Anabaptists: the Reformers' reformers

On Saturday, January 21, 1525, at the house of Felix Mantz in Zurich, Switzerland, Georg Blaurock, a former priest, confessed his sins and then was baptized by Conrad Grebel, a layman. During the following week, 35 people were baptized in the nearby village of Zollikon. Shortly after this, Wilhelm Reublin went to Waldshut, some 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Zurich, and there baptized Balthasar Hubmaier and 60 others. During the Easter season of that same year, Hubmaier, in turn, baptized 300 new converts. These events marked the beginning of the Anabaptist movement. ¹

Many free-church Christians find in this movement some of their spiritual forefathers. In a four-article series that begins with this article, we will see why this is so. We will begin by looking at the historical background of the Anabaptist movement, and in later articles we will examine some of their more important teachings in greater detail.

The church of the sixteenth century desperately needed reform. Even earlier, reform movements had arisen—the Waldenses in the Alpine regions of Italy and France, the Wycliffites in England, and the Hussites in Bohemia among them. The men who brought about the Reformation were part of this long tradition of reform movements. While they were opposed to the worldliness of the papal church, they also wanted reform of the church's doctrines, which centuries of tradition had blighted. They wanted to replace the whole realm of work righteousness with justification by faith, tradition with Scripture, and the special priesthood and papal hierarchy with the priesthood of all believers. When, at the Leipzig disputation (1519), Martin Luther became convinced that pope and councils were not infallible but could err, he became a heretic in the eyes of the church. ² Zurich saw similar developments. Huldreich Zwingli, who doubted the word and the work of the Roman Church and preached against her, was branded a heretic.

Not very many years passed, however, before we find some of the followers of Luther and Zwingli being called heretics by their fellow Reformers because they differed on fundamental questions. Some of these men did have quite revolutionary ideas. Thomas Miintzer, for instance, wanted to change church and society radically, and was willing to use force to do so. ³ The Mtinsterites, a radical Anabaptist group, fought to secure and defend their "New Jerusalem," the city of Miinster in Westphalia, which they believed would become the center of the 1,000 years of peace here on earth.

Most Anabaptists did not have this revolutionary spirit. In fact, most of them were rather peaceful, even rejecting all participation in war. A number were pacifists and believed in nonresistance. ⁴ A movement should not be judged by the excesses of some. Rather, it should be evaluated by the teachings and practices of the best of its supporters. Unfortunately, however, primarily because of the excesses, the great Reformers rejected as radicals, or Schwdrmers, all those who did not agree with them. ⁵ Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin did not distinguish among the various other groups and movements that existed alongside of their own.

The genuine, peaceful Anabaptist movement had begun when certain followers of Zwingli concluded that he had not reformed the church thoroughly enough. They wanted a pure church consisting of people who had repented of their former way of life and who were willing to join a congregation voluntarily. Only believers could join such a church. Therefore the Anabaptists rejected infant baptism (more about this in a later article). Zwingli, on the other hand, was working toward the reformation of the whole land. He wanted to establish a kind of "Alpine Israel" that would include all those who lived there. Those of Zwingli's followers who looked for a more volitional and thoroughgoing reform held discussions with the Reformer during 1523 and 1524, but these discussions did not end in agreement. The break was inevitable. The baptisms in Zurich and its vicinity followed in 1525, and from here the movement spread in all directions.

What did Anabaptists believe?

An Anabaptist was a person who had been baptized again, as a believer. Those who practiced believers' baptism did not call themselves Anabaptists. Rather, it was the Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Calvinists who gave them this name. The Anabaptists called themselves Christians or Brethren. To them, believers' baptism was not a rebaptism, but baptism proper.

The Anabaptists were not a homogenous group; often each leader had his own understanding and would stand up for his particular convictions. Nevertheless, a certain common faith bound them together.

In 1527 some of the Anabaptists met at Schleitheim, in the Swiss canton of Schaffhausen, and agreed on seven basic articles. ⁶ These articles indicate not only the beliefs they held in common but also, to some degree, points in which they differed from the other Reformers.

The first article concerned baptism. The Anabaptists agreed that only those who believe, who have repented, and are willing to live a life of active discipleship should be baptized. This excluded all infant baptism.

The second article dealt with the ban. Anabaptists believed that people are not perfect after they decide to follow Jesus, and that a believer could indeed fall into sin. They believed that in that case, as Jesus Christ Himself outlined (Matt. 18), the church should administer discipline.

The third article outlined their understanding of the Lord's Supper. They believed that one celebrated the Lord's Supper in remembrance of the broken body of Christ. They objected to the Roman Catholic idea of the Mass: that the Mass is a sacrifice, that the Latin liturgy must be used in connection with the Mass, and that the Mass involves transubstantiation—the priest's ministration changing the bread and wine into the real body and blood of Christ. They also believed that Luther erred in placing so much emphasis on the bodily presence of Christ in these elements.

