Anabaptism

Okay, imagine you and your friends like to play a game together. One day, someone decides to change the rules without telling anyone else. This might make some of your friends upset because they were used to playing the game a certain way.

In the 1500s, some people in Europe felt kind of like this with the Christian church. It was called the Catholic church and it had been around for a long time. But some people didn’t like the way the church was doing things anymore. They thought it was being run the wrong way and wasn’t following what the Bible said.

So, some people started to speak out about it and try to change things. One group was called the Anabaptists. They wanted to follow the Bible in a different way than the Catholic church did.

One big thing they believed was that people should decide for themselves to be baptized (which means to be dipped in water to symbolize starting a new life with God) instead of just doing it as a baby like the Catholic church did. They also believed in separating church and state, meaning that the government shouldn’t control the church and make people do things a certain way.

The Anabaptists faced a lot of persecution because of their beliefs, and many were even killed for it. But they kept spreading their message and other people started to join them.

So in a way, the Anabaptists were like a group of friends trying to change the rules of their game. They wanted to follow the Bible in a different way than what they were used to and it wasn’t easy, but they kept trying anyway.