Senior Scholar at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College Steve Nolt recently contributed a chapter to a major new work on Anabaptism that was published in January 2022.
The “T&T Clark Handbook of Anabaptism,” a 636-page definitive volume, outlines Anabaptism’s early history during the Reformation of the sixteenth century, its varied and distinctive theological convictions, and its ongoing challenges to and influence on contemporary Christianity.
Nolt was one of 36 scholars from eight countries – the United States, Canada, Germany, the 
Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and New Zealand – invited to contribute chapters. Nolt’s chapter, “Contemporary Anabaptists in North America,” surveys Mennonites, Brethren, Hutterites, and Amish in the United States and Canada. He believes his chapter’s inclusion in the book is a testament to the international recognition and status of the Young Center.
“Since our founding in 1986, the Young Center has been the only research center devoted to the entire spectrum of Anabaptist groups—Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites—in their various North American context and expressions,” Nolt said. “When it came to the chapter ‘Contemporary Anabaptists in North America,’ the Young Center was the natural choice.”
The creation of this handbook is a major accomplishment for a variety of scholars, historians, and theologians, and its publication prefaces an important upcoming milestone for the Anabaptist movement.
“We’re approaching the 500th anniversary of the origins of the Anabaptist movement, which came out of the Protestant Reformation in 1525,” Nolt said. “As we approach 2025, there has been renewed attention to the roots, origins, beliefs, and expression of Anabaptism, and the T&T Clark Handbook serves to situate the state of the field and an assessment of the movement as we approach that anniversary.”
