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The Mennonites are members of certain Christian groups belonging to the church communities of Anabaptist denominations named after Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings, Simons articulated and formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders, with the early teachings of the Mennonites founded on the belief in both the mission and ministry of Jesus, which the original Anabaptist followers held with great conviction, despite persecution by various Roman Catholic and Protestant states. An early set of Mennonite beliefs was codified in the Dordrecht Confession of Faith in 1632, but the various groups do not hold to a common confession or creed.
Newton is a city in and the county seat of Harvey County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 19,132. Newton is located 25 miles (40 km) north of Wichita. The city of North Newton is located immediately north and exists as a separate political entity. Newton is located at the intersection of Interstate 135, U.S. Route 50, and U.S. Route 81 highways.
The Church of God in Christ, Mennonite, also called Holdeman Mennonite, is a Christian Church of Anabaptist heritage. Its formation started in 1859 under its first leader John Holdeman (1832-1900), who was a baptized Mennonite. It is very similar to Conservative Mennonites but has stayed away from other Conservative Mennonites because of its "true church" doctrine and its practice of excommunication. In 2013 the church had 24,400 baptized members.
The Mennonite Church USA is an Anabaptist Christian denomination in the United States. Although the organization is a recent 2002 merger of the Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church, the body has roots in the Radical Reformation of the 16th century.
The Mennonite Brethren Church was established among Plautdietsch-speaking Russian Mennonites in 1860, and has congregations in more than 20 countries, representing about 500,000 adherents as of 2019.
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is a relief, service, and peace agency representing fifteen Mennonite, Brethren in Christ and Amish bodies in North America. The U.S. headquarters are in Akron, Pennsylvania, the Canadian in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Bethel College is a private Christian liberal arts college in North Newton, Kansas. It is affiliated with the Mennonite Church USA.
The Russian Mennonites are a group of Mennonites who are descendants of Dutch Anabaptists who settled for about 250 years in the Vistula delta in Poland and established colonies in the Russian Empire beginning in 1789. Since the late 19th century, many of them have come to countries throughout the Western Hemisphere. The rest were forcibly relocated, so that very few of their descendants now live at the location of the original colonies. Russian Mennonites are traditionally multilingual with Plautdietsch as their first language and lingua franca. In 2014 there are several hundred thousand Russian Mennonites: about 200,000 in Germany, 100,000 in Mexico, 70,000 in Bolivia, 40,000 in Paraguay, 10,000 in Belize and tens of thousands in Canada and the US and a few thousand in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.
The Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church of Goessel, Kansas, is a congregation affiliated with Mennonite Church USA. The congregation has a continuous history dating from 16th-century Europe.
Hesston College is a private college in Hesston, Kansas. It is associated with the Mennonite Church USA and has an enrollment of about 400 students who typically come from about 30 states and 15 other countries.
Wadsworth Institute was a Mennonite seminary in Wadsworth, Ohio, from 1868 to 1878. Officially named the "Christian Educational Institution of the Mennonite Denomination", it accepted men aged 18 to 35 for a three-year program centering on biblical studies and other topics relevant to training pastors and mission workers. Starting in 1876, women were accepted as day students. Classes were primarily taught in German and some in English.
The General Conference Mennonite Church was a mainline association of Mennonite congregations based in North America from 1860 to 2002. The conference was formed in 1860 when congregations in Iowa invited North American Mennonites to join together in order to pursue common goals such as higher education and mission work. The conference was especially attractive to recent Mennonite and Amish immigrants to North America and expanded considerably when thousands of Russian Mennonites arrived in North America starting in the 1870s. Conference offices were located in Winnipeg, Manitoba and North Newton, Kansas. The conference supported a seminary and several colleges. In the 1990s the conference had 64,431 members in 410 congregations in Canada, the United States and South America. After decades of cooperation with the Mennonite Church, the two groups reorganized into Mennonite Church Canada in 2000 and Mennonite Church USA in 2002.
Jacob Hoeppner (1748–1826) was one of two delegates selected by the Mennonite community in Danzig, Prussia, to travel to South Russia and evaluate land along the Dnieper River near Chortitza as a possible settlement. The Mennonites were recruited by Queen Catherine II the Great to settle on territory recently won from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The entire Ukraine had a population of three million at most. In order to settle this empty territory, colonists from western Europe were invited to come to Russia.
Jacob Abraham Schowalter was a Kansas farmer, business owner and Mennonite philanthropist whose estate formed the basis of the Schowalter Foundation.
Johann(es) Cornies was a Prussian Mennonite settler in the Russian Empire, who became an important agricultural and architectural reformer for the Mennonites, Hutterites and other minorities in the Russian Empire.
Molotschna Colony or Molochna Colony was a Russian Mennonite settlement in what is now Zaporizhzhia Oblast in Ukraine. Today the central village is called Molochansk and it has a population of under 10,000. The settlement is named after the Molochna River which forms its western boundary. Today the land falls mostly within the Tokmatskyi and Chernihivskyi Raions. The nearest large city is Melitopol to the southwest of Molochansk.
The forestry service was a form of alternative service offered to German speaking Mennonites in lieu of military service in Russia from 1881 to 1918. At its peak during World War I, 7,000 men served in forestry and agricultural pest control in Ukraine and South Russia. The program ended in the turmoil of the Russian Revolution.
According to the 2012 estimates, there were 100,000 Mennonites living in Mexico, the vast majority of them, or about 90,000 are established in the state of Chihuahua, 6,500 were living in Durango, with the rest living in small colonies in the states of Campeche, Tamaulipas, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí and Quintana Roo.
Kleine Gemeinde is a Mennonite denomination founded in 1812 by Klaas Reimer in the Russian Empire. The current group primarily consists of Plautdietsch-speaking Russian Mennonites in Belize, Mexico and Bolivia, as well as a small presence in Canada and the U.S.A. In 2015 it had some 5,400 baptized members. Most of its Canadian congregations diverged from the others over the latter half of the 20th century and are now called the Evangelical Mennonite Conference.
The Mennonite Church USA Archives was founded in 2001 under the denominational merger of the (old) Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church. Prior to 2001, the two largest Mennonite denominations maintained separate archives: the Archives of the Mennonite Church, located on the Goshen College campus, housed materials pertaining to the (old) Mennonite Church, while the Mennonite Library and Archives on the Bethel College campus held the records of the General Conference Mennonite Church.
References
- Kaufman, Edmund G. (1973), General Conference Mennonite Pioneers, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas.
- Krahn, Cornelius, Gingerich, Melvin & Harms, Orlando (Eds.) (1955). The Mennonite Encyclopedia, Volume IV. Mennoniite Publishing House.