Early Anabaptism in Global Perspective
Session 1
Tuesday, July 22, 2025 • 1:30–3 p.m.
A. Papers: Menno Simons, Anabaptist Witness, and the Doctrine of Discovery
Menno Simons’ Critique of Christian Empire
Gerald J. Mast
This paper explores Menno Simons’ costly withdrawal from his priestly duties as an act of resistance to the imperial project of Christendom as exemplified by the reign of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the exercise of magisterial power by other Christian rulers who either supported or challenged the emperor’s policies. As an elder in an emerging dissenting network of Anabaptist faith communities in the Netherlands and North Germany, Menno’s teaching, publishing, and pastoral leadership advocated for a church founded on Jesus Christ alone, focused on the commandment of love—for neighbors and enemies, and governed by the ban rather than the sword. The contingent and regional focus of Menno’s ecclesial network also presented an alternative to the colonizing globalism of Charles V’s empire—the first of which it could be said that “the sun never sets.”
Gerald J. Mast is Professor of Communication at Bluffton University and the author of numerous books and essays on Anabaptist persuasion. Most recently, he has published a series of seven essays in Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage on the life and theological rhetoric of Menno Simons.
Historic Believers Church Theologies of Public Witness
J. Denny Weaver
This paper draws on the political theology of Menno and other believers church movements to sketch a theology of social and political activism for contemporary Anabaptist communities. Such an account describes the emergence of a socially active believers’ church peace witness that calls for the political and commercial systems of the international order to disarm and to refocus their authority in support of just and equitable relationships of peace and thriving. A key feature of this account is the persistent struggle to resist conventional theological habits that underwrite the violence and colonialism of Christendom—including the Doctrine of Discovery.
J. Denny Weaver taught in the Religion Department of Bluffton University for thirty-one years. His many writings include Becoming Anabaptist; The Nonviolent Atonement; with Gerald Mast, Nonviolent Word; and a recent memoir, New Moves. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Early Anabaptist Witness and the Work of Decolonization
Sarah Augustine
Having considered the historical actions and political theology of Menno Simons, this presentation argues that the policies of Christian empire that Menno resisted in the sixteenth century are the condition of possibility for the extraction-based capitalism that now dominates the world and threatens human well-being and life everywhere. This paper will suggest how the struggle of Menno Simons and other early Anabaptists against Christian empire can inform today’s decolonizing movements such as those working to dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery.
Sarah Augustine, who is a Pueblo (Tewa) descendant, is cofounder and executive director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. She is a columnist for Anabaptist World and co-hosts the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery podcast with Sheri Hostetler. Augustine is also author of the book The Land Is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery (Herald Press, 2021), and coauthor, with Sheri Hostetler, of So We and Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis (Herald Press, 2023).
B. Seminar: The Ties That Bind: Examining Cross-Border Early Modern Anabaptists’ Networks Through PRINT—People, Religion, Information Networks, and Travel
Rosalind Beiler
Adaeze Nwigwe
This seminar introduces participants to PRINT (People, Religion, Information Networks, and Travel)—a digital humanities project that explores the communication networks of early modern religious minorities (Anabaptists, Pietists and Quakers) and the dynamic way they shaped migration between 1630 and 1730. European Anabaptists began corresponding across political borders in the 1630s to assist those being banished from their homes for their beliefs. Similarly, in the 1650s English and Scottish Quakers, themselves facing persecution, began sending “traveling Friends” (missionaries) into communities of European Anabaptists and Pietists (also struggling to prove their legitimacy) to convince them of “the truth.” By the early eighteenth-century, the kaleidoscopic communication networks they created took on a life of their own as individuals used them for their own purposes. PRINT’s team is creating a portal to 2,700 letters from five archives in the U.S., U.K., Netherlands, and Germany. We are building a resource for visualizing the complex networks these early modern religious minorities created. Relying on citizen scholars to crowdsource transcriptions and translations of correspondence in English, German, and Dutch, we are designing opportunities for users to learn about the everyday lives of Anabaptists and the broader themes the letters convey—global connections, travel, persecution, family, and friendship, among others.
Our seminar will introduce the project, the correspondence we are making accessible, and some of the research questions we are answering by engaging participants in reading letters from PRINT. Using both English and Dutch letters, we will illustrate how reading a familiar language in an unfamiliar hand teaches us transferable skills for transcribing and conducting research. In addition, we will show the ecumenical and transcultural nature of Anabaptist networks in the seventeenth century. Participants will learn about the historical content of the letters, the different themes that emerge from them, the interdisciplinary analyses they facilitate, and the way they raise questions that are relevant for today. By showing how to read seventeenth-century correspondence, we will demonstrate the potential research and stories that PRINT enables.
Rosalind J. Beiler is an associate professor of history at the University of Central Florida whose research focuses on early modern migration, especially of German-speaking people. She currently codirects PRINT (People, Religion, Information Networks, and Travel), a digital humanities project that is creating a portal to make the correspondence of early modern religious minorities (including Anabaptists) accessible. Users will be able to explore and visualize religious, communication, and kinship networks to understand how they shaped migration flows in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Adaeze Nwigwe is a graduate student in the University of Central Florida’s Public History program. She is currently completing her thesis with an anticipated graduate date of Spring 2025. She has worked with the PRINT Migration project since 2022 and has served as the transcription team lead helping new volunteers and team members employ the project’s protocols when deciphering these manuscripts.