22 / European Background of the Ohio Mennonites and Amish

a question involving religious practice and civil authority. When ordered by the City Council of Zurich to baptize their children, they refused to do so because they could find no New Testament basis for infant baptism nor could they accept the dictation of the state on this religious matter. On January 21, 1525, they met for prayer and guidance, and in the course of the meeting they baptized one another. The group was comprised of average middle-class citizens of Zurich and in their number were persons with such occupations as baker, tailor, bookseller, goldsmith, and cooper. They became known as the Swiss Brethren.

While the Anabaptist reformers at Zurich and its environs were beginning to wield a popular influence, a similar yet independent movement was going on in the Netherlands. Certain followers of Luther began to deviate on questions such as the Lord's Supper. An Anabaptist group arose in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands where the brothers Obbe and Dirk Philips became leaders. The group led by these brothers had inner struggles with regard to the doctrines about the nature of the kingdom of God and finally severed connections with those of its number at Munster who had views which the Philips brothers considered heretical and fanatical. Moreover, they even decided to have nothing to do with this group in spiritual or social intercourse. This incident is important in Anabaptist history, for it marks the beginning of the practice of shunning or avoiding those who are excommunicated.' Much of later Mennonite history, including the Amish division, is to be understood in the light of this practice and the doctrine upon which it is based.

It was during this early stage and crisis that Menno Simons (c. 1496-1561), a former Roman Catholic priest, joined the movement. The date of his conversion from Catholicism was 1536 and it took place in his native land of the Netherlands. Menno Simons labored in Holland and north Germany for most of his life and his numerous writings have left a permanent impress on the Anabaptist movement in all its branches since that day. It was from Menno Simons that the term "Mennonite" originated and is today perhaps the most common term by which the modern descendants of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists or Swiss Brethren are known.

Summary of the Religious Tenets of the Early Mennonites

First of all, the Anabaptists were committed to a drastic attempt to recover the life and pattern of the primitive church of New Tes-