Menno Simons
1496-1561 16th century
The faith that cannot lie down, and that gets up as concrete acts.
Who was Menno Simons?
A Frisian parish priest, he doubted for years what he was teaching, read Scripture in secret, and finally left his parish to join the small hunted Anabaptist communities. He spent the rest of his life on the roads of the Netherlands and Holstein, writing and gathering people with a price on their heads. The refusal of weapons and the service of the poor remained, after him, the mark of the churches that bear his name.
In their own words
My heart trembled in my body. I prayed to God with sighs and tears that he would give to me, a troubled sinner, the gift of his grace and create a clean heart in me.