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A woodcut in the 17th-century Anabaptist Martyrs Mirror shows Dirk Willems, an early Dutch Mennonite, saving the life of a "thief-catcher" who has fallen through the ice on a lake. The "thief-catcher" had been pursuing Willems at a burgomaster's behest, to bring him to trial and execution for his Anabaptist beliefs. After his act of mercy, Willems was nonetheless recaptured (over the protests, the Mirror notes, of his rescued pursuer) and burned at the stake.

This story is intimately familiar to most Amish, Mennonites, and Brethren (the Amish still give the Martyrs Mirror as a wedding present). It celebrates their sense that to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, one must serve others as he did and taught. This sense of compassionate human responsibility has borne fruit in a long history of Anabaptist mutual aid and service ministries.

During the intense persecutions of the 16th and early 17th centuries, adherents drew together for protection and sustenance in close-knit communities. But after the persecutions ended, the tendency to act in concert persisted. In Europe, especially Russia, where Catherine the Great permitted Mennonites great freedom to develop their own way of life, Anabaptist agricultural communities operated as cooperatives, with equal distribution of arable land and commonly held animal herds. They also grew used to sharing the workload—an ethos demonstrated most visibly today in the traditional Amish barn raising. Such cooperative efforts have allowed the Mennonites and related groups to achieve what one writer has called "reasonable prosperity for the group rather than for only a few within the group."

In America, early Mennonites continued the practice of providing for persecuted brethren in Europe and helped Mennonites who were driven from their homes in Europe relocate to America. A few communities in North America, past and present, have practiced community of goods, such as the Ephrata Community in colonial Pennsylvania, the Hutterites of the Midwestern U. S. and Canada, and the Hutterian Brethren (Bruderhof) of the Eastern U. S. and Europe, but most groups have stopped short of total community ownership of resources.

One expression of mutual aid among Anabaptists has been in the unlikely area of insurance. As early as the 17th century, Mennonites provided one another with insurance protection. In 1663, Mennonites in West Prussia organized a fire insurance company, and similar efforts to insure against losses have characterized American Anabaptists as well. True to the Anabaptist view that the community is responsible for meeting the needs of its members, many of the early fire insurance programs did not involve the payment of premiums in anticipation of loss, but rather in the levying of payments on the whole community, based on ability to pay, to meet the needs of those who had suffered losses.

Anabaptists were slow to adopt life insurance and retirement annuities, assuming that other members of the religious community would care for those who became dependent. However, today Anabaptists have developed their own insurance programs, such as the Church of the Brethren Benefit Trust and Mennonite Mutual Aid (MMA). MMA, which also serves the Brethren in Christ and the Church of the Brethren, sells products that are common among insurance companies today—life insurance and retirement annuities. While to the casual observer, MMA appears to be like any wholly secular insurance company, it remains true to its Anabaptist roots, providing "Sharing Fund grants"—matching grants to churches to help members with such things as exceptional medical expenses and the costs of adopting children—and maintaining a scholarship fund. Some conservative Mennonite groups, most Amish, and the German Baptist Brethren are still opposed to life insurance and retirement accounts.

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September (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49