Anabaptist
Anabaptist · 1525 · Switzerland, South Germany, Moravia, Netherlands; the Americas
Zwingli's radical students broke with the pace and civic basis of the Zurich reformation, practicing believers' baptism from January 21, 1525; the Schleitheim Articles (1527) fixed the free-church ecclesiology. Persecuted by Catholic and Protestant authorities alike; Felix Manz drowned at Zurich, 1527.
Anabaptist was formed in 1525. Anabaptist continues today. Anabaptist's institutional line runs back through Reformed, Roman Catholicism to the post-apostolic church. No body on this tree is the assembly of Acts 2; where a body claims that, the claim appears in the claimed-lineage layer.
Between the post-apostolic church and Anabaptist stand 3 divisions along the institutional line, counting separations and disputed forks, not mergers, renewals or national organizations.
At a glance
- Formed
- In 1525
- Family
- Anabaptist
- Region
- Switzerland, South Germany, Moravia, Netherlands; the Americas
- Key figures
- Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, Georg Blaurock, Michael Sattler, Menno Simons
- Cause tags
- Doctrine, Governance
- Also known as
- Swiss Brethren; Mennonite/Hutterite/Amish (streams)
What it separated from
- Separated from Reformed. Emerged from within Zwingli's Zurich circle — genealogically a child of the Zurich reformation, conventionally rendered as a fourth primary Reformation family.
Bodies organized out of it or separated from it: Mennonites, Hutterites, Schwarzenau Brethren.
On the tree
Solid lines are separations and unions; dashed lines are renewals that began inside a body; dotted gray lines are national organizations of one communion; a diamond marks a fork event where neither side is drawn as the one that left. Every line runs back to the post-apostolic church; no body descends from the assembly of Acts 2.
Sources
Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-10.