*Editor’s Note: The following blog post is the third installment of a three-part series authored by Pastor Ben Habegger. Click here to read more installments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
A Cautionary Tale of Schismatic Application: The Ban and Shunning within Anabaptist Circles
Then there is the extreme [in the administration of corrective discipline] of carnal severity. This usually comes after a period when discipline has been tragically neglected and there is a rediscovery of its wholesome influence in the church. This occurred in some of the older Anabaptist churches when excommunication involved making a spouse and her children leave the home of the person shunned. That was an extreme expression in reacting against the state church and the absence of discipline. Be patient in your judgment of those Anabaptist brethren, because they sought to implement corrective church discipline in a very unfavorable setting.
Some understanding of what transpired during the Protestant Reformation is helpful. Certain electors and certain leaders would declare their canton or their state no longer loyal to the Roman Catholic Church but committed to the confessional standards which emerged during the Reformation. Then suddenly, all the Catholic churches within that canton or state were considered Reformed churches with unreformed, unconverted people sitting in the pews sympathizing with what the leader had done. In other words, the Protestant Reformation did not break the stranglehold of the sacralist state church arrangement. As a result, the so-called Protestant churches were a mixed church from the outset. When the Anabaptists saw this, they said that the church is supposed to be composed of true saints, men and women who had been united to Christ by faith and professed their faith commitment in baptism, pledging to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. In other words, these Anabaptists saw from Scripture that the churches of the New Testament were composed of men and women who were not incorporated into it by right of birth and a ritual of infant sprinkling. Rather, they saw from Scripture that entrance into the church of Christ was dependent on the profession of a vital saving union with Christ, to which one is to bear witness by undergoing confessor baptism, or what has come to be designated as credobaptism.
We should thank God for their courage, many of whom suffered greatly, while some were even martyred for daring to declare the state-church concept antithetical to true Christianity. That suffering came not only at the hands of Romanists, but even at the hands and instigation of some of the so-called Protestant reformers. In their determination to have pure churches composed only of confessing disciples whose lives validated their profession, some of the Anabaptists went beyond a balanced scriptural view of what was necessary to be admitted into a visible community of saints, and what was necessary to remain in the membership of such a community. They began to overreact against the laxity of the previous situation where corrective church discipline was either non-existent or very lax at best. In many cases, the pendulum moved very swiftly from the extreme of laxity to the other extreme of excessive severity, thereby injecting a high level of prejudice against the concept of corrective church discipline.[1]
In our own congregation, we have members who came to Christ out of a radical, isolationist cult, and they still have loved ones in more or less sectarian groups. Such a background has its share of veritable trauma related to illegitimate and cruel shunning when anyone violated the demands of the cult or departed the group. Some of these groups have claimed an Anabaptist lineage for their own thoughts (though this claim is a historical stretch). What follows about the Anabaptists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries should not be overshadowed by current heretics who wish to claim a loosely Anabaptist heritage (much as the leftist United Methodists of today cannot justly claim spiritual solidarity with the Methodism of John and Charles Wesley in the eighteenth century). At the same time, the Amish mentioned later did indeed behave in a schismatic, sectarian manner in their practice of shunning (as well as other extrabiblical standards of holiness).
That said, there is a legitimate danger of misapplication regarding the social exclusion necessary to excommunication. The history of various Anabaptist groups richly illustrates this danger, beginning with the Reformation-era namesake of the Mennonites, Menno Simons, and his teaching regarding “the ban.”
Baptism and the ban were the two keys controlling the entry to and the exit from the regenerate church of Anabaptism. By [re]baptism one entered the church. By the ban the wayward member was extruded… The ban was, of course, based on Matt. 18:15–18. With it came to be associated the practice of avoidance or shunning, based on 1 Cor. 5:11. Paul’s injunction not to eat with the faithless could be interpreted as limited to the Supper of the Lord or it could be extended so as to exclude all social intercourse with the banned. And as the movement passed from the phase of widespread baptismal recruitment in the spirit of Conrad Grebel (cf. Selection III, at n. 21), George Blaurock (Selection I), and Melchior Hofmann (Selection IX) to that of disciplined consolidation (cf. Hutterite Ulrich Stadler, Selection XIII), the problem of the extent to which the faithful might properly associate with former members who had been banned, including spouses, became acute. In the Netherlands the rigoristic interpretation of avoidance set in after the defection (c. 1540) of Obbe Philips (Selection X) and the banning of Adam Pastor in 1547 for incipient Unitarianism. Among the rigorist leaders were Menno’s two chief lieutenants, Dietrich Philips (cf. Selection XI, at notes 55 and 58) and Leonard Bouwens. Menno himself, however, wavered on the question of shunning a banned spouse, bed and board. Whereupon he was himself threatened with excommunication. By 1555 a schism opened on this issue with Menno leading the slightly moderated rigorists over against the laxist or mild-banner Waterlanders, who became the forerunners of the liberal Doopsgezinden.[2]
Here are portions of two questions and answers put forth by Menno Simons regarding “the ban”:
QUESTION 3. Should husband and wife shun each other on account of the ban—as also parents and children? Answer. First, that the rule of the ban is a general rule, and excepts none: neither husband nor wife, neither parent nor child….
