Jakob Ammann

Jakob Ammann was a Swiss Anabaptist leader whose late-seventeenth-century teachings and church reforms helped give rise to the Amish movement.

Swiss Brethren: A Swiss Anabaptist movement formed during the Reformation and organized in autonomous congregations. Ammann belonged to this movement before his reforms divided its congregations.
Believer's baptism: Baptism administered to people who personally profess faith, rather than to infants. Ammann’s congregations practiced the defining Anabaptist alternative to infant baptism.
Menno Simons: A sixteenth-century Dutch Anabaptist leader whose teachings shaped the Mennonite tradition. The Mennonite tradition associated with Simons became a point of comparison in later Anabaptist divisions.
Excommunication among the Amish: The formal removal of an Amish member from church fellowship for serious violations of community rules. Ammann’s reform program made exclusion a decisive means of enforcing communal standards.
Amish migration to North America: The movement of Amish families from Europe to North America, especially from the eighteenth century onward. Migration carried communities descended from Ammann’s movement across the Atlantic.
Amish: A Christian Anabaptist tradition descended from communities that followed Jakob Ammann’s reforms. The movement’s name and identity derive from Ammann’s followers.
Church discipline: Formal practices by which a religious community corrects misconduct and regulates membership. Ammann pressed for stricter, more consistent discipline among congregations.
Hans Reist: A Swiss Brethren leader who opposed Jakob Ammann’s position on church discipline and avoidance. His disagreement with Ammann became a central personal conflict in the emerging split.
Shunning: The deliberate restriction of social contact with someone who has been excluded from a community. Ammann’s strict approach to avoidance shaped the practice later associated with Amish discipline.
Old Order Amish: Amish communities that maintain conservative practices and limit adoption of many modern technologies. They are one later branch of the movement that traces its origins to Ammann.

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