The Anabaptists and the Radical Reformation

Zurich, January 1525

The Reformers set out to renew the church by Scripture, but what was changed, and when, was usually settled together with the city council or the prince. Some of the young men who read the Greek New Testament with Zwingli wanted to go further. Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz and their friends read the church of the New Testament as a fellowship of people who had heard the gospel, repented, believed and freely chosen to follow Christ. If so, they reasoned, the baptism of infants, who can confess nothing, is not the baptism the Bible describes.

They heard an order in the Lord's command:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Matthew 28:19-20

At Pentecost, too, "Those who embraced his message were baptized" (Acts 2:41). Making disciples and faith come first; baptism follows. Long before, Jerome had seen the same order in this verse: "They first then teach all nations, and when taught dip them in water" Jerome. Yet in Jerome's day the church was already baptising infants as well.

In January 1525, after a public disputation, the Zurich council ordered all infants to be baptised and forbade the radicals to meet. A few days later, on the evening of 21 January, as a later chronicle tells it, a group met in the house of Manz's mother. George Blaurock, a former priest, asked Grebel to baptise him, and then baptised the others. Their opponents called them Anabaptists, ‘re-baptisers’. They did not see themselves that way, since they did not count infant baptism as baptism at all; they called one another brothers.

Schleitheim: the costly way of discipleship

In February 1527 scattered brethren met at Schleitheim, a Swiss village near the German border. Michael Sattler, once a Benedictine monk, led them in drawing up seven articles of agreement, the Schleitheim Confession, the first Anabaptist confession The Schleitheim Confession. Article 1 gives baptism to those who have learned repentance and amendment of life and truly believe that Christ has taken away their sins. Article 2 is the ban: as the Lord commanded, a brother who sins is to be admonished privately, then before witnesses, then before the church (Matthew 18:15-17). Article 3 says that those who break the one bread must first be united by baptism into one body; Article 4 calls for separation from the evil of the world; Article 5 has the congregation choose its shepherds.

Articles 6 and 7 caused the most controversy. Article 6 says that the sword is ordained by God outside the perfection of Christ to punish the wicked, but within the perfection of Christ only the ban is used, so a Christian does not serve as a magistrate who bears the sword. Their ground was the Lord's word, "I tell you not to resist an evil person" (Matthew 5:39). Article 7 refuses every oath, since Jesus taught "not to swear at all" (Matthew 5:34). They understood all this not as a new law but as discipleship: living the Sermon on the Mount as it stands.

The way was costly. In 1526 the Zurich council made rebaptism punishable by drowning, and in January 1527 Felix Manz was drowned in the river Limmat, the first Anabaptist put to death by a Protestant government. In May of the same year Sattler was burned at Rottenburg by Catholic authorities, and his wife was drowned a few days later. In Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed lands alike, many Anabaptists were imprisoned and killed. They remembered their martyrs in hymns and books. The Martyrs Mirror of 1660 tells how in 1569 Dirk Willems, fleeing across the ice in the Netherlands, turned back to pull his pursuer out when the ice broke beneath him, and was then seized and burned.

Münster, Menno and other streams

Nothing darkened the Anabaptist name more than Münster. In 1534 a band stirred by preaching that the end was near took over the German city of Münster and proclaimed it the New Jerusalem. They held it by force, imposed community of goods and even polygamy, and fell after a siege in 1535. For generations Münster was used to paint all Anabaptists as dangerous rebels. But the Swiss Brethren and most Anabaptists rejected it, because they refused the sword. Münster was not typical of the movement; it was its saddest exception.

Out of that wreckage Menno Simons (1496–1561) gathered the scattered Anabaptists of the Netherlands and northern Germany. A Catholic priest in Friesland, he had come through reading Scripture to doubt both transubstantiation and infant baptism; grieved by the violence of the Münsterites, he left the priesthood in 1536. For twenty-five years, a hunted man, he cared for congregations and taught repentance and faith, believers' baptism and a holy, peaceable life Menno Simons, Foundation of Christian Doctrine. His books carried as their motto Paul's words, "For no one can lay a foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11). His followers became known as Mennonites.

There were other branches. The Hutterites, named after Jakob Hutter, martyred in 1536, formed communities in Moravia that held all goods in common, like the church in Acts (Acts 4:32). In 1693 the Amish, following Jakob Ammann's call for stricter discipline, separated from their Swiss brethren.

Historians often describe several distinct streams within the Radical Reformation. Spiritualists such as Caspar Schwenckfeld put the inner light of the Spirit ahead of the outward word and sacraments. Anti-Trinitarians denied the Trinity: Michael Servetus, executed in Geneva in 1553 (Zwingli, Calvin and Reformed theology), and the Socinians, who took root in Poland late in the century. The main body of Anabaptists held to the Trinity and should not be confused with them.

Where they parted, and what they left

The Lutheran and Reformed churches parted from the Anabaptists at three points. The first was infant baptism. The Reformed held that as circumcision was given to Abraham's children as the sign of the covenant, so baptism is given to the children of believers, and they pointed to Paul's setting baptism beside "the circumcision performed by Christ" (Colossians 2:11-12). For this reason the Belgic Confession rejects the Anabaptists' teaching by name Belgic Confession, Article 34 (see the Reformed Faith course's lesson The sign of the covenant: baptism and infant baptism). Lutherans taught that baptism rests not on our faith but on God's command and promise, and so is given to infants too.

The second was the sword and the magistrate. The Reformers pointed out that the ruler "does not carry the sword in vain" but is God's servant (Romans 13:4), and taught that Christians may hold office and bear the sword for justice. The Augsburg Confession The Augsburg Confession, Article 16 and the Belgic Confession Belgic Confession, Article 36 reject the Anabaptists on this point.

The third was the oath. The Reformers noted that God himself swore an oath and that Paul called God as his witness, and they concluded that lawful oaths are not forbidden. Matthew Henry puts the view plainly: "There is no reason to consider that solemn oaths in a court of justice, or on other proper occasions, are wrong, provided they are taken with due reverence" Matthew Henry. Yet he adds that what the Lord requires is "such a constant regard to truth as would render oaths unnecessary" Matthew Henry. On the worth of a true word, both sides were one.

These differences remain among evangelicals today. The Baptist churches that arose among English Christians in the seventeenth century shared the Anabaptists' baptism of believers The Second London Baptist Confession. Some early Baptists had contact with Dutch Mennonites, but historians disagree on whether Baptists descend from the Anabaptists, and most Baptists accept public office and the oath. Churches that baptise the children of believers and churches that baptise those who confess their faith, Christians who allow the use of force and those who hold to nonviolence, each appeal to Scripture.

The Anabaptists' witness is weighty. They insisted that the church is made not by birth or by the state but by those who choose to follow Christ, and they testified with their blood that faith cannot be forced by the sword. Balthasar Hubmaier, who later became an Anabaptist, wrote in 1524 that heretics should be won by the word, not burned; he was himself burned in Vienna in 1528. Few have answered the apostles' words, "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29), at greater cost. The story continues beyond 1900: in 2010 the Lutheran World Federation formally asked the Mennonites' forgiveness for past persecution. For more, see What are baptism and the Lord's Supper? and Why are there so many churches and denominations?.

Practice