Some object to this, saying that there is no divorce but by reason of adultery. This is just what we say; and therefore we do not speak of divorce, but of shunning, and that for the aforementioned reasons….
QUESTION 5. Are we allowed to show the banned any charity, love, and mercy? Answer. Everyone should consider, (1) the exact meaning of the word commercium; (2) for what reason and purpose the ban was ordained by the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures; (3) how a real true Christian is reborn, bred, and endowed; (4) how the merciful Father himself acts with those who are already worthy of his judgment and wrath.
All those who can rightly see into these will doubtlessly not deny necessary services, love, and mercy to the banned. For the word commercium does not forbid these, but it forbids daily company, conversation, society and business, as was explained above.[3]
William Estep further explains the tensions in these Anabaptist groups during the lifetime of Menno Simons:
Even though Menno’s last years were spent in comparative safety, they were far from peaceful. His strict position on shunning an excommunicated church member soon became divisive. He found himself caught between two fires. Leenaert Bouwens and Dirk Philips took an extreme position. They demanded that shunning be practiced between married partners to the extent of denying the excommunicated member “bed and board.” After oscillating between this position and a somewhat more moderate one, Menno finally came out on the side of the milder position. From the beginning, the Swiss and south German Anabaptists were dissatisfied with the Dutch position on shunning. Meeting in Strasbourg in 1557, they rejected the practice of shunning married partners and petitioned the Mennonites to reconsider their position.
This criticism of the strict position caused Menno to defend it. Once again he stood with his “dear brethren,” Dirk Philips and Leenaert Bouwens, against the more liberal view of their critics. However, the apparent sternness of Menno’s position was mitigated by the transparent sincerity and love with which he wrote.[4]
In the generation following Menno Simons, questions of shunning only intensified as Jacob Ammann arose to lead the Amish schism.
Meanwhile Mennonite refugees continued to come into the region [of Alsace]. Among them was Jacob Ammann (b. 1644), who soon became minister and elder of the congregation in Markirch. There he became troubled over the lack of church discipline in his and other Alsatian and Swiss congregations. Appealing to the Dordrecht Confession which the congregations had now adopted, he insisted that church discipline should include avoidance. In its strictest form this meant that even family members must avoid excommunicated persons, making them eat, sleep, and live completely alone. The goal of this action was to bring them to repentance. Ammann also insisted that all congregations should practice foot washing, that members wear simple clothing including beards for the men.[5]
The Amish-Mennonites or Amish, as they have come to be known, originated from the only major division among the Swiss Brethren in Europe. The Dutch Mennonites had experienced many divisions during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, frequently over issues of church discipline. They may have inadvertently helped to precipitate the Amish division through the article on discipline in the (Dutch) Dordrecht Confession of 1632, which demanded shunning or avoidance (Meidung) of a transgressing member of the fellowship. Such a member was to be expelled from the fellowship, but also “according to the doctrine of Christ and his apostles, be shunned and avoided by all members of the church… whether it be in eating or drinking, or other like social matters.”
The Confession itself had not been formally adopted by the Swiss Brethren, but was frequently referred to by them as a guide to faith. It was precisely on the subject of discipline that the Swiss had held discussions with the Dutch Mennonites, including Menno Simons, and urged them to moderation. In late seventeenth century, however, a young Swiss Brethren elder by the name of Jacob Ammann, became deeply concerned over laxity of discipline in the Swiss and Alsatian congregations, when a woman who admitted speaking a falsehood was not shunned. He also identified as wrong the belief that sincere people (treuherzige) who were sympathetic to the Swiss Brethren doctrines but did not join the group would be saved.
