The Anabaptist tradition and the Amish-Mennonite Split

An Anabaptist is someone who is committed to "adult voluntary baptism, separation of church and state, non-violence in all of life which included not taking part in the military, and the Bible (N.T.) as final authority threatened the unity of church and state." That sounds a lot like the church of Christ/Christian church. A popular Anabaptist belief statement can be found here. The Anabaptist were persecuted and killed by both the Protestants and Catholics throughout Europe.

What is amazing to me in reading the story of the Anabaptist split in the 1600s that brought about the Amish is how similar the whole debate is to the one that goes on within church of Christ/Christian churches in regards to baptism and the salvation of those not baptized. Hans Reist led a group of believers in a heavily persecuted area. He considered his neighbors around him who were Protestant and members of the state church as saved despite not being baptized as adults. This salvation was shown through their kind and loving actions towards the Anabaptists during times of persecution. Jakob Ammann believed that all outsiders should be shunned, along with any church member that also strayed. It was these two individuals that led the Anabaptists down a course of division. In the end, their personalities prevented the two groups from being able to discuss the doctrines in a friendly and rational manner. The result was a splintering of the Anabaptists into two distinct groups: Mennonites and Amish.

Here is an excerpt from the A History of the Amish by Steven Nolt.

For Ammann, the danger the church faced was compromise. The Anabaptist reformers of 150 years earlier had given their lives for a church that would be a visible alternative to sinful society. Now some Mennonites were resorting to outward compromise, agreeing to attend state church catechism or even have their infants baptized to avoid exile. Relations with the True-Hearted were especially problematic, Ammann charged, because of the half-commitment of such folks only mirrored lack of full-fledged conviction on the part of many Anabaptists themselves. He also believed that Mennonites were willing to sacrifice humility and simplicity in their efforts to fit in with those around them. In contrast, Ammann required male members to wear untrimmed beards and forbade "haughty clothing." Fashionable styles represented frivolous spending, and the use of buttons to fasten coats suggested the ornamental style of military uniforms; neither stood the test of the biblical injunction to avoid even the appearance of evil.

Moreover, if the Anabaptists had really believed that salvation was given by grace through faith, then the True-Hearted (state-churched neighbors of the Anabaptist who helped them during times of persecution), who had not publicly accepted such grace and submitted to its accompanying symbol of water baptism, could not be saved. The same was true for what Ammann saw as the clear New Testament teaching of social avoidance: there was no middle ground. In those regions where persecution was relatively light and compromise was a greater threat--Alsace, parts of the Palatinate, and the mountains south and west of Bern--Ammann received most of his support. He championed strict doctrinal interpretations and an activist approach that appealed to Mennonites who desired a strong group identity in an atmosphere of relative tolerance.

For Reist and the old Mennonite communities in the Emme River Valley and parts of the Palatinate, the threat was anything but lost identity. Their identity as outcasts and the targets of state persecution was all too clear. For the Reist group, the threat to the church was a cold legalism. They already faced enough external threats. Shunning or stricter dress standards that would divide them from within were the last thing they needed. Nor were they keen to receive lectures on faithfulness from those who lived in relative safety outside of Bern.

Additionally Reist could claim--probably quite accurately--that the Swiss Anabaptists had never practiced social avoidance, even if they had agreed to it in principle during unity discussions with their northern European Mennonite cousins years before. Ammann's insistence on implementing it now only stirred up trouble. Physical avoidance was simply not taught in the New Testament, as Reist read it. And as for the True-Hearted, Reist thought that it was presumptuous for humans to declare whether or not a person was saved, baptism notwithstanding. Yet despite their emphasis on openness and opposition to avoidance, it was the Mennonites who seemed to practice shunning when opportunities for reconciliation arrived.

After reading through this story and looking at the present state of the church of Christ/Christian churches I am left with a few questions: Why does baptism always become an instrument of division? Why can we not view things from other people's perspectives? How do we decide what is and is not a biblical issue? How do we have unity?