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“It isn't necessary to call me Father, the chaplain explained. I'm an Anabaptist.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“True Christians are those who carry out Christ's doctrine in their lives. ”
― Michael Sattler

“Unless a theologian has the inner fortitude of a desert saint, he has only one effective remedy against the threat of cognitive collapse in the face of these pressures: he must huddle together with like-minded fellow deviants⁠—and huddle very closely indeed. Only in a countercommunity of considerable strength does cognitive deviance have a chance to maintain itself. The countercommunity provides continuing therapy against the creeping doubt as to whether, after all, one may not be wrong and the majority right. To fulfill its functions of providing social support for the deviant body of "knowledge," the countercommunity must provide a strong sense of solidarity among its members (a "fellowship of the saints" in a world rampant with devils) and it must be quite closed vis-à-vis the outside ("Be not yoked together with unbelievers"); in sum, it must be a kind of ghetto.”
― Peter L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural

“Is the church really demonstrating the new life in Christ if there is no discipline, if there is no fencing in of the Lord's table, no demand for purity of life?”
― Michael Sattler

“Thou doubtest because thou lovest the truth. Some would willingly believe life but a phantasm, if only it might for ever afford them a world of pleasant dreams: thou art not of such! Be content for a while not to know surely. The hour will come, and that ere long, when, being true, thou shalt behold the very truth, and doubt will be for ever dead. Scarce, then, wilt thou be able to recall the features of the phantom. Thou wilt then know that which thou canst not now dream. Thou hast not yet looked the Truth in the face, hast as yet at best but seen him through a cloud. That which thou seest not, and never didst see save in a glass darkly—that which, indeed, never can be known save by its innate splendour shining straight into pure eyes—that thou canst not but doubt, and art blameless in doubting until thou seest it face to face, when thou wilt no longer be able to doubt it.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“We are accused also of condemning all who are not of our mind and who act not as we do. That we deny. We condemn no man, but we show to men their reprobate life and warn them of condemnation, and this we do in accordance with the Word of God that cannot lie.... No human being can condemn another. Judgment is in the hand of the Lord; but sinful, evil works are what condemn man, when he has not left them in accordance with the Word of God and brought forth honest fruits of repentance....�� - Felbinger, Hutterite beheaded for his faith, July 10, 1560 in "The Anabaptists”
― William Roscoe Estep

“From the very beginning of the movement in the sixteenth century, Anabaptists shared a deep suspicion of the so-called Schriftgelehrten - the university-trained scholars who, they claimed artfully dodged the clear and simple teachings of Jesus by appealing to complex arguments and carefully crafted statements of doctrine. In other words, they confused theological discussions with lived faith.”
― John D. Roth, Beliefs: Mennonite Faith and Practice

“There can be no question but that the great principles of freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, and voluntarism in religion, so basic in American Protestantism and so essential to democracy, ultimately are derived from the Anabaptists of the Reformation period, who for the first time clearly enunciated them and challenged the Christian world to follow them in practice.”
― Harold S. Bender, The Anabaptist Vision

“Truth is immortal”
― Balthasar Hubmaier, Balthasar Hubmaier: Theologian of Anabaptism

“Throughout history, Christians have faced the persistent temptation of confusing the language we use to talk about God with the essence of Christian faith. This stubborn human tendency to turn doctrine into an idol - to confuse a human creation with the truth itself - can easily lead people to wield doctrinal claims as a weapon against minority or dissenting perspectives. Thus, anyone who does not line up with a certain formulation of Christian faith is not only wrong, but also a heretic and therefore worthy of punishment or death.”
― John D. Roth, Beliefs: Mennonite Faith and Practice

“One hundred years before the present government existed, a powerful leader, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, stated his views in clear, unflinching terms. "I thank God," he said, that "there are no free schools nor printing [in this land]. For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing hath divulged them...God save us from both!”
― Jonathan Kozol, Illiterate America

“Whoever says that God wills sin does not know what God or sin is. For sinning is always to do or to omit something against the will of God, 1 John 2:5-6.”
― Balthasar Hubmaier, Balthasar Hubmaier: Theologian of Anabaptism

“To associate what is nice with what is evil happened easily in the sixteenth century. Comfortable houses, nice clothes, and orderly, easy lives belonged to the “world�� and only dungeons, flight, torture, grief, and anxiety remained for the true followers of Christ. The Anabaptists, living in such an other-worldly atmosphere of persecution, had no time for humour or recreation. At first from necessity, but soon from a brotherhood emphasis on strict asceticism, they ruled out many normal comforts of life. In Switzerland the Anabaptists even condemned congregational singing as a frivolous concession to the senses.”
― Peter Hoover, The Secret of the Strength: What Would the Anabaptists Tell This Generation?

“In the name of rejecting ecclesiastical authority as "hierarchy" or "tradition" as theological manipulation and bondage, we have instead created a hermeneutic of suspicion and have invested every biblically informed conscience (instead of a pope) to speak ex cathedra. It is a Pyrrhic victory for Free church Protestantism when the net effect of its teaching results in the replacing of the tyranny of the magisterium with the tyranny of individualism.”
― Daniel H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants

“La iglesia bíblica consiste en los que han sido redimidos por Cristo, unidos en una comunión de fe y amor, y comprometidos a la vida de obediencia y santidad. Este concepto espera que cada cristiano verdadero se una voluntariamente a una hermandad cristiana por medio de un compromiso vertical (con Dios) y uno horizontal (con los hermanos). Éste es el cuadro de la iglesia que vemos en el libro de los Hechos.”
― D. Eugenio Heisey, Más allá del Protestantismo