In due course Ammann began traveling from his home near Bern, Switzerland, to visit all the congregations in the Swiss, South German, and Alsace areas to find support for his concern. He also criticized an older fellow elder, Hans Reist, for not disciplining the woman and other evidences of undue tolerance. Reist undoubtedly underestimated Ammann’s zeal when he told others “not to consider seriously the teaching and ordinances of youths.” Meanwhile Ammann’s concerns grew to include other issues. Though the Swiss had never practiced foot washing, article XI of the Dordrecht Confession did teach it, and so Ammann did also. He saw worldliness coming into the fellowship in the clothes being worn and urged both simplicity and uniformity. Men should not trim their beards since this was an obvious sign of pride. To attend the services of the state church was also grounds for discipline. Communion service was to be observed twice annually, not once, Ammann insisted, and began the actual schism by observing it “out of order” in the summer of 1693.
Eventually Ammann excommunicated all ministers who did not agree with him, including Reist, as well as many individual members. He found his strongest support in Alsace. Many attempts at reconciliation were made, even by North German Mennonites, but without success. While Ammann did apologize later and admitted acting too quickly, he did not retreat from the substance of his position. The 1693 division seemed to be final by 1697. It was a reform attempt to recover doctrines which Ammann thought were being neglected, but it also included personality conflicts and the struggle for power.[6]
Ironically, the split of the Amish faction from the Swiss Brethren is key to my own family history. Habeggers were found among the Swiss Brethren Anabaptists from its early years (since at least 1564[7]), but it was the Amish schism which apparently divided them. On the one hand, some of my ancestors and their congregations refused to accept Jacob Ammann’s radical version of avoiding the excommunicated (among his other radical dictates), and therefore they remained in the mainstream Swiss Brethren movement (later known as “Mennonites” in North America). Peter Habegger was one of the Swiss ministers whom Jacob Ammann declared excommunicated on the spot during a discussion of their differences.[8]
Nevertheless, the Amish division caused permanent rifts among the tight-knit Swiss Brethren congregations. A different stream of my ancestors, including a different stream of Habeggers, became Amish and remained so until the twentieth century. The same Anabaptist family of Habeggers, all originating in Canton Bern, Switzerland, was permanently divided by the Amish schism. My father’s household happened to be an ironic reunion of that divided bloodline. My Grandpa Habegger was from the Amish line (though his grandfather had created a splinter group from the Old Order Amish and my own grandfather was no longer Amish at all), and my Grandma Habegger’s mother was a Habegger from the Swiss Brethren/Mennonite line.
Such historical sagas illustrate the possible consequences of losing vital distinctions and confusing categories when practicing excommunication. The consequences affect not only individual but church relationships. We must certainly be zealous to obey Christ’s commands and those of his apostles, but zeal without careful understanding will wreak spiritual havoc.
Stay in touch with CBTSeminary
For more information about CBTS, go to CBTSeminary.org
Consider giving to CBTSeminary to help us train the next generation of gospel ministers.
Apply to CBTS today to be sharpened for a lifetime of faithful ministry.
Follow CBTS on our socials: X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Sign up for our newsletter and receive monthly updates related to the Seminary.
[1] Albert N. Martin, The Man of God: His Shepherding, Evangelizing, and Counseling Labors, Pastoral Theology, Volume 3 (Montville, NJ: Trinity Pulpit Press, 2020), 198–199.
[2] “On the Ban: Questions and Answers, by Menno Simons [1550], Introduction”, Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers: Documents Illustrative of the Radical Reformation, edited by George Huntston Williams and Angel M. Mergal, The Library of Christian Classics, Ichthus Edition (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957), 261–262.
[3] Ibid., 264–265, 267.
[4] William R. Estep, The Anabaptist Story: An Introduction to Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism, Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 173–174.
[5] Cornelius J. Dyck, An Introduction to Mennonite History: A Popular History of the Anabaptists and the Mennonites, Third Edition (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1993), 153.
[6] Ibid., 236–237.
[7] Gratz, Delbert L. “Habegger (Habecker, Hawbecker) family.” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1956. Web. 8 Oct 2026. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Habegger_(Habecker,_Hawbecker)_family&oldid=141147.
[8] Harold S. Bender, “Amish Division.” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1953. Web. 16 Feb 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Amish_Division&oldid=146357.
