What is "mennonite" ?

Do you know that Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons and Futurama grew up in a mennonite family?

Don't get confused with maronites :D

What is Mennonite then?
Mennonite is a group of Christian Anabaptist (Radical Reformation) denominations after the name of Menno Simons. There are about 1.5 million Mennonites in the world (data from 2006).

The early history of the Mennonites begins with the Anabaptists in the German and Dutch-speaking parts of central Europe. The German term is "Täufer" (that is, Baptists). These forerunners of modern Mennonites were part of the broad reaction against the practices and theology of the Catholic Church known as the Protestant Reformation.

Its most distinguishing feature is the rejection of infant baptism, an act that had both religious and political meaning since almost every infant born in Western Europe was baptized into the Catholic Church. Other significant theological views of the Mennonites developed in opposition to Catholic views or to the views of other Protestant reformers like Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli.

Some of the followers of Zwingli's Reformed church felt that requiring church membership beginning at birth was inconsistent with the New Testament example. They felt that the church should be completely removed from government (the proto-free church tradition), and that people should join only once they were willing to publicly acknowledge that they believed in Jesus and wanted to live in accordance with his teachings.

movement. In the spirit of the times, many radical groups followed, preaching any number of ideas about hierarchy, the state, At a small meeting on January 21, 1525, Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and George Blaurock, along with twelve others, baptized each other. This meeting marks the beginning of the Anabaptisteschatology, and sexual license, running from utter abandon to extreme chastity. These movements are together referred to as the Radical Reformation.

(source : Wikipedia)