13. The Anabaptists: Separation of Church and State

In addition to speaking, teaching, and writing, I have for more than a dozen years operated Carlton Gardens, a gift shop featuring art, antiques, floral furniture, birdhouses, chimes, and much more. Lyle, my supplier for arbors, swings, and benches, is an Amish artisan from northern Indiana. His lifestyle is as simple as it is complex.

The Amish, known for plain living, actually conduct their lives under a system of complicated rules and restrictions. For example, Lyle has a toll-free phone number, but he must travel three miles each morning in his horse and buggy to access his messages. There is no electricity on his farm—only a large generator that powers his very sophisticated woodworking tools.

Why is he permitted to have such tools but not allowed to drive a truck? Why can he use a generator to make furniture, while his wife washes clothes by hand and lights lanterns to illuminate the rooms at night? It all makes perfect sense to Old Order Amish communities who each have their own variants of the given rules. Maintaining a plain lifestyle is the critical element in determining how modern implements and technology can be used. If a toll-free phone and power tools do not impinge on lifestyle, leaders of the local congregation may permit their use.

Because his religion does not permit him to own or drive a vehicle other than his horse-drawn buggy, Lyle teams up with Mennonite neighbors who deliver his furniture. Mennonites are spiritual cousins of the Amish, some of whom are still known for their distinctive lifestyles and separation from the world. A young man and his “spoken-for” girlfriend, neither out of their teens, delivered one of my orders. They were a striking pair—he in a white shirt, black hat, pants, and suspenders; she in a light blue ankle-length dress, white sneakers and socks, her hair pulled back in a bun and covered with a small white head-covering. She worked alongside her future husband as they unloaded the truck.

I talked with them as I have often talked with Lyle. They are at ease in their separation from the world, enjoying a sense of security and community that few of us in the hustle of our fast-paced lives will ever fully realize. They draw heavily on a spiritual and cultural Anabaptist heritage that arose in the sixteenth century—a tragic time of martyrdom at the hands of so-called Christians—Catholic and Protestant alike.

History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at all we must impose some order upon it.

HENRY STEELE COMMAGER

The history of sixteenth-century Anabaptists, like all history, is “a jangle of accidents and blunders and surprises.” The German and Swiss contours of the Magisterial Reformation have long ago been set in some semblance of order by historians, but the various strands of Anabaptism have been less identified. Among those labeled Anabaptists—or “Radicals”—are some promoting polygamy and a militaristic kingdom of God on earth. Others want nothing more than to live in peace and spread the gospel. Most bizarre of all is that Reformers—those who risked their lives in breaking away from the Catholic Church—are the very ones torturing and executing these peaceful Christians. Their “heresy” is not the denial of the Trinity or the infallibility of Scripture. Their crime is the practice of believers’ baptism and separation from the world. How then do historians impose order on such a jangle of absurdity?

A critical question asked by Reformers was How are we saved? Catholics, with such accoutrements as relics and indulgences, maintained that salvation is through faith plus works. Luther insisted on faith alone—sola fide. He denounced the Catholic Church as diseased and in need of serious surgery. But while performing such surgery, he failed to remove the cancerous connection to the state. If Protestants controlled a particular realm, then all residents were regarded Protestant. Such was the case also with Calvin in Geneva. Anabaptists, however, saw Protestants as behaving no better than Catholics. Neither demonstrated true discipleship. Neither showed signs of having been saved by following Christ in separation and sacrifice and service—and believers’ baptism. Among these so-called heretics defending their faith were Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, Balthasar Hubmaier, Michael Sattler, Menno Simons, and Elizabeth Dirks.

The term Anabaptist means baptize again. When used in the sixteenth-century context it was a broadly inclusive term that encompassed many groups—some unrelated to others. Like the early Christians, they were separated from the world and its government. If the church was composed of all those living in a given area or all generations of a family or community, then infant baptism would make sense. But if the church is made up of only those who testify to a conversion experience and who commit to living a different life from the rest of the world, then believers’ baptism, symbolizing the “new birth,” is appropriate. As a pilgrim church seeking to follow the precepts of Jesus, Anabaptists stand out among all other Reformers.

PARADE OF HISTORY

The Reformation procession takes a sharp turn as it veers into Anabaptism. No longer will the Christian parade comprise the state church. Rather, it will include only a called-out few. Those marching to glory are separated from the world and profess a conversion experience marked by believers’ baptism. The notorious parade that gives Anabaptists a bad name is the march to Münster—pilgrims in wagons and on foot joining in a procession to the city where the millennial kingdom will be proclaimed. Arriving in Münster, they find like-minded locals parading in the streets, including women participating in frenzied dances and tearing off their clothes until they are “half-naked.”

