This is a good question. The answer is: both.

But to tell the history of how the Mennonites came to be, I must start at the beginning of Christianity.

After the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (which in my opinion is the most significant event in all of human history), the Christian church was born in Jerusalem and grew by thousands of converts daily. The Jews (who weren’t thrilled about the accusation that not only did they not recognize their own Messiah, but they had him executed) persecuted the early converts. Of the original twelve disciples, ten were executed, John was exiled, and Judas hung himself after he realized what a horrifically bad decision it was to betray the Son of God.

The Romans conquered Jerusalem in AD 70, and they turned the persecution and capture of Christians into a sport.The torture and death of Christians became entertainment for the “enlightened” Roman citizens. One result of this persecution was that many Christians moved away from Jerusalem, which was exactly what Christ had told them to do – to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Thus the church grew and spread throughout the Roman Empire.

The Christians were heavily persecuted until early in the fourth century, when the religion was legalised by Constantine I. After this, the church had a few centuries of ruling power. If power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely; the power of the burgeoning Catholic Church created a corruption that oppressed the people from the cradle to the grave and beyond.

The Protestant Reformation officially began in 1517, when Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg Church. Luther soon realized that reforming so huge an organization as the Roman Catholic Church was not happening any time soon, so he founded the Lutheran Church.

There were other reformers who didn’t think that Luther had protested quite enough, so they began the Anabaptist Movement. Anabaptist means baptised again, since everyone of that generation had already been baptised as infants in the Catholic Church.

The Anabaptists challenged the Roman Catholic practice of infant baptism. Cornelius J. Dyck, author of “An Introduction to Mennonite History”, wrote: “As a sacrament with its own effectiveness regardless of the attitude of the infant, this practice was believed to purify the child from the stain of original sin, making salvation certain in case of early death and predisposing him toward a mature Christian life… The reformers defined faith as a personal response of trusting obedience and repentance. It must be genuine and personal to meet the conditions for salvation. They insisted that no church ceremony could have saving value.” (p. 31)