Lambists
The Lammists or Remonstrant baptismalists (also Galenists ) were a group within the Dutch and North German Mennonites in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The origin of the Lammists goes back to a conflict about the importance of the Christian creed, which split the Mennonite community in Amsterdam in the middle of the 17th century ( War of the Lambs ). Under the preacher Galenus Abraham de Haen , the Amsterdam congregation opened up more and more to the ideas of the emerging rationalism , which ultimately led to a schism within the congregation in June 1664 . The more conservative and the more open to Calvinism part left the congregation under the leadership of the preacher Samuel Apostool and founded the group of the Sonnists . The approximately 1,500 members of the congregation who remained in the congregation named themselves after their symbol, the lamb, lambists. Some of them were also called Remonstrant baptismalists or, directly after Galenus, Galenists . Like the Remonstrants who were expelled from the Reformed Church , they advocated the concept of free will and rejected firm creeds . Committing to a man-made creed should not obstruct the believer's path to Jesus Christ. To a small extent there were also spiritualistic and deistic ideas.
The schism of the Amsterdam Mennonites soon affected other Dutch and North German Mennonite communities and covered up earlier differences between Frisian, Flemish or Waterland communities. Until the beginning of the 18th century, the Lammists were mainly affiliated with municipalities. Talks between Lammists and Sonnists in 1684 and 1685, in which Samuel Apostool also took part, did not lead to any real agreement. It was not until 1801 that the two parties reunited. But even after that some Mennonite churches still bore the sign of the Lamb.
The Theological Seminary of the Dutch Mennonites , which still exists today, was founded under the Lammists in 1735 .