Francis Nigel Lee

Anabaptists, Baptists, and their Stepchildren Francis Nigel Lee

Anabaptists are known today by their descendants; Amish, Mennonite, Brethren, and Hutterite, but are the offspring and step-children of their ancestors from the 16th Century. "Anabaptist" was a derogatory term used to describe their chief error, Re-Baptism. The difficulty in defining the Anabaptists is that there were many of them with different stripes and colors. There were Anabaptists which had no qualms in destroying property, disrupting worship services, and some were physically violent, even to the point of murdering their detractors. They existed in a time where all citizens were required to be baptized, names recorded in church records, submissive to church and magistrate, and willing to serve in military service if required to fight the enemies of state or religion. They found themselves almost universally opposed by German Lutherans, Swiss Reformed, English and Scottish Presbyterians, and even Roman Catholics, all of which considered them to be heretics, schismatics, and enemies of the God of truth.