For a time Zwingli himself contemplated a separated church that pushed the boundaries of reform further than Luther could have anticipated. But such an ecclesiastical stance was far more radical in the sixteenth century than it would be today. He quickly pulled back. His enthusiasm for offering Bible studies to eager students, however, led to biblical interpretations that carried reform far beyond what the Magisterial Reformers had in mind. Soon Anabaptist house churches were forming right under his nose. Spurred by their commitment to lay evangelism, they quickly spread the gospel message—so rapidly in fact, that many Reformers, particularly in Switzerland, feared that whole regions might be swept away. “The people are running after them as though they were living saints,” lamented Heinrich Bullinger. Another warned that “there was reason to fear that the majority of the common people would unite with this sect.” Still another reported that they “spread so rapidly that their teaching soon covered the land as it were,” having “gained a large following, and baptized thousands.”

While it is true that some cell groups expanded into congregations, most Anabaptist groups were independent from one another, and there was no one charismatic leader to unite them all into a threatening political force. Besides, most Anabaptists were pacifists who had no interest in upending the ruling powers. True, certain segments of the movement were mesmerized by authoritarian figures, but they were the exception to the rule. One such group arose in Münster. Here the rule of God was established under a self-identified king; militant followers took up arms against their oppressors, seeking to institute common property, polygamy, and other practices viewed as dangerous.

Catholic authorities were brutal in stamping down such insurrection and in their persecution of peaceful Anabaptists. But it was Zwingli who is most associated with what has been termed “the cruelest joke of the Reformation.” One would suppose that those who have endured persecution themselves would be less likely to persecute and torture others, yet history demonstrates otherwise. The execution of scholarly and peaceful Anabaptist theologians and lay people defies imagination. Many of them had once been Zwingli’s friends and colleagues, making his brutality even more difficult to comprehend.

ANABAPTIST INFLUENCE ON CHURCH AND STATE

Judged by the reception it met at the hands of those in power, both in Church and State, equally in Roman Catholic and in Protestant countries, the Anabaptist movement was one of the most tragic in the history of Christianity; but, judged by the principles, which were put into play by the men who bore this reproachful nickname, it must be pronounced one of the most momentous and significant undertakings in man’s eventful religious struggle after the truth. It gathered up the gains of earlier movements, it is the spiritual soil out of which all nonconformist sects have sprung, and it is the first plain announcement in modern history of a programme for a new type of Christian society which the modern world, especially in America and England, has been slowly realizing—an absolutely free and independent religious society, and a State in which every man counts as a man, and has his share in shaping both Church and State.

Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion

EVERYDAY LIFE

Sixteenth-Century Fashion

Anabaptists in all their various forms did not stand out in sixteenth-century society as they have since then. Their plain and simple dress was similar to that of the lower classes, and in some cases it has changed very little. In fact, today Amish and certain Mennonites appear to have walked straight out of the sixteenth century. Anabaptists considered fashionable clothes dishonoring to God, a sign of “worldliness.”

Renaissance paintings function like a fashion catalog for us. Men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing appear in full color, from top-of-the line ball gowns to laborers’ work clothes. We glimpse into the lives of the rich and famous as well as those of nameless peasants toiling in the field. Women selling and buying in the market, whose husbands might have been working behind a plow or in a cobbler’s shop, are often shown with colorful dresses that feature interesting layered designs. The collars are sometimes open, betraying more bosom than Calvin would have approved. An apron covering the skirt is a common feature worn both in the home and in the market. Headscarves, veils, and bonnets frequently cover the hair, and hats are common for both men and women.

Working men’s clothing is typically much simpler than that of their wives. Shirts are rarely collared and are often worn under a vest or an outer shirt. Trousers are straight and full, held up with a rope tied around the waist. Short pants and leggings are also worn, perhaps more often by men on the make. Lower-class families have only one or two sets of clothing per person; washing is arduous and infrequent.

STYLISH FASHION IN GENEVA

Men and women were dressed to a tee. They all wore the latest fashions which featured an abundance of lace and fur and splashes of loud colors…. The year was 1540. The town was Geneva, Switzerland. The minister was John Calvin. Pastor Calvin mounted the twelve steps that led to his pulpit in the stately St. Pierre Church…. “Just look at yourselves,” he began, pausing for effect. “Men dress up as young women as though they grieve over the fact that God has not made them women. And women dress as glorious rainbows, trying to catch the glances of men….”

