The term anabaptist literally means to rebaptise. However, these groups would not have seen themselves as ‘re’ baptising as they would not have recognised a person’s baptism as an infant as being a valid baptism. One of their core beliefs was that rather than baptise people when they are babies we should baptise people at an age when they can give their consent to what they promise at baptism.
It might be thought that
today’s Baptist churches are an offspring of the anabaptist movement, but
actually they have a different family root.
The decedents of the anabaptist movement on sixteenth-century Europe are
groups such as the Amish, Hutterites and Mennonites.
The early anabaptists
were harshly persecuted by both ‘magisterial Protestants’ (those who had a
coalition with a governing power) and the Roman catholic church.
Although there were
forerunners to these anabaptist groups they emerged most visibly in what was
called the Radical Reformation. The magisterial
Protestants were ‘established churches’ and their clergy received their salary from
the state. Among the views held by those
in the Radical Reformation was the complete separation of church and state. Their opinions received condemnation from
Luther.
Zwickau
Prophets
On December 27th
1521 three ‘prophets’ appeared in Luther’s Wittenberg from Zwickau (also in Germany). These three preached a radical alternative to
Luther’s teaching based on their understanding of the end times. These three prophets were not anabaptist
(they did not believe in believers’ baptism).
However, they were an example of the form of radicalism that could arise
out of reformation thinking.
These three prophets were
influenced by, and were influences of, a man called Thomas Muntzer. Their preaching contributed to the sentiments
that erupted in the Peasants’ War of 1525.
Under the leadership of Muntzer the war was an attempt to create an idealised
Christian commonwealth with complete equality among all citizens.
Ulrich
Zwingli
Zwingli was the leader of
the reformation in Switzerland. He
became the people’s priest at the Great Minster Church in Zurich in 1519. He influenced the thinking of the city
through his biblical expositions. One
area where Zwingli disagreed with Luther was on his embrace of the regulative
principle of worship. The regulative
principle of worship says that churches can only do what is commanded to do in Scripture. The alternative to the regulative principle of
worship is the normative principle of worship, which means that churches are
free to worship in other ways, as long as they are not forbidden in scripture. Zwingli’s views of worship meant that in
Zurich churches tended to remove music and pictures.
Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz
were two supporters of Zwingli. But
their study of the Bible led them to different conclusions than Zwingli regarding
baptism and the relation of the church to the state.
Like the rest of Europe,
in the city-state of Zurich infants were baptised and every baptised person was
considered to be a member of the church.
However, Grebel and Manz wanted a church that only consisted of those
who truly believed. Zwingli opposed
these new radicals.
Point
of no return
In the autumn of 1524,
Grebel’s wife had a son. The city rules
said that this child must be baptised, but the Grebel’s refused. Other people began to follow their example
and reuse to have their infants baptised too.
So, the city council
organised a public debate. Of course,
the influential Zwingli and his supporters were declared the winners and the
council warned the dissenters that if they did not have their babies baptised
within a week they would be banished from the city.
Rather than back down the
anabaptists held their nerve. On 21st
January 1525 about a dozen men gathered in the home of Felix Manz. Manz and Grebel had been ordered by the City
Council to stop holding Bible studies.
Those gathered prayed. Then one
of the men, a former priest named George Blaurock asked Conrad Grebel to
baptise him ‘in the apostolic fashion’.
A number of men were baptised that night.
The group soon moved to
the nearby town of Zollikon and set up a ‘free church’ (a church free from ties
to the state).
Persecution
However, the authorities
in Zurich had no intention of letting this group do its own thing. They sent police to Zollikon to arrest the
newly baptised men. When these anabaptists
were released they went to surrounding towns sharing their gospel. On 7th March, 1526 the Zurich
council declared that anyone found ‘re-baptising’ would be put to death by
drowning. On 5th January 1527,
Felix Manz was drowned. Blaurock was burned at the stake. During the years
around the reformation anabaptists were put to death by burning, sword and, of
course, drowning.
The
Munster Rebellion
Anabaptist history has
been stained by what is called the Munster rebellion.
Munster was a city near
what is now the Netherlands. A group
migrated to the city who were ‘apostles’ of a man called Jan Matthijs. Many of these people looked for the creation
of the Lord’s ‘earthly kingdom’ in Munster.
Matthijs expelled the bishop, Franz von Waldeck. So, the bishop of the region gathered the troops
to besiege the city. Normally,
anabaptists opposed the use of arms, however on this occasion they resorted to
violence. The extremists gained control
of the city Matthijs had prophesied that God’s judgement would come on the
wicked and that he was a new Gideon. He
took just twelve followers and took on the opposition. He was cut off from his band of soldiers, was
killed, and his dead was placed on a pole for all the city to see (his genitals
were nailed to the city gate).
A twenty-five-year-old former
inn-keeper by the name of Jan von Leiden manged to seize power after Matthjs. He ruled with absolutely authority, believed that
he was receiving new revelations from heaven, reinstated the Old Testament of
polygamy and eventually took the title ‘King David’. He lived in luxury with his sixteen wives as
the city starved. When the city fell to
the troops von Leiden and other leaders were imprisoned. The most prominent of the leaders were tortured
and executed in the marketplace of Munster.
Their bodies were exhibited in cages which hung from one of the city
churches.
Smalley comments, that ‘for
centuries thereafter Europeans upon hearing “anabaptist” thought of the Munster
rebellion. It stood for wide-eyed,
religious fanaticism.’
No comments:
Post a Comment