[11] Seven ordinances have been taught in many traditional Mennonite churches, which include "baptism, communion, footwashing, marriage, anointing with oil, the holy kiss, and the prayer covering.

In the spirit of the times, other groups came to preach about reducing hierarchy, relations with the state, eschatology, and sexual license, running from utter abandon to extreme chastity.

Many government and religious leaders, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, considered voluntary church membership to be dangerous—the concern of some deepened by reports of the Münster Rebellion, led by a violent sect of Anabaptists.

Martyrs Mirror, published in 1660, documents much of the persecution of Anabaptists and their predecessors, including accounts of over 4,000 burnings of individuals, and numerous stonings, imprisonments, and live burials.

[30] In 1693, Jakob Ammann led an effort to reform the Mennonite church in Switzerland and South Germany to include shunning, to hold communion more often, and other differences.

While Mennonites in Colonial America were enjoying considerable religious freedom, their counterparts in Europe continued to struggle with persecution and temporary refuge under certain ruling monarchs.

[38][39][40] Seven ordinances have been taught in many traditional Mennonite churches, which include "baptism, communion, footwashing, marriage, anointing with oil, the holy kiss, and the prayer covering.

They are notable for being the church of Milton S. Hershey's mother and famous for the long and bitter ban of Robert Bear, a Pennsylvania farmer who rebelled against what he saw as dishonesty and disunity in the leadership.

However, disagreements in the United States and Canada between conservative and progressive (i.e. less emphasis on literal interpretation of scriptures) leaders began in the first half of the 20th century and continue to some extent today.

Following World War II, a conservative movement emerged from scattered separatist groups as a reaction to the Mennonite churches drifting away from their historical traditions.

[51][52] The "Russian Mennonites" (German: "Russlandmennoniten")[53] today are descended from Dutch Anabaptists, who came from the Netherlands and started around 1530 to settle around Danzig and in West Prussia, where they lived for about 250 years.

Russian government officials invited Mennonites living in the Kingdom of Prussia to farm the Ukrainian steppes depopulated by Tatar raids in exchange for religious freedom and military exemption.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the Mennonites in Russia owned large agricultural estates and some had become successful as industrial entrepreneurs in the cities, employing wage labor.

When the German army invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 during World War II, many in the Mennonite community perceived them as liberators from the communist regime under which they had suffered.

From 1941 to 1947, 4,665 Mennonites, Amish and Brethren in Christ[77] were among nearly 12,000 conscientious objectors who performed work of national importance in 152 CPS camps throughout the United States and Puerto Rico.

CPS made significant contributions to forest fire prevention, erosion and flood control, medical science and reform of the mental health system.

The first schism in America occurred in 1778 when Bishop Christian Funk's support of the American Revolution led to his excommunication and the formation of a separate Mennonite group known as Funkites.

[86] * name not on the 20-entry list Surnames of Frisians include Abrahams, Arens, Behrends, Cornelius, Daniels, Dirksen, Doercksen, Frantzen, Goertzen, Gossen, Harms, Heinrichs, Jantzen, Pauls, Peters, Siemens, and Woelms.

[87] Surnames that mostly occur in Frisian congregations include Adrian, Brandt, Buller, Caspar, Flaming, Hamm, Harms, Isaak, Kettler, Kliewer, Knels, Stobbe, Teus, Töws, and Toews,[88] additionally, Pauls,[89] Peters,[90] Unruh,[89] and Fransen and Schmidt.

[93] Across Latin America, Mennonite colonization has been seen as a driver of environmental damage associated with land clearance in countries including Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay,[21] and Peru,[20] while indigenous peoples in Suriname have expressed similar concerns.

[94] Since the early- to mid-twentieth century, Mennonite colonization has brought a characteristic, religious approach to cultivation (not generally found in either peasant or corporate farming) and the potential to impact a range of different biomes.

[20] Mennonite farmers have cleared large areas of wilderness (greater than the size of the Netherlands) across major transnational regions of Latin America such as the Gran Chaco, the Chiquitano, and the Amazon rainforest.

[20][21] Their commercial success in transforming previously wild lands to make way for soybean production and cattle ranching appears to have provided inspiration for others, including some conglomerates that have reproduced the model on a massive scale.

[21] While habitat destruction by Mennonite colonies has been on a smaller scale overall than that recently inflicted by a few very large corporations, the environmental damage is increasingly being contested,[20] sometimes in the form of legal challenges.

[97][98] In July 2018, Mexican Mennonites were fined $500,000 for unauthorized logging on 1,445 hectares (5½ square miles) of forested ejidos (shared ownership lands) in Quintana Roo.

The province threatened to invoke youth protection services if the Mennonite children were not registered with the Education Ministry; they either had to be home-schooled using the government-approved material, or attend a "sanctioned" school.

[110] Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), founded on 27 September 1920, in Chicago, Illinois,[111] provides disaster relief around the world alongside their long-term international development programs.

[118] Mennonite organizations in South Africa, initially stifled under apartheid due to the Afrikaner government's distrust of foreign pacifist churches, have expanded substantially since 1994.

This guarantee of many freedoms was the impetus that created the two original Old Colony settlements near Patos Nuevo Ideal, Durango, Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua and La Honda, Zacatecas.

[147] Other films depicting Mennonites include I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight, as well as All My Puny Sorrows and the Oscar-winning Women Talking, both based on Miriam Toews novels.