Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Anabaptism at 500

Anabaptism at 500: What Anabaptism Means to Me – February 2025

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As Mosaic Mennonite Conference commemorates the 500th Anniversary of Anabaptism in 2025, each month we will share a variety of Mosaic voices reflecting on the question, “What does Anabaptism mean to me?”  

Submission from

John L. Ruth, Salford (PA) congregation

I understand baptism to be a sacramental act of accepting God’s forgiveness, God’s renewal of my heart, and entrance into God’s covenant of reconciliation.

The ancient term “Anabaptist” (rebaptizer) is a kind of misnomer. The people in my 16th Century-formed fellowship considered themselves to be baptized only once, since they concluded that a ritual on behalf of uncomprehending infants was not what the New Testament teaches. Thus, though most had received the rite common throughout medieval Christendom, they did not view their conscious baptism of repentance as a second one.

As the oversimplified term “Anabaptist” became common parlance, it is historically useful. But it fails to convey ideas that are just as definitive as baptism to the spiritual / social breakthrough that focused my Mennonite people’s understanding: (1) following “the Word” to (2) covenant or “form a church” in which (3) the use of force is replaced by the loving way Jesus described in the “Sermon on the Mount.” Since many Anabaptists of the 16th Century did not “give up the sword,” it is to the testimony and suffering of the minority who did that I look for my inspiration and model of church. 

Submission from

Maati Yvonne Platts, Mosaic Conference Board Member, Nueva Vida Norristown (PA) New Life 

What it Means to be Black and Anabaptist 

Anabaptism to me means being baptized by my Black preacher Hubert Brown on Easter Sunday, April 14, 1968 when I was ten. It meant what was important in the church was important in the community and what was important in the community was important in the church.  

It meant Brother Markley knocking at ya door when you done missed church a few Sundays in a row. Baking chocolate, fresh mint tea, and hot blueberry pies at summer camp. 

It means fellowship meals and cherry cheese pies from my sister Betty (no shoe-fly pie for me). 

It means loving our brothers and sisters as ourselves: red, brown, yellow, white, or black we are all precious in God’s sight. 

It means a love that was real, serving a God that was real, who cares about community, there was real love and unity, ministry over business, taking care of the poor as well as those in prison. 

It means a heart of gratitude for other Anabaptists that see your ugly and your beauty and love you still. 

It means a heart of forgiveness for those who have hurt you and walking closer with the spirit of humility as you grow old, and patience grows thin. 

Anabaptism means departing from evil to do good; to seek peace and pursue it. 

What Anabaptism means to me is to live free in what Jesus has called me to be, to show love even when others aren’t loving, to stand up and speak out against injustice, yet have compassion for those that hearts and minds just ain’t right. 

It ain’t about being Anabaptist, it’s about the love of Jesus in me. 

Submission from

Bishop Juan Marerro, Executive Director of Conference-Related Crossroads Community Center (Philadelphia, PA)  

What does Anabaptism mean to me?  

These early believers, whose theology and philosophy of ministry that we current Anabaptists descend from, had the heart and conviction to follow what they were convinced was the leading and moving of the Holy Spirit.  

These early believers were radical enough to follow what they saw on the pages of sacred scripture and quickly developed a Christ-centered theology and philosophy of ministry. These Anabaptists, as they were called, held on to the practice of believer’s baptism despite opposition and persecution. Despite drownings and burnings, they pushed on, following the example of Jesus Christ and his apostles. This gives me encouragement to continue in this radical faith and push on despite the opposition we may face as believers in Christ.  

500 Years of an Anabaptism that Continues to Emerge

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by Stephen Kriss

For my 50th birthday, I traveled to Europe to explore my biological family heritage in Slovakia and my spiritual family history in Switzerland and Germany. I began in the Carpathian Mountains where my great-grandparents had lived, discovering family names in cemeteries and noticing the similarities between the landscape and that of the Alleghenies of Western Pennsylvania, where my family later settled. This journey deepened my sense of connection and left some unanswered questions about my familial story, especially about whether, amid a predominantly Catholic family, I might also have Ashkenazi Jewish roots. 

The second part of my trip was a three-day immersion in Anabaptist/Mennonite history with John L. Ruth (Salford [PA] congregation). We visited key locations in Zurich, explored an archive to see a letter written by Conrad Grebel, and traveled to Germany. I saw the family heritage locations for the Landis, Groff, and Alderfer clans who are part of our Mosaic settler families from colonial days. It was a privilege to travel with John, who is now in his 90s, and hear his stories and enthusiasm. 

Stephen Kriss and John L. Ruth in Germany. Photo by Stephen Kriss.

John, his friend Peter Schmid, and I hiked to one of the Anabaptist caves where early members of the movement gathered clandestinely. Peter is part of the movement to stir conversation and confession between Anabaptists and his community, the Swiss Reformed. More than the spiritual significance of the cave, I remember praying together, and Peter gently guiding John as we walked the precarious wooded trail on a rainy morning, possibly the last of John’s many pilgrimages to that spot. 

The Anabaptist plaque on the Limmat River in Zurich, Switzerland marks the spot where Felix Manz and other Anabaptists were drowned for their faith. Photo by Stephen Kriss.

As the 500th Anniversary of Anabaptism approaches next week, I am reflecting on that European pilgrimage trip. Anabaptism was opened to me as a child through a Mennonite church in a mining town in the Allegheny Mountains. I have remained Anabaptist not because of right theology but because of relationships centered in Jesus, in all their brokenness and beauty. 

My academic training teaches me to approach belief with humility and openness. I have come to hold my own Anabaptism both lightly and seriously. I acknowledge the beauty and brokenness that exists within the breadth of Christian traditions including our own. I also have experienced that of God in settings beyond the framework of the church. 

I recognize that after the heroism of the first generations of Anabaptists, the movement institutionalized, became biologically bound in some settings, and was captive to many of modernity’s traps. I acknowledge that our practiced humility is sometimes the flip side of our arrogance. 

This year, as we honor Anabaptism’s beginnings, I am aware that some of us who have been Mennonite all our lives still wonder if it’s our story or how we belong in it. It can be hard to live within and alongside the margins of a 500-year legacy. Sometimes Anabaptism’s exacting and perfecting process can create implicit and explicit boundaries that are difficult to navigate as we seek to faithfully follow Jesus. 

Yet I’ve come to know that Anabaptism is always a plurality. It’s localized, contextualized, and personalized. It’s quirky and brave. At its best, it is both deeply personal and fully communal. It’s a balance of the Bible, the people, and the Spirit (though the work of the Spirit has sometimes not been considered enough).  

In this time which historian Phyllis Tickle has called another great reformation in the church, Anabaptists have an opportunity to honestly and humbly examine our past and imagine our future. What confessions should we be ready to offer in the midst of our celebration? In what ways does active repentance alter our trajectory? How can we embody the reconciling love of Jesus and exhibit the fruit of the Spirit while interacting with our neighbors in a global and local age? 

We will need to again be brave, full of both conviction and humility, repenting from that which has distracted us from the centrality of Jesus. We will need to remain open to the Anabaptisms that continue to emerge, ready to be led by the Spirit into faithfulness and change, binding and loosing, giving and receiving, hoping and working, broken and beautiful. 

Kriss family relatives in a cemetery in Spišské Podhradie Slovakia. Photo by Stephen Kriss.

Stephen Kriss

Stephen Kriss is the Executive Minister of Mosaic Conference.