Who were the Anabaptists?
There were two Reformations, not one.
But one has been forgotten.
The remembered Reformation included figures like Luther, Calvin and Zwingli. These were highly educated reformers who God used to restore truth to the church.
But there were another band of Reformers called Anabaptists ("baptise again") who wanted to reform the church much further than the famous reformers.
The famous reformers inherited a massive blindspot which hindered their work and greatly limited their reform. They continued to believe in the union of church and state. They inherited the idea of "Christendom" from their age and could not see that according to the New Testament, church and state should be totally separate.
The consequences of this blindspot were vast.
First, they used the state to advance their reforms, somehow imagining that Caesar could help Christ! They employed the local magistrates to push through their spiritual reforms. If everyone in the country was a "Christian" including the local magistrates then why not? This blindspot naturally led to the use of persecution towards all those who disagreed with them: imprisonment, torture and even death. By inheriting the connection between church and state they also inherited the violence of that age. Since church and state are one, treason and heresy should be treated alike.
Second, this blindspot resulted in a polluted church. Since not everyone in a local parish was in point of fact a "christian," unbelievers brought their sin and unbelief into the church and the church became a mixed gathering.
Third, the practise of infant baptism continued since infant baptism was the door into which a new human being came into both the church and the state.
Fourth, the church-state blindspot made the Magisterial Reformers orient towards the Old Testament. When you read their works you often get the impression that they are as much Old Testament men as New Testament teachers! This is a direct consequence of the church-state blindspot for they naturally found enormous parallels between the theocratic organisation of the OT and the "Christian" kingdom they were trying to build.
But all over Europe God was raising up another group of reformers.
They were, by and large, ordinary folks, Peter Riedemann for example was a simple cobbler. They were fishermen we might say.
They saw further than the famous reformers. They saw that church and state should be separate. They understood that not everyone in the local parish was a Christian, they wanted to return to the New Testament pattern where church and state were separate. They wanted all the benefits that would emerge from that separation - a purer church, adult baptism, loving communities of believers, proper church government and so on.
In the New Testament there is no connection between Church and Babylon. It is most common and most likely for the state to persecute the church, not to support it. This proper separation was part of the Anabaptist vision.
On January 5, 1527, Felix Manz was dragged by the executioner into the ice-cold Limmat, the river which runs through Zwingli's Zurich. He was one of the first Anabaptists to be killed by the state for believing that only professing believers should be baptised.
(It was not until 2004 that the Zurich council put up a plaque to acknowledge the city's past and honour the martyrs.)
This is how the Anabaptists were treated by both the Catholics and the famous Reformers, sad it is to report.
For centuries this side of the 1500s Reformation was forgotten.
Why?
Because the big-name Reformers sadly speak evil of them (and there was, to be fair, a radical, unworthy and unruly element who sided with the Anabaptists and muddied the waters). John Calvin, for example, constantly rubbishes the Anabaptists in his Institutes.
Forgotten, because they were the persecuted underdogs.
Forgotten, because they were not among the scholars or the influential of that age.
Thankfully, however, the Plough Publishing House has been printing major works of these noble Christians and so, rather than relying on the biased opinions of the famous Reformers, we can read what these Christians actually believed themselves.
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| Plough Publishing House Anabaptist Books |
If you want to learn more about these noble Christians I suggest you start with Peter Riedemann's Confession of Faith.
Magisterial vs Radical Reformers
If these two branches of reform had worked together the outcome might have been a far greater and truer reformation of the church.
The Magisterial Reformers (MRs) such as Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, brought clarity and truth to the table. The Anabaptist Reformers (ARs) brought heart and life to the table.
We who live at a distance of 500 years from the Reformation will be profoundly limited if all we read or esteem are the MRs. Our Christianity will tend to be all head and no heart.
For many years all I read were the MRs. I did not even know there was such a group as the ARs. But as I have gained a more balanced view of what God was actually doing in the 1500s, I have come to value the simple down-to-earth and persecuted Christianity of the Anabaptists.
And now thanks to Plough, we can all read them for themselves, rather than hear about them through the distorted lenses of the otherwise noble Calvin, Luther and Zwingli.
Or you could start with this simple introduction from Fisherman's Press:
LOST REFORMERS - the Story of the Anabaptists
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