member's medical bills or rebuilding a burned barn, is expected rather than exceptional 2,3,5. Practice varies enormously, from Old Order groups with horse-drawn buggies and plain dress to congregations indistinguishable from any other Protestant church 12,5.
The ban that the Dordrecht Confession prescribes is still kept in the plainer groups, where a member put out of fellowship is also avoided socially, and it has separated members from their families. It is argued about inside those communities and not settled 15,12.
Mennonite worship is plain and centred on preaching, with singing that is often unaccompanied and in four-part harmony. Communion is a memorial, and many congregations wash one another's feet before it.
Singing without instruments produced a tradition of congregational harmony that Mennonite colleges and choirs are still known for, and hymn singing is treated as something the whole body does rather than a performance 5,2. Footwashing follows the Dordrecht article on it, and is kept in Old Order and conservative congregations and in some others 15,12. Baptism follows confession, usually in the teens or later, and marks entry into a community that can hold its members accountable 2,3,15. Old Order groups worship in homes or plain meeting houses, in German dialect, without instruments or Sunday school; assimilated congregations look like their neighbours 12,5.
Old Order Mennonites read Luther's German Bible and hear sermons in dialect. Most other Mennonites read the New International, New Revised Standard or Common English versions, and the whole tradition reads the New Testament as the lens for the rest.
The characteristic Mennonite reading puts Jesus at the centre and reads everything else through him, which is why the Sermon on the Mount governs their ethics rather than being set aside as impractical 2,3,16. That approach became widely known through Mennonite theologians in the twentieth century, whose work on the politics of Jesus was read far outside these churches 13,5. Bible study happens in congregations rather than through clergy, and lay preaching is common in the plainer groups 12,2. Read here: the Lutherbibel of 1912, still used in Old Order congregations, the Berean Standard Bible and the King James Version. The versions guide sets out what these churches read today.
Free to read here: Lutherbibel 1912, King James Version, Berean Standard Bible. The full note on which Bible Mennonite use, with sources ›
These passages illustrate themes discussed in this profile; they are not a survey of members' favorite verses. Each is quoted from the Berean Standard Bible and links to its chapter. You can explore the text for study or personal reflection; memorization is optional.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are the peacemakers. Twelve words that a church has organised itself around for five centuries.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Overcome evil with good. The working instruction behind nonresistance, and the answer Mennonites give when asked what they would do instead.
For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you took Me in, I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you looked after Me, I was in prison and you visited Me.’
I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat. The passage the Mennonite Central Committee was built on, and the reason Mennonites show up after disasters.
A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”
Love one another. Read alongside the footwashing in the same chapter, which many Mennonite congregations still practise before communion.
If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. Why mutual aid is expected in these congregations rather than admired.
Most Mennonites are now African, Asian and Latin American. Mennonite World Conference reports about 1.44 million baptized believers in its member churches as of November 2025 17, and the largest national churches are in Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and India.
Its November 2025 membership comprises 110 national churches in 61 countries, plus an international association, and close to 10,400 congregations. These include Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches, so this is neither a Mennonite-only total nor a count of all Anabaptists 17,1,5. Ethiopia's Meserete Kristos Church is the single largest, having grown fastest during the years it was banned 1,5. In North America, Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada are much smaller than they were, while Old Order groups and the Mennonite Brethren have grown 14,8,12. The Mennonite Central Committee continues in relief, development and peace work, and its name is often better known than the church's 4,7. The historic peace churches still meet together and still argue the case for conscientious objection wherever conscription exists 11,2.
The Amish separated from the Swiss Mennonites in 1693 over how strictly the ban should be applied and whether the excommunicated should be avoided socially. Both are Anabaptist and both hold nonresistance; the Amish kept a stricter separation from modern life, while most Mennonites did not. Old Order Mennonites are closer to the Amish in practice than to other Mennonites 5,12,15.
No, though it can look that way in places where the name attaches to a migrating people with a shared language and surnames. Mennonite is a church membership entered by baptism on confession, and most Mennonites today are African, Asian or Latin American with no connection to the European migrations 1,9,5.
Numbered references link the account above to its sources. These include the tradition's own documents and outside reference works. The review status below distinguishes source checking from completed member and scholarly review.
BibleVerse. “Mennonite: where they came from, what they hold, and the Bible they read.” bibleverse.site, version 2026-09-09, https://bibleverse.site/denominations/mennonite/
Awaiting review by a member of the tradition. First published 2026-09-07; last changed 2026-09-09. Years before the common era are written BC, and later years plainly, as the site's Christian pages do.
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Blessed are the peacemakers. Twelve words that have cost this church its homes, more than once, and that it has not put down.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.