Visiting the Site of an Anabaptist Leader

Since we are to be conformed to the image of Christ, how can we then fight our enemies with the sword?… Our weapons are not weapons with which cities and countries may be destroyed, walls and gates broken down, and human blood shed in torrents like water. ~ Menno Simons

It’s been a while since I last posted. With the holidays and other things happening in my life, I have been rather busy. I am also finding that I’m not quite ready to discuss courtship practices just yet. To be honest, it is rather embarrassing. Even among the Amish, bed courtship is controversial and very hush-hush. I was always told not to tell people outside the community about it, because they wouldn’t understand. Now I realize that I don’t understand it either, and I grew up with it. I dare say other Amish people don’t understand it either.

So for tonight I am going to post pictures and thoughts about visiting Bad Oldesloe, in the north of Hamburg, Germany.  My husband and I visited Beata Vogel, who lived there and who showed us around. In Bad Oldesloe, there is a cottage that used to house Menno Simons’ printing press. Menno Simons was an Anabaptist leader in the 1500s, who was a prolific writer and who gave the Mennonites their name. He revitalized the Anabaptist movement when it was floundering, right after a faction of the Anabaptists had participated in the violence of the Peasant War in Münster. Simons was considered a moderate Anabaptist leader, who strongly advocated nonviolence or “nonresistance.”