“Tell us, Sir. How should we dress?” The voice was that of a shop-keeper….

“In clothing that simply protects you from the cold and heat,” shot back Calvin. The congregation fell silent. What sort of standard was that for the fashion-conscious? Had this Calvin no sense of fabric or texture? … Calvin was reacting to the secular spirit which pervaded 16th-century Geneva. He was living among a stubborn, worldly bunch who resisted the will of God.

Adrian Dieleman, “John Calvin on Clothing,” sermon, June 22, 2003

Prosperous women employing professional dressmakers typically wear full skirts, billowy sleeves, and ruffles. A low, square neckline is a popular style that displays an assortment of jewelry. For those who can afford it, a long floor-length cape completes the look for a social function. The fashion of middle-class men is more varied and fluid than it is today. A knight might wear a short skirt-like tunic with tights; “blouses” with puffy sleeves are popular. Professors and anyone else with academic standing wear robes and an appropriate hat.

Kings and princes are often painted in heavy robes, sometimes lined in fur and accessorized with heavy jewelry, and a crown or fashionable hat. Beneath the robe are shirts with high pleated collars. Tights and fancy pointed shoes can be spotted behind the folds and hem of the robe.

Ornate hats, gowns, and jewelry are the fashion for aristocratic women. In lieu of hats, very elaborate hairstyles often served to crown the lady’s attire—a high up-do held by jewel-encrusted combs. Silk, imported from the East, is a favorite fabric. Underneath the gown a variety of underwear effects serve to cinch the waist and increase the bustline. Stuffing of various materials also enhance the lady’s figure.

Fashions varied from region to region, and for both men and women of any social status there is an amazing variation of styles. Indeed, with the onset of the Renaissance, fashion has become not only a critical status symbol but also an art form. It is this fashion-conscious mentality that prompted Savonarola to call for gowns to be thrown into the fire along with other “vanities” such as frivolous hats, jewelry, and makeup. John Calvin also has harsh words for those who used adornment as a status symbol.

Children are rarely shown wearing clothing designed specifically for youngsters. Rather, whatever their social status, they tend to reflect their superiors in fashion, making them appear as miniature grownups.

An authoritarian leader, Zwingli is determined to nip in the bud what he deems heresy.

Several of his followers have begun calling for separation of church and state. To them believers’ baptism goes hand in hand with a “called-out” body of believers. Zwingli is not convinced. When Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel begin holding their own Bible study groups, Zwingli calls for a disputation. Manz and Grebel insist that the Scripture alone determines doctrine—that the church fathers and church tradition often veer far away from biblical teaching. When the city council bans voluntary church congregations and requires that all babies be baptized, the two sides are at loggerheads. Manz and Grebel are ordered into exile. They ignore the order, and, with more than a dozen followers, organize a free, independent church. The Anabaptist movement is born.

Conrad Grebel: Father of Anabaptism

The son of a well-respected iron merchant, Conrad Grebel (c. 1498–1526) is considered the father of the Anabaptist movement. He was, according to Zwingli, “the ringleader” of Zurich’s Anabaptists. One of six children, he grew up in Grüningen, the son of Dorothea and Junker Jakob Grebel. He attended Latin school in Zurich, and through his father’s aristocratic connections, took further studies at the University of Vienna and the University of Paris. But he squandered his first-rate education and spent his best years in drinking and brawling. Learning of his son’s behavior, his furious father called him home. After some six years of higher education he was still without a degree.

Back in Zurich in 1521, in his early twenties, Grebel joins Zwingli, Felix Manz, and other young scholars to study the Bible in Greek and Hebrew. The following year he testifies to a profound conversion experience and a call to ministry. At the same time, his devotion and loyalty to Zwingli deepens and he becomes one of his most trusted followers. But then, through his studies and his friendship with Manz, he becomes convinced that Zwingli is disobeying Scripture by continuing to perform the Mass—a practice that continues until 1525. The resulting break with Zwingli is painful. The issue creating the most serious rift between Zwingli and his students is believers’ baptism. Grebel, Manz, and others insist that infant baptism is invalid. They debate Zwingli in a public forum in 1525, and the town council sides with Zwingli. But Grebel has a baby daughter whom he refuses to baptize. The debate is now very personal.

