Sonnists
The Sonnisten (also Zonisten ) were a grouping within the Dutch and north German Mennonites in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The origin of the Sonnists goes back to a conflict about the status 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 ideas of emerging rationalism and also of Arminianism . This was opposed by around 500 parishioners who separated from the parish in June 1664 under the preacher Samuel Apostool and founded a new, more conservative parish. After the badge of the sun affixed to the new meeting house , the new group was called Sonnisten. Unlike the more liberal Lammists who remained in the community , the Sonnists were open to Calvinism , advocated the doctrine of predestination and insisted on firm beliefs. The split of the Amsterdam Mennonites soon affected other Dutch and North German Mennonite communities, with the Sonnists joining mainly rural communities until the beginning of the 18th century. Conversations between Lammists and Sonnists in 1684 and 1685, in which Samuel Apostool also took part, did not lead to any real understanding. It was not until 1801 that the two parties reunited. A similar development took place within the Dutch Reformed Church with the dispute between Remonstrants and Calvinist counter-demonstrators .
Like the Lammists, the Sonnists founded their own Mennonite theological seminary in 1753 .