The fourth article laid out their agreement that the believer should separate from evil and from the wickedness of this world. To them this meant a withdrawal from "Babylon" and "earthly Egypt," under which designations they included: "all popish and antipopish works and church services, meetings, and church attendance, drinking houses, civic affairs," and so forth.

The fifth article indicated that pastors should be men of good report. They should admonish and teach, warn and discipline, administer the Lord's Supper, and care for the members of the church. Each pastor should be supported by the church that had chosen him.

The sixth article revealed that these early Anabaptists believed that, in disciplining, Christians should go no further than administering the ban—in other words, excommunicating people from their fellowship. They opposed the use of the sword against erring members. They opposed capital punishment, as well, even in civil matters. This article also pointed out how difficult it is for a Christian to serve as a magistrate.

The seventh article dealt with the oath. Anabaptists believed that Christ forbade all swearing and oath taking. The Christian's word, yes or no, should be enough.

From this beginning, Anabaptism spread throughout Western Europe. Its adherents were especially concentrated in the northern part of Switzerland, southern Germany, around Strassburg, the Netherlands, Moravia, and Silesia. But increasingly, evidence is coming to light that Anabaptism also had its followers in other places, such as central Germany, especially Hesse and Thuringia. And we find evidence of congregations in northern Germany (in Emden, Hamburg, Gliickstadt) and along the Baltic Sea (in Liibeck, Wismar, Danzig, Elbing, Konigsberg, and other places). After the Reformation, Anabaptists spread into Romania and Russia; and eventually, because of constant persecution, many emigrated to America.

The Reformers become persecutors

After Zwingli's private persuasion and the official disputations in 1525 bore no results, the Zurich magistracy came out against the Anabaptists. They issued an order that infants should be baptized as heretofore, that parents refusing to allow their children to be baptized should leave the city and the canton. But the Anabaptists were not willing to leave. Soon the first were arrested. One slogan of the day expressed their fate with ghoulish humor: "He who dips shall be dipped—by drowning."

Felix Mantz, the Hebrew scholar in whose house the first baptism had taken place, was the first victim. In 1527 he was bound, taken in a boat out onto the river Limmat near Lake Zurich, and thrown in. Conrad Grebel escaped a similar fate by dying a natural death in 1526. Balthasar Hubmaier, the early Anabaptist leader who was instrumental in baptizing 300 others shortly after his own baptism, was burned at the stake in Vienna in 1528. Three days later his faithful wife was drowned in the Danube. Georg Blaurock, the former priest and first one baptized, died at the stake in 1529.

Countless others in Germany and Austria suffered similar fates. The Diet of Speyer (1529) made it clear that every Anabaptist, or rebaptized person, was to be put to death. ⁷ Many archives witness to the terrible treatment of people who wanted to follow neither the Roman tradition nor human leaders like Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, but only Christ and their consciences, informed by the Word of God.

Luther at first wanted to fight the heretics with just the Word; but after 1528, and especially after 1530, he felt that heretics should be punished by the civil authorities. ⁸ Melanchthon, Luther's closest coworker, even agreed to the death penalty for heretics. In a letter to Mykonius (1530) he wrote, "In regard to those who do not really stir up, but still represent, blasphemous 'articles' [and Anabaptism would be such a blasphemous article], my opinion is that the authorities are obliged to execute them." ⁹

Many other Reformers also took this attitude. The civil powers, who were primarily interested in internal peace and who were distrustful of any new movement, had the backing of the spiritual and theological leaders for their efforts to stamp out the Anabaptists.

As a movement, Anabaptism was more or less defeated by the severe persecution. Its members were scattered, its leaders dead. But the blood of martyrs is never shed in vain. Although nearly defeated, it was not totally destroyed. The Anabaptist movement later revived under the capable leadership of Menno Simons, after whom the Anabaptist Mennonites are named. The Mennonites, who still have congregations in many parts of the world, continue to testify to the convictions the early Anabaptists held as precious truth. ¹⁰

But even more important, in the early seventeenth century (1607-1608) a group of English nonconformists had to leave England because of persecution there. They went to Amsterdam and befriended the Mennonites. Undoubtedly through the influence of these Waterlander Mennonites, this English group accepted believers' baptism as a biblical teaching. In 1611 or 1612, under the leadership of Thomas Helwys, some of this group of refugees returned to England. They can be regarded as the first Baptist church on English soil. ¹¹ And from this small beginning the Baptist movement spread all over the world, carrying with it the belief that only believers should be baptized. The Seventh-day Adventist Church stands in this long line of tradition regarding baptism, a tradition that finds its ultimate authority in the word and example of the apostolic church.

The next article in this series examines the basis of the Anabaptists' belief in believers' baptism—their concept of the church.