A study on the Mennonite Church

The topic of this research includes emergence of the Mennonite Church, confession and rules of this faith, services, practices of worships, customs, holidays, schools and missionary activities, and the life of this church's founder and his works. The purpose of this study is to investigate stages of the Mennonite Church development until 21st century, which is an Anabaptist movement, started in the 16th century. The United States of America was visited to investigate the Mennonite Church members' lives, and search for resources from the practicing Mennonite Churches and their universities, in which country Mennonites only found the opportunity to practice their religion freely. The sources were used in this study including Menno Simon's publications and English language based publications that describe the history and the religion practices of the Mennonites, that were published from 1871 to 2015. These publications were investigated with the descriptive method. Beside this, phenomenological methods were used. Further, the comparison method was also utilized to show the similarities and the differences between Mennonite Church and Catholics with Protestants because these two churches were against to the ideas of the Mennonite Church. The Mennonite Church emerged as a Christian denomination in the 16th century in the Low Countries consisting of Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg around of these countries. The reason for emergence of the Mennonite Church as a reform movement time is that the ideas of this church show differences from Catholic and Protestant denomination. Because of these differences, the Mennonite Church was called as Anabaptists by the Catholic and the Protestant Churches. Given that, the Mennonite Church is an Anabaptists movement, firstly the movements and the ideas, which were caused this church to be developed, was examined in the situations of the Low Countries' religion, social and political structures. After this, the emergence of Mennonite Church, and the tortures and pressures, that were happened to Mennonites, were investigated during the development of this church. Moreover, the life of Menno Simons, why he converted to Mennonite when he was a Catholic priest, and why he did not participate in the Protestant movement although he was affected before, were explained. Thus, the ideas and the sources that Menno Simons revealed while establishing the principles of faith were examined. Thereafter, the spread and the migration of the Mennonites to other countries were included. Finally, the foundations of the Mennonites' beliefs, teachings, practices, traditions, holidays, worships, schools, missionary activities, and today's Mennonites living in Europe and America were explained in detail. Key Words: Religion, History, History of Religions, Church, The Reform of the 16th Century, Anabaptist, The Mennonite Church, Menno Simons, Baptist, The Lord's Supper, Foot Washing, Missionary.