Mennonites, a Protestant sect, combining some of the distinctive characteristics of the Baptists and the Quakers. Their principal tenet is the administration of baptism only upon confession of faith; consequently they do not baptise infants. They attach more importance to the ordering of the Christian life than to doctrinal points, ranking discipline and rectitude of life before learning and the scientific elaboration of dogmas. They refuse to take oaths, to bear arms, condemn every kind of revenge and divorce (except for adultery), and object to fill civic and state offices, holding all kinds of magistracy to be necessary for the present, but foreign to the kingdom of Christ. The church is the community of the saints, which must be kept pure by strict discipline. Grace they hold to be designed for all, and their views of the Lord's Supper fall in with those of Zwingli; in its celebration the rite of feet-washing is retained in most congregations. They have bishops, preachers, and deacons. The first congregation to profess these principles was formed at Zurich in 1525 by three men, Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock. Thence the sect spread rapidly through Switzerland and the south of Germany and Austria, establishing itself in greatest strength at St Gall, Augsburg, and Strasburg. But a bitter persecution, in which 3000 persons perished, caused many to move into Moravia and into Holland. Contemporaneously with the formation of the Zurich congregation and its first years of propagandism was the appearance in Westphalia of the Anabaptists (q.v.), a sect professing some similar views, but guilty of most reprehensible fanatical excesses, in which the Swiss party had no share and with which they showed no sympathy. After the fanatical party had been suppressed, with much shedding of blood, in Münster, there arose a man of sound piety and great moderation, Menno Simons (1492–1559), who denounced the blasphemous zealots of Westphalia, and organised the scattered members and congregations of the more sober-minded throughout Holland and north Germany. His influence became so paramount that his name has been used ever since to designate the sect as a religious body. Dissensions broke out amongst them at a later time both in Switzerland and Holland, chiefly as to the degree of strictness of discipline to be enforced. In 1620 the stricter Ammanite or Upland Mennonites separated from the more tolerant Lowland Mennonites in Switzerland. In Holland the first disruption occurred in 1554; the more liberal section in North Holland were called Waterlanders, though they exchanged the name of Mennonites for Baptist Communities. The advocates for greater strictness showed much want of cohesion, the various parties being known by such titles as Old Flemings, Ukwallists, Dompelers, Jan Jacob Christians, Apostoolites, Galenists, &c. All the Dutch Mennonites were, however, reunited in 1801. At the present time they number about 32,000, divided among more than 100 congregations. The German and Swiss Mennonites probably number nearly 25,000. In 1783 Catharine of Russia introduced colonies of German Mennonites into south Russia; others joined them after 1867. But in 1871—at which time they numbered close upon 40,000—the Russian emperor decreed that they should be liable to conscription for the army, and should be deprived of certain others of their privileges. This caused many of them to emigrate to the United States, where they settled principally in Minnesota and Kansas; others have proceeded of late years to Brazil. But Mennonite refugees from Alsace, the Palatinate, and Holland had already reached America as early as 1683, in which year the first Mennonite church in the States was organised at Germantown in Pennsylvania. At the present time there are about 100,000 professing this form of religious life in the United States and Canada. The most important groups into which they are divided are known as Old Mennonites, Reformed Mennonites or Herr's People, New Mennonites, Evangelical Mennonites, and Amish or Omish Mennonites, also known as Hookers and as Buttonites. Nearly all Mennonites throughout the world are farmers; for culture, integrity, and philanthropic enlightenment they stand everywhere high in the regards of their neighbours.
See Bloupet ten Cate, Geschiedenis der Doopsgezinden (5 vols. 1839–47); J. A. Starck, Geschichte der Taufe und der Taufgesinnten (1789); N. Brown's Life of Menno (Phila. 1853); [Mrs Brons] Ursprung, Entwicklung, und Schicksale der Taufgesinnten (1884); and Hoop Scheffer in Herzog-Plitt's Real-Encyklopädie (new ed.), who gives a full bibliography.