Mennonites
Anabaptist · c. 1536 · Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland; worldwide (largest numbers now in Africa)
Menno Simons organized and defended the scattered nonviolent Anabaptists after the Münster catastrophe, fixing the movement's pacifist identity; centuries of persecution and migration (Vistula, Russia 1788, the Americas) shaped the family that bears his name.
Mennonites was formed around 1536. Mennonites continues today. Mennonites's institutional line runs back through Anabaptist, 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 Mennonites stand 3 divisions along the institutional line, counting separations and disputed forks, not mergers, renewals or national organizations.
At a glance
- Formed
- Around 1536
- Family
- Anabaptist
- Region
- Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland; worldwide (largest numbers now in Africa)
- Key figures
- Menno Simons
- Cause tags
- Doctrine
- Also known as
- Mennists (early); Doopsgezinden (Dutch)
What it was organized out of
- National organization of Anabaptist, not a separation from it.
Bodies organized out of it or separated from it: Amish, Evangelical United Brethren Church.
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.