Mennonite movement in the footsteps of its Swiss roots

Some 3,500 mennonites were gathered in Zurich at the end of May. Aim of this meeting: to celebrate the half-millennium of this Protestant religious movement born on the verge of limmat before swarming around the world.

Olivier Pauchard

I am mainly responsible for translation, rereading and putting online of the articles of Swi Swissinfo.ch. I sometimes also write press reviews as well as original articles devoted to typically Swiss subjects. After studying history and religion sciences, I started my journalistic career in Radio Friborg. After a visit to the Swiss editorial staff of the Swiss telegraph agency, I joined Swi Swissinfo.ch in 2000. I worked there for a long time as a specialist in federal policy, then historical themes. More recently, I devote myself to the translation, rereading and putting online of articles.

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  Return to the origins: the movement of anabaptists celebrates the 500th anniversary

  Lire Plus Return to the origins: the movement of anabaptists celebrates the 500th anniversary

Even for a cosmopolitan city like Zurich, the streets offered a fairly unusual show on May 29, with people from all over the world for an event neither sporting nor cultural, but religious.

In this year 2025, Catholics are not the only ones to celebrate a jubilee. This is also the case for mennonites. On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the creation of this current of Protestantism, Zurich welcomed a meeting entitled “The courage to love – anabaptism 500 yearsExternal link», At the invitation of the World Mennonite ConferenceExternal link. Other events are planned during the year, both in Switzerland and abroad.

The “left wing” of Protestantism

Various encyclopedias, including WikipediaExternal linkindicate that the Mennonite movement was created in 1540 by the Dutch reformer Menno Simons. So why celebrate his half-millennium in 2025 in Zurich?

The explanation is simple. Mennonites are part of the Anabaptist family, such as the famous American Amish. However, the origin of anabaptism is in Zurich. Some specialists even bring its creation back to a specific event: the first baptism of adults by a group of former disciples of the Zwingli reformer in the house of Felix Manz, in Zollikon, on January 21, 1525.

The anabaptist movement is part of the line of the Protestant reform of 16^e century. But this current intended to go further than the Reformators Luther, Zwingli or Calvin to find Christianity of the origins through a “radical reform”.

Anabaptism is characterized by three main features. First, you only become a believer at the end of a conversion process. This explains the importance given to the baptism of adults rather than the traditional baptism of infants, which is not recognized. Then, the anabaptists refuse any state intervention in the affairs of the church. Finally, they also refuse to engage in violence, to carry weapons or to take an oath.

To these religious considerations was also added, at the time, a more political and social discourse, in particular in favor of the peasants subject to princes or cities. Anabaptism is sometimes sometimes described as a “left wing” of Protestantism.

Exile … in the best of cases

The positions of the anabaptists certainly allowed them to win followers, but also solid enmities. “Their radical criticism of society and religious life of their time, the alliance, in their fatal opinion, between church and state, quickly attracts the wrath of power,” notedExternal link The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.

This hostility from the authorities has regularly forced anabaptists to exile. They took refuge in remote regions where they lived discreetly, in particular in the Emmental and the Bernese Oberland. In the French-speaking part of the country, the Prince-Bishop of Basel welcomed them and tolerated in what is today the Bernese Jura, but only at more than 1000 meters above sea level and above the villages.

But sometimes the repression was much more severe, especially in the cantons of Bern and Zurich, where anabaptists were burned, beheaded or even drowned.

A Global Movement

The various policies of repression in Switzerland as in other parts of the Holy Empire have forced the anabaptists to take refuge in ever more distant regions, even on the American continent and in the Russia of the Tsars, which participated in the dissemination of the movement.

More recently, the Mennonite movement has rather spread through missionary activity. According to the latest statisticsExternal link From the World Mennonite Conference, which has its headquarters in Canada, the Anabaptiste spiritual family now has 2.13 million believers baptized in 86 countries, mainly in Africa (36.43%) and North America (30.50%).

Switzerland as a place of memory

As for Switzerland, still according to statistics from the World Mennonite Conference, it has 1900 members baptized (0.09% of the global workforce) distributed in 13 congregations. Particularly modest workforce.

From a geographic point of view, the Swiss mennonites meet mainly in the canton of Bern, in two areas which had once served them as a refuge: the Emmental and the Bernese Jura, now also called the Grand Chasseral.

Despite these reduced numbers, Switzerland keeps a special place as a place of memory, as the jubilee recalls.

>> PèLerinage in Anabaptist Switzerland with a couple of American mennonites and a Jura family in the program “Development” of the RTS of June 8, 2025:

Among the most symbolic places are a commemorative plaque in Zurich, which indicates the place where Felix Manz, which is considered the first anabaptist martyr, had been thrown into the limmat in January 1527.

Text reread and verified by Samuel Jaberg