In the weeks and months that follow, a “free” congregation—the Swiss Brethren—emerges in Zurich. While meeting in the House of Felix Manz, one of the men, after making confession of faith, requests baptism from Grebel. Others follow suit. There is no turning back. Grebel, leaving the oversight of the tiny congregation to others, sets off as an itinerant evangelist. As people listen to his persuasive preaching, some five hundred “converts” are baptized (or re-baptized) by immersion, often in a nearby stream. Others join in the evangelistic outreach.

In the fall of 1525 Grebel is incarcerated, during which time he writes a biblical defense of his beliefs that is published after his escape the following spring. But his ministry is cut short. He falls ill of the plague and dies before the age of thirty. Nevertheless, his ministry of less than four years is foundational to the Anabaptist cause. Though he is a very persuasive evangelist, his desire to convert his father and to convince him to abandon Zwingli does not lie within his reach. His own children are reared by relatives in the Reformed faith of Zwingli.

Felix Manz: Execution in Icy Waters

A student of Zwingli and a good friend of Grebel, Felix Manz (1498–1527) was cofounder of the first congregation of Anabaptist Swiss Brethren. The son of a Catholic cleric, Manz, like Grebel, had a well-rounded sixteenth-century humanist liberal arts education that included Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Like Grebel, he was imprisoned for preaching his new-found faith and for challenging the Zurich city council on the matter of believers’ baptism.

ANABAPTIST BELIEFS ON PACIFISM AND BAPTISM

Moreover, the gospel and its adherents are not to be protected by the sword…. True believing Christians are sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter. They must be baptized in anguish and tribulation, persecution, suffering, and death, tried in fire, and must reach the fatherland of eternal rest not by slaying the physical but the spiritual. They use neither worldly sword nor war, since killing has ceased with them entirely, unless indeed we are still under the old law, and even there (as far as we can know) war was only a plague after they had once conquered the Promised Land. No more of this…. On the subject of baptism … the Scriptures describe … that it signifies the washing away of sins by faith and the blood of Christ (that the nature of the baptized and believing one is changing before and after), that it signifies one has died and shall (die) to sin and walks in newness of life and Spirit and one will surely be saved if one through the inward baptism lives the faith according to this meaning….

Conrad Grebel, Letter to Thomas Müntzer

In March of 1526, only months before Grebel’s death of the plague, the Zurich city council had enacted a law making believers’ baptism (re-baptism) a capital offence punishable by drowning. Manz would become the first Anabaptist martyred for this offence. Insisting that he was not seeking to prevent Reformers from baptizing infants, he argued that his only motive was “to bring together those who were willing to accept Christ, obey the Word, and follow in His footsteps, to unite with these by baptism, and to leave the rest in their present conviction.” But Zwingli and the city council were determined to make Manz’s death a deterrent. Just two days before his drowning, Zwingli wrote to a fellow Reformer: “The Anabaptist, who should already have been sent to the devil, disturbs the peace of the pious people. But I believe, the axe will settle it.”

Anabaptist rescuing his captor from the river

But Manz would not be axed to death. Rather, officials execute him by his own baptismal prescription—immersion of an adult believer. His death is ridiculed as the third baptism: infant, believers, and drowning—”He who dips shall be dipped!” The story is chilling. Bullinger describes the scene: On a bitterly cold Saturday afternoon in January of 1527, “Manz was taken out of the Wellenberg prison and led to the fish market there by the Limmat [River]. There his death sentence was read. He was taken to the butcher shop, and then forced into a boat, in which the executioner and a pastor were standing.” A crowd of onlookers, including his mother and brother, had accompanied him. Offered an opportunity to recant, he publicly proclaims his faith, encouraged by his family and other supporters. He is then rowed some distance from shore, where he is pushed into the icy water, declaring his faith in Christ until the water engulfs him. Among the writings that he leaves behind is a hymn, the first lines offering his own testimony:

With gladness will I now sing;

My heart delights in God,

Who showed me such forbearance

That I from death was saved

Which never hath an end.

I praise Thee, Christ in heaven

Who all my sorrow changed.

In the weeks and months that follow, six more Anabaptists suffer a similar fate.

Thomas Müntzer: Prophet of the Peasants’ Uprising

It is inaccurate to suppose that the Reformation was religious in nature only. Many leaders and their followers were influenced by social and political factors as well. Thomas Müntzer (c. 1488–1525) was a radical reformer whose philosophical and religious perspectives soundly clashed with most Anabaptists as well as with Catholics and Magisterial Reformers. Though often lumped with the Anabaptists, he does not easily fit that label, and he predates the broader Anabaptist movement. Born in a small village in Germany, he was raised a devout Catholic and was a monastic leader by the age of twenty-one. But motivated by the writings of Luther, he left the monastery behind for university studies and political activism.

In 1520, Müntzer accepts a call to serve as minister in a church in Zwickau, a town that had gained a reputation for radicalism as the home of the Zwickau prophets. Some of these prophets had relocated in Wittenberg and created problems for Luther. Müntzer has barely begun his ministry when his church sends him packing. He is too radical for their tastes. Moving on to Prague, he is welcomed as a reformer in the tradition of Luther. There he writes the “Prague Manifesto,” denouncing Catholic clerics and prophesying the reign of Christ. Luther renounces him as a Schwärmer (fanatic), as do secular rulers. By 1523, he is back on German territory, ministering in the village of Allstedt. He remains long enough to marry Ottilie von Gerson, a former nun. Fearing the wrath of authorities, he moves on and becomes an instigator in the peasants’ uprising, using as his rallying cry, Omnia sunt communia (all things in common). Indeed, some scholars view him as a precursor to modern socialism. But his views change as often as does his place of residence.

Settling down in Mühlhausen in 1525, he stirs the citizens to overthrow the city council and institute his “Eternal League of God.” At the height of his popularity he leads some one thousand followers in an independent religious community, identifying himself as an interpreter of dreams in the tradition of the Old Testament prophet Daniel. But more important than the Bible is his direct revelation from God. “These villainous and treacherous parsons are of no use to the church in even the slightest manner,” he thunders, “for they deny the voice of the bridegroom, which is a truly certain sign that they are a pack of devils. How could they then be God’s servants, bearers of his word, which they shamelessly deny with their whore’s brazenness? For all true parsons must have revelations, so that they are certain of their cause.”

Unlike Anabaptists, Müntzer does not administer believers’ baptism, nor is he a pacifist. In fact, he leads thousands of ill-equipped peasant soldiers in the final battle of the Peasants’ War in the spring of 1525. Government troops had agreed to a truce, but the next day they attack in full force, slaughtering the unsuspecting peasants. Müntzer is arrested and tortured to the point that he recants and submits to the Mass. Any hope for leniency, is dashed, however. He is beheaded, and his head is publicly displayed to serve as a deterrent to future radicalism.

John of Leiden: Prophetic Revelations and Bible Burning

Not to be confused with Thomas Müntzer, John of Leiden (c. 1509–1536) reigned as self-proclaimed king for more than a year in the German town of Münster. Like Müntzer, he is often labeled an Anabaptist. But he fits the category only in his practice of re-baptizing. Born in the Dutch town of Leiden to an unmarried woman, he was reared in poverty. Unlike other religious leaders of this era, his schooling was meager and he worked as a tailor as well as an innkeeper, having neither a monastic nor university education.

In his mid-twenties, John encounters Jan Matthys, an Anabaptist lay-evangelist who has baptized thousands of converts. Captivated by his message, he soon becomes his chief lieutenant. As he is traveling and preaching, he comes to Münster, a city ripe for his message. With the help of local merchants, he takes control of the town council and calls on Matthys for help. Matthys pronounces Münster the “New Jerusalem,” and with his followers they usher in the kingdom of God.

Melchior Hofmann, another lay preacher, had sought to establish a similar New Jerusalem in Strasbourg, a crime for which he was sentenced to life in prison. Blaming Hofmann for his own failure, Matthys is convinced God has given him prophetic powers that will guarantee his success. His take-over of Münster in February of 1534 comes at a heavy cost to local residents, who flee in the face of violent persecution. Those who remain are forced to submit to re-baptism. At the same time, Matthys’s out-of-town followers are flocking to the city. He distributes the possessions of the “godless” to the newcomers as “communism” is instituted. In March he demands that all Bibles or portions thereof be brought to the cathedral square, where he presides over their burning, solidifying himself as the sole authority.

But a month later on Easter Sunday 1534, Matthys is fatally wounded in a failed military campaign. Despite this setback, within months John of Leiden gains the upper hand, pronouncing himself King of Münster, King David’s successor. He begins his reign by jogging through the streets naked, after which he falls into a three-day trance. When he regains his senses, he sets up a new government patterned after the Twelve Tribes of Israel, each with its own judge. “Now God has chosen me to be king over the entire world,” he declares. “What I do, I must do, because God has ordained me.”

To demonstrate his power, he micromanages every aspect of life from renaming streets and days of the week to minting coins and regulating family activities. He and his henchmen execute dozens of those who challenge or disobey his rules. With many of the men soldiering and dying, he introduces polygamy and reportedly takes some dozen wives, executing one for disobedience, beheading her in the public market. But such a dictatorship cannot last. Two guards escape and aid outside Catholic forces in taking military control of the city. In late June of 1535, the reign of terror in Münster comes to an end. After interrogation and indescribable torture, John is executed.

A significant outcome of the Münster episode was its negative effect on the larger Anabaptist movement, which, contrary to John’s radical teaching, rejected military and political entanglements and revered Scripture.

ANABAPTIST INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

There can be no question but that the great principles of freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, and voluntarism in religion, so basic in American Protestantism and so essential to democracy, ultimately are derived from the Anabaptists of the Reformation period, who for the first time clearly enunciated them and challenged the Christian world to follow them in practice. The line of descent through the centuries since that time may not always be clear, and may have passed through other intermediate movements and groups, but the debt to original Anabaptism is unquestioned.

Harold S. Bender, The Anabaptist Vision

Balthasar Hubmaier: Anabaptist Theologian

One of the most highly educated and respected theologians among Anabaptists was Balthaser Hubmaier (c. 1480–1528). Born in Bavaria, he taught school while earning his doctorate from the University of Ingolstad in 1512. So respected was his scholarship that he was invited to stay on as a rector at the university.

In 1516, a year before Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses, Hubmaier accepts a call to a church in Regensburg, where he is widely hailed as a superb preacher. In the years that follow, he interacts with Erasmus and Conrad Grebel. Then, in 1523, he meets Zwingli for a disputation; he argues that there is no biblical precedent for infant baptism. Two years later, he and dozens of his parishioners—soon to be followed by some three hundred more—are re-baptized by an Anabaptist leader.

Hubmaier is well aware of the cost of being an Anabaptist. In 1524 he had written Heretics and Those Who Burn Them, and the following year—almost baiting authorities—he writes The Christian Baptism of Believers. He makes a strong case for religious toleration, arguing against the criminalization of heresy or unbelief. “It is well and good that the secular authority puts to death the criminals who do physical harm to the defenseless (Romans 13),” he asserts. “But no one may injure the atheist who wishes nothing for himself other than to forsake the gospel.”

Threatened by Catholic authorities in Austria, Hubmaier escapes to Zurich. But Zwingli shows no sympathy and promptly has him arrested. He is permitted to defend his views on believers’ baptism, using some of Zwingli’s earlier statements. Zwingli denies having ever seriously considered such statements, though others remember him counseling that children should be instructed before being baptized.

Balthasar Hubmaier

Fearing for his life, Hubmaier agrees to recant, but then, speaking before a larger congregation, he takes back his recantation: “Oh what anguish and travail I have suffered this night over the statements which I myself have made. So I say here and now, I can and I will not recant.” Going on to defend the practice of believers’ baptism, he is immediately arrested and returned to prison, where under torture he once again recants. With his second recantation and release, he hastens to get out of town. He journeys to Nikolsburg, a tolerant town in Germany. Once again wracked by guilt—as is evidenced in his Short Apology of 1526—he confesses: “I may err—I am a man, but a heretic I cannot be because I ask constantly for instruction in the word of God…. But faith is a work of God and not the heretic’s tower, in which one sees neither sun nor moon, and lives on nothing but water and bread…. O God, pardon me my weakness.”

A free man, Hubmaier reportedly baptizes some six thousand followers in the space of a year. He also clarifies the distinct theology of the Anabaptists in tracts and treatises and promotes their wide distribution. Here he develops his stance on the sacraments as well as on salvation, which is marked by a new birth as a requisite for entrance into heaven. The Christian life consists of good works and evangelism—especially to “Jews and pagans,” who are to be warmly received “so that they might be drawn by a Christian example to faith in Christ.” He criticizes Luther’s reform as permissive of moral laxity. The biblical solution is to be a part of a confessing community of believers set apart from the world.

Anabaptists tortured

Some of Hubmaier’s followers are influenced by those who insist on a socialist sharing of possessions and on avoiding