Spring 2025 · Vol. 54 No. 1 · pp. 56–68
Anabaptism in Britain: Then and Now
Anabaptists in England, 1534–1575
Anabaptists from the Netherlands arrived in England in the mid-1530s seeking refuge from persecution, which was increasing following the collapse of the ill-fated attempt to establish an Anabaptist kingdom in the north German city of Münster. Their reception was hostile, and fourteen were burned in 1535, three more in 1538. The latter was the year Henry VIII received from two Protestant German princes, Philipp of Hesse and John Frederick of Saxony, a letter written by the reformer Philip Melanchthon warning him that continental Anabaptists were infiltrating his kingdom. Henry commissioned Archbishop Thomas Cranmer to investigate and issued two proclamations, one prohibiting Anabaptist literature and the other banishing anyone who had been rebaptized.
In a situation of church decline and closures, there were many opportunities for church planting without competing with others, and we suspected the Anabaptist tradition might have perspectives and practices of relevance in a post-Christendom context. p. 57
The following year, Henry issued a proclamation of pardon to all heretics in his realm except foreigners, perhaps in the hope of avoiding further executions by effecting the removal of those who were bringing Anabaptist ideas from abroad. In 1540, another act again offered a pardon to those regarded as heretics but explicitly excluded Anabaptists, which suggests some English people had embraced their convictions. Their offending beliefs included believers baptism, not swearing oaths, holding possessions in common, and an unorthodox Christology. Three more Anabaptists, one of them English, were burned at Southwark in 1540. 1
Edward VI’s brief reign (1547–1553) was marked by greater tolerance toward the Anabaptists, not least because Cranmer preferred persuasion to execution. He and a number of others debated with a group of Anabaptists in April 1549 and succeeded in persuading three to recant. Other Anabaptists took the opportunity of a less oppressive environment to attend public lectures and take part openly in debates. Anti-Anabaptist pamphlets by Heinrich Bullinger and John Calvin were translated into English by Jean Veron, a French Reformed minister in England, and strenuous efforts were made to persuade Anabaptists to recant. However, the threat of execution remained for those who refused, and, on May 2, 1550, an English woman, Joan Bocher (probably a member of the nobility), was burned at Smithfield. Kirk MacGregor, in the first substantial study of her life and theology, concludes that she was “a bona fide English Anabaptist, a remarkably creative Christological thinker, a bold witness to her convictions in both high and low places, and a dedicated Bible distributor.” 2
Robert Cooche and Henry Hart, English Anabaptists during the reigns of Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth I, both wrote tracts in defense of their beliefs, provoking responses from Veron, John Knox, and others. Hart held a public debate with John Reynolds at St. Margaret’s Church in London, probably in 1553. Undoubtedly several others were English Anabaptists (Joan Bocher claimed improbably that there were at least a thousand in London), and likely there were informal gatherings. However, there is little evidence of separate churches, even in the more tolerant years of Edward’s reign. Most remained within the national church, whatever their private views.
Mary’s reign (1553–1558) was far less tolerant, but it is difficult to know how many Anabaptists were caught up in the widespread persecution of Protestants, as Mary attempted to return England to Catholicism. Hart was imprisoned, and other Anabaptist leaders, including Humphrey Middleton, Nicholas Sheterden, and George Brodbridge, were executed. Many others were likely martyred in these years. p. 58
Early in the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603), her bishops issued warnings about the growth of Anabaptist beliefs in England. In 1560, she issued a decree that required Anabaptists to conform to the Protestant faith or leave the country—an indication that most were still foreigners. Execution was not threatened, but they might be imprisoned or have their possessions confiscated. The situation was complicated by the outbreak of severe persecution against Protestants in the Netherlands, which prompted thousands to flee to England. Among these were Anabaptists. A minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in London, Adriaen van Haemstede, was accused of welcoming Anabaptists into his congregation and was banished. A further royal decree in 1568 indicates that there were informal gatherings of Anabaptists in various places and urged action to suppress these.
On April 3, 1575, twenty-five Dutch Anabaptists were interrupted while meeting near Aldgate on the eastern edge of the city of London. They were imprisoned, interrogated by the bishop of London, and visited by several others who urged them to recant and join the Dutch Reformed Church. Five men succumbed to pressure and did so. Fourteen women and a young lad were banished, and one man died in prison. Despite pleas from the martyrologist John Foxe to Queen Elizabeth, two of them, Jan Pieters and Hendrik Terwoort, were burned at the stake at Smithfield on July 22. The remaining two men were deported to the Netherlands in the following year.
Opposition to Anabaptist convictions is evident in various church documents in the sixteenth century. Anabaptists were named in the Ten Articles (1536), The Bishop’s Book (1537), The King’s Book (1543), and the Forty-Two Articles (1553). In the better-known Thirty-Nine Articles (1562), article 38 stated that “the riches and goods of Christians are not common . . . as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast,” and other articles were worded in such a way as to exclude Anabaptist beliefs. The Presbyterian Confessions of 1560 and 1647 both excoriated Anabaptist convictions. Also thousands of polemical treatises and pamphlets presented the Anabaptists in the worst possible light, drawing on and frequently distorting the excesses and unorthodox theological statements of certain German and Dutch Anabaptists. As Gary Waite has shown, although these were intended to help suppress Anabaptism in England, they may have unwittingly spread dangerous ideas and helped to energize various emerging movements of dissent. 3
The Influence of the Anabaptists
During the final decades of the sixteenth century, numerous dissenting groups began to emerge that would in time result in the formation of Congregational and Baptist churches. From this time on, it is difficult to p. 59 distinguish Anabaptist groups from these separatist movements, not least because the term “Anabaptist” was used to castigate anyone with separatist tendencies with whom the person using it disagreed. The term appeared frequently in lists of those the government or the state church were trying to suppress. 4 Congregationalists and Baptists denied vehemently that they were Anabaptists, concerned both to distance themselves from the Münster episode that still defined Anabaptism in the minds of many, and to reject the charge that they subscribed to the heterodox Christology associated with Melchior Hofmann and endorsed by some Mennonites. But this was a very confusing period, with many interrelated groups and fluctuating allegiances.
There were also connections with an earlier English dissenting movement, the Lollards. 5 It may be significant that Anabaptists were discovered mainly in southeast England, especially in Kent, Essex, and Sussex, as these were areas where Lollardy had mostly flourished (although they were also the closest areas to the Netherlands from which many of the Anabaptists came). Joan Bocher, martyred in 1550, was the widow of a known Lollard. E. G. Rupp suggests that the “new Anabaptist was but old Lollard writ Dutch.” 6 And Michael Watts concludes that Lollardy was one of the streams flowing into English dissent and that this was “fed from the turbulent waters of continental Anabaptism in the first half of the sixteenth century.” 7 Lollards and Anabaptists were subsumed into the dissenting maelstrom of the early seventeenth century.
The relationship between the Anabaptists and the English Baptists is debated by historians. Although those who became known as Particular Baptists have roots in Calvinism rather than Anabaptism, it seems likely that Anabaptist influences on the General Baptists were significant. A congregation formed in Amsterdam by John Smyth and others in 1608, after their escape from England, had links with Dutch Mennonites and was influenced by their convictions and practices. And, in 1626, there was an abortive attempt to bring about union between the English General Baptists and the Amsterdam Waterlanders (Anabaptists). Although ongoing connections between Anabaptists and Baptists in England are difficult to discern with confidence, and despite persistent denials from Baptist leaders that they were Anabaptists, there is sufficient congruence between their convictions and practices to support the conclusion that the General Baptists had at least some roots in Anabaptism. 8
The relationship between the Anabaptists and the Quakers, who emerged in the 1640s, is also unclear. These traditions do have much in common, not least their shared commitment to nonviolence and refusal to swear oaths. And some historians would argue that Anabaptism bequeathed p. 60 to all the separatist groups in this era an understanding of the church as a gathered community of believers that should not be subject to state control.
Much of our information about Anabaptists in England in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries comes from the hostile writings of their opponents or the promulgations against them. Further, the profligate way in which the term was used then and in later centuries precludes reliable conclusions about the extent of their influence. Between the mid-seventeenth century and the mid-twentieth century there is no evidence of distinctively Anabaptist groups in England. But the term continued to be used in theological and popular literature as a generic description of heretics and fanatics, for example, by John Wesley in the eighteenth century. 9 Church history books until relatively recently associated Anabaptism primarily with the atypical events in Münster or relegated references to Anabaptism to footnotes. And until recently, most Baptists preferred to trace their origins and distinctive convictions to sources other than Anabaptism.
Mennonites Return, 1940–1991
Anabaptists reappeared in England during the Second World War to help with relief work. Mennonite Central Committee in North America deployed, first, Ted Claassen and then John Coffman to London in 1940. Others followed, so that in all, twenty-four Mennonite workers were in England during the war years. After the war, attention shifted to other parts of Europe, but John Coffman stayed to be involved in inner-city mission in London, where he married Eileen Pells (the first English Anabaptist since the seventeenth century).
In 1953, the Mennonite Board of Missions sent Quintus and Miriam Leatherman to open the London Mennonite Centre in Highgate, north London. This extensive property provided housing and pastoral support for many international students at a time when signs saying “No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs” appeared on many properties offering lodging. This use of the Centre to house students continued through 1980. Two significant residents in 1966–1968 were Alan and Eleanor Kreider, who would become the directors of the Centre in 1974.
In 1976, the London Mennonite Fellowship was constituted as a church and met in the building. However, the policy of the Centre was not to attempt to plant other Mennonite churches but rather to engage with Christians from many traditions. Centre workers were involved in the Christian peace movement in England and were invited to speak in various places. Alan Kreider recalls after one meeting thinking, “I’m the first Mennonite to have the chance to speak publicly in England since 1575.” 10 p. 61
During the 1980s, a number of English people began to discover Anabaptism and became frequent visitors to the Centre, which offered space for reflection and resources on a range of theological, ecclesial, and ethical issues. Some joined the church, which outgrew the space available at the Centre, moved to Wood Green, and renamed itself Wood Green Mennonite Church. Responding to this growing interest, Alan and Eleanor, with Chris Marshall (later to become a leading figure in the Anabaptist Association of Australia and New Zealand 11), in 1986 launched the Cross-Currents program, which presented Anabaptist and Mennonite perspectives on a wide range of discipleship issues. The Centre also had a book service and a specialist library, but at its heart was hospitality and conversations.
Between 1987 and 1991, the Centre also hosted a Radical Reformation study group in which a dozen English Christians (the present author included) met with the Kreiders to read Anabaptist writings, present papers, engage in discussion, and share meals together. Topics included church and state, baptism, swearing of oaths, an Anabaptist critique of Augustine, post-Christendom, and much more. Regular participants included Nigel Wright from Spurgeon’s College, David Nussbaum, Judith Gardiner, and Noel Moules, whose long-running Workshop program introduced many more people to Anabaptist perspectives. 12
From Mennonite to Anabaptist, 1991–2011
In 1991, with the Kreiders about to move to Manchester, it seemed that the Radical Reformation group might come to a natural end. Instead, believing that others might be interested in something similar, we considered the possibility of forming a relational network, encouraging other study groups, producing a journal, and organizing occasional conferences. I wrote eighty letters (in pre-email days!) to people we thought might be interested, and, within months, we received 250 responses as news had spread. Nelson Kraybill arrived as the new Centre director, and he and I coedited a new journal, Anabaptism Today. 13 Other study groups emerged, and day or residential conferences were held roughly once a year for several years on topics including English Radicalism, Anabaptism and anarchy, new monasticism, shalom, faith and politics, preaching after Christendom, and multi-voiced church. We also initiated a theology forum, which met twice a year for many years, went online during the pandemic period, and now combines online events and an annual residential gathering.
This was the birth of the Anabaptist Network, a loose-knit and dispersed network that represented indigenous Anabaptism. Unlike the London Mennonite Centre, which required significant funding and management, p. 62 the Network had no money or facilities but was relational and nimble. We decided not to retain the rather academic-sounding terminology of Radical Reformation but to embrace the term “Anabaptist” for this network. 14 And Christians in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, as well as England, from across the theological and denominational spectrum, joined.
These two expressions of Anabaptism in Britain worked in partnership for many years as the Centre welcomed further directors from North America—Mark and Mary Thiessen Nation and then Vic Thiessen—each of whom brought fresh emphases as the Centre continued offering hospitality, teaching, and resources. North American Mennonites on short-term assignments also supported both the Center and the Network. 15
A significant initiative of the London Mennonite Centre at the beginning of 1996 was the launch of Bridge Builders, inspired and initially part-funded by North American Mennonites. It has trained hundreds of people, especially clergy, in conflict transformation and has mediated in congregational disputes. Originally a ministry of the Centre and directed by Alastair McKay, Bridge Builders became a separate organization in 2011. 16
Despite its limited numbers and resources, the Anabaptist Network has enabled many British Christians to engage with the Anabaptist vision. We have frequently been invited to “offer an Anabaptist perspective” on various issues. Sensing this growing interest, and aware that it was likely connected with the search for fresh perspectives in an increasingly post-Christendom culture, we decided to cease publication of our in-house journal and embark on a major publishing enterprise. Beginning in 2004 with my Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World, at the time of writing seventeen books are available in the “After Christendom” series with more to come. These books explore the implications of the continuing demise of Christendom for many aspects of mission, church, and discipleship. They have been widely read and well-reviewed and have introduced many others to Anabaptist perspectives and resources. 17
In order to respond to questions from those who wanted to know more about the Anabaptist tradition and its contemporary relevance, the Anabaptist Network’s steering group decided to produce another book addressing these questions directly. During the 1990s, we had attempted to summarize what we had learned from the Anabaptist tradition in the form of seven “core convictions.” These were not a statement of faith or a requirement for membership (the Network is a nonmembership organization) but had functioned as a “center of gravity” for us. We agreed to use an updated version of these as the basis for the book, and I was asked to write it. Noel Moules provided the title—The Naked Anabaptist—and this was p. 63 published by both Paternoster and Herald Press. 18 Much to our surprise, this book was widely read in Mennonite, Mennonite Brethren, and Church of the Brethren communities in Canada and the U.S. and was translated into several other languages.
In addition to expounding the core convictions, the book also introduced some initiatives that had been shaped by these convictions. These included Urban Expression, an urban mission agency, which I cofounded in 1997; its training program, Crucible; a political/theological think tank, Ekklesia; and the Workshop course mentioned above. 19 Although these initiatives did not generally present themselves as explicitly Anabaptist, Anabaptist convictions were evident in their core values, and there were strong relational links with the Anabaptist Network.
Two terms that we have found helpful in describing the Anabaptist community in Britain are “neo-Anabaptist” and “hyphenated Anabaptist.” The first of these is an acknowledgement that, however much we identify with historic Anabaptism, we are in a very different context and need to contextualize Anabaptism for our post-Christendom environment. The core convictions were an attempt to do this. The other term recognizes that many people connected with the Anabaptist Network remain members of churches in other traditions and explore ways of integrating Anabaptist perspectives into these. So there are Baptist-Anabaptists, Methodist-Anabaptists, Pentecostal-Anabaptists, Anglican-Anabaptists, and many others.
The Anabaptist Mennonite Network, 2011–2025
In 2011, the London Mennonite Centre closed and the building was sold. This decision was taken reluctantly, but it had become clear that the Centre was no longer financially viable, as North American Mennonite funding dried up. The building was valuable—situated in an area of London in which property prices had increased dramatically since it was bought in the 1950s—but running costs had become unsustainable. The substantial sale proceeds were held by the London Mennonite Trust to be invested in future Anabaptist/Mennonite activities in Britain.
The closure of the London Mennonite Centre galvanized conversations that had taken place periodically since the late 1990s about the feasibility of merging the Centre and the Anabaptist Network. For various reasons, these talks had always stalled in spite of our close partnership, but this new situation required fresh thinking. After a period of discussion and prayerful reflection, the decision was taken to wind up the London Mennonite Trust and transfer its substantial assets to the renamed Anabaptist Mennonite p. 64 Network. These assets were largely invested in property, mostly in the Birmingham area, and the rental income is used to fund a range of projects.
One of the questions that arose when the Centre closed was what to do with the library, which contained one of the most extensive collection of Anabaptist and other radical church resources in Britain. It was decided to donate this to Bristol Baptist College (Bristol, England) so that it could be integrated into the college’s library and so be accessible to anyone interested. Following this, the college principal suggested that this might provide an opportunity to offer teaching on Anabaptism, and I was invited to become the founding director of the Centre for Anabaptist Studies in 2014. The Centre has offered a range of MA modules and provides supervision for PhD candidates. 20 The Anabaptist Mennonite Network provides bursaries for students and funds to update the library.
During the past few years, the Wood Green Mennonite Church had also been struggling with declining numbers and its inability to impact the neighborhood in which it had been meeting. Its symbiotic relationship with the London Mennonite Centre meant that the closure of the Centre threatened its future, and, in 2016, the church decided to close. This left just one Mennonite Church in Britain, a Portuguese-speaking charismatic fellowship in Eastbourne on the south coast of England founded by Brazilian Mennonite students in the early 2000s.
Two other communities in England owe much to the Anabaptist tradition. The first is the Bruderhof in Sussex and Kent, which has affinities with and some connections with the Hutterites. 21 Numbering several hundred persons, these are our largest Anabaptist-related groups, but they include very few British members. The other community is an emerging network of eleven largely Zimbabwean Brethren in Christ churches planted in several British cities. 22 This denomination draws on Evangelical, Pietist, and Methodist traditions as well as Anabaptism, but in recent years they have been increasingly emphasizing their Anabaptist heritage. Their relationship with the Anabaptist Mennonite Network has grown much stronger over the past decade.
The first project supported by the Anabaptist Mennonite Network was Peaceful Borders in 2015. Founded by Juliet Kilpin, my long-time colleague in Urban Expression, and Simon Jones, this began with visits to the large refugee camp in Calais, France, known as “The Jungle.” Peaceful Borders supported volunteers, helped in practical ways, built relationships with community leaders, and explored ways of being a peaceful presence in the midst of tension, poverty, and police brutality. In recent years, Peaceful Borders has been operating mainly in Britain, supporting asylum seekers p. 65 and advocating for a more just and humane system. Some of the community leaders Juliet and Simon met in the Calais camp are now their colleagues.
During 2019 and 2020, there were several conversations about the development of new Anabaptist communities in Britain. Earlier, the Anabaptist Network had adopted the approach of North American Mennonite mission workers, refraining from any attempt to plant churches in favor of offering resources to others. But we were starting to question this policy. In a situation of church decline and closures, there were many opportunities for church planting without competing with others, and we suspected the Anabaptist tradition might have perspectives and practices of relevance in a post-Christendom context. Attempting to plant some churches with an explicit Anabaptist identity would enable us to test this out.
At a residential conference in March 2020, a decision was taken to attempt this, while still offering support and resources to other churches interested in ways of incorporating Anabaptist practices. A week later, Britain went into the first of a series of lockdowns to restrict the spread of the coronavirus outbreak, so it was not until 2022 that this decision could be put into effect. The Network invited Alex Ellish, a Baptist minister in London who had previously done some work for it and was one of the coordinators of Urban Expression, to chair a steering group. Two part-time coach/catalysts, Barney Barron and Lynsey Heselgrave, were funded by the Network to identify, encourage, and support pioneers to plant churches with Anabaptist values and practices. This project, now called Incarnate, is still in its infancy, but it does represent a change of strategy from a dispersed network of individuals to what we hope will be a network of interrelated communities.
Alongside the discussion about church planting was a conversation about how to move from convictions to practices. Although the “core convictions” did indicate some of the implications of what we said we believed, we became convinced that we needed to go further and ask what practices might embody these convictions. As we reflected on this, we decided to focus on community practices rather than individual practices. We also agreed to use the term “common practices” rather than “core practices,” recognizing that in different contexts some practices might be more appropriate than others. We did not want to be unduly prescriptive but to suggest that there were practices that were likely to characterize churches with Anabaptist convictions. Following the conference in 2020, we settled on twelve of these practices as our initial list and disseminated these for further reflection.
In order to encourage this reflection and as a resource for the Incarnate project, we decided that a further book might be helpful. Just as The Naked p. 66 Anabaptist had explored the core convictions, this book could investigate the outworking of the common practices. Once again, I took responsibility for writing the book but invited three colleagues to contribute chapters: Juliet Kilpin on Peaceful Borders, Alex Ellish on Incarnate, and Karen Sethuraman on Soulspace (of which more below). And so The New Anabaptists: Practices for Emerging Communities was published in January 2024. 23
Although most activities of the Anabaptist Mennonite Network have taken place in England, with occasional events in Scotland, we are aware of longstanding interest in Ireland among North American Mennonites and are delighted that new initiatives are emerging there. The Mennonite Board of Missions sent workers to the Republic of Ireland in 1978 and to Northern Ireland in 1987. The focus in both contexts was on peace and reconciliation. Mission workers helped to develop a reconciliation studies program for the Irish School of Ecumenics, participated in cross-community initiatives in Belfast, and engaged in interpersonal forms of peacemaking through multiple conversations. Two of the key figures were Joe Liechty and Joe Campbell, who have contributed chapters on Mennonite work in Ireland to a book on Mennonite participation in international peacebuilding. 24 Joe and Linda Liechty were Mennonite Board of Missions workers based in Dublin; Joe Campbell was a Northern Irish Presbyterian who was heavily influenced by the Kreiders and the London Mennonite Centre and worked alongside numerous Mennonite volunteers in Northern Ireland. Another significant regular visitor was John Paul Lederach, bringing training on peace and reconciliation. 25
Soulspace is an emerging initiative in Belfast, linked with the Incarnate project. It is convened by Karen Sethuraman, the first ordained Baptist minister in Northern Ireland. It operates both as an online community with 250 participants and as a physical gathering, called “The Table.” Karen is also working toward a PhD with the Centre for Anabaptist Studies, investigating whether Anabaptist ecclesiology might offer a way forward in post-conflict Northern Ireland. A colleague of hers, Gordon McDade, is also exploring the possibility of planting an Anabaptist church into a former Methodist church building that is situated on one of the so-called “peace walls” in Belfast. The Anabaptist Mennonite Network is supporting these new initiatives.
We are looking forward to participating in events to mark the five hundredth anniversary of the Anabaptist movement in 2025. Not only are we organizing events in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, but some of us are also planning to participate in events elsewhere in Europe. Over the years, we have valued our connections with North American and European Mennonites and Mennonite Brethren. For the first time, in October 2024, p. 67 we hosted the annual European Mennonite Leaders’ conference, which is convened by José Arrais, a Mennonite Brethren leader from Portugal. And several of us have participated in events organized by Mennonite Board of Missions, Mennonite Central Committee, and various Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren churches in France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Spain, and Lithuania. We were also instrumental in encouraging the formation of an Anabaptist Network in Scandinavia. These links are important to us as a relatively small Anabaptist community in Britain that is eager to contextualize the Anabaptist vision but recognizes the need to remain connected with historic expressions of the Anabaptist tradition.
The challenges ahead include following through on the project to plant churches that are explicitly Anabaptist; raising up younger leaders, including a new director for the Centre for Anabaptist Studies; grappling with the legacies of colonialism and the exciting but problematic realities of “reverse mission”; and continuing to explore ways in which the Anabaptist vision can help followers of Jesus in Britain to engage creatively with the opportunities of a post-Christendom culture and respond faithfully and hopefully to the complex challenges of a world in crisis.
Notes
- See further Albert Pleysier, Henry VIII and the Anabaptists (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2014). The most comprehensive account of Anabaptism in England in the sixteenth century is Irvin B. Horst, The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558 (Nieuwkoop: B. De Graaf, 1972).
- See further Kirk R. MacGregor, “The Theology of English Anabaptist Martyr Joan Bocher,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 91 (October 2017): 454.
- See Gary K. Waite, Anti-Anabaptist Polemics: Dutch Anabaptism and the Devil in England, 1531–1660 (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2023).
- For examples, see Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 87, 98, 100, 223.
- See Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988).
- E. G. Rupp, Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition (Mainly in the Reign of Henry VIII) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947; reissue 1966), 1.
- Watts, 7. p. 68
- See further James Coggins, John Smyth’s Congregation: English Separatism, Mennonite Influence, and the Elect Nation (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1991), and Paul S. Fiddes, ed., The Fourth Strand of the Reformation: The Covenant Ecclesiology of Anabaptists, English Separatists and Early General Baptists (Oxford: Centre for Baptist History and Heritage, 2018).
- Watts, 441.
- This quotation (240) and much other information in this section is drawn from Alan Kreider, “From Mennonite to Anabaptist: Mennonite Witness in England since 1974,” in History and Mission in Europe: Continuing the Conversation, eds. Mary Raber and Peter F. Penner (Schwarzenfeld: Neufeld, 2011), 237–60.
- See anabaptist.au/.
- See workshop.org.uk/.
- This was a print journal that continued until 2004, publishing 37 issues. It was resurrected in 2019 as an online journal. See anabaptismtoday.co.uk/index.php/home.
- We realized, of course, that this term was originally an accusation and that those accused denied that they were rebaptizing each other, but it was becoming familiar in Britain and accruing more helpful connotations.
- Alan and Eleanor Kreider, whose ministry and many friendships had been foundational to the development of the Anabaptist Network, returned to the U.S. in 2000. For a reflection on their time in England, see Kreider, “From Mennonite to Anabaptist.”
- See bbministries.org.uk/.
- These books, by different authors, have been variously published or republished by Paternoster Press, Herald Press, Wipf & Stock, and SCM Press. The aforementioned book is now in a second edition: Stuart Murray, Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018).
- Stuart Murray, The Naked Anabaptist: Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2010; Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2011).
- See urbanexpression.org.uk and ekklesia.co.uk.
- See bristol-baptist.ac.uk/study-centres/anabaptist-study-centre/.
- See bruderhof.com/.
- See westmidbicc.org/bicc-near-you/.
- Stuart Murray, The New Anabaptists: Practices for Emerging Communities (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2024).
- In Cynthia Sampson and John Paul Lederach, eds., From the Ground Up: Mennonite Contributions to International Peacekeeping (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
- See, for example, John Paul Lederach, The Journey Toward Reconciliation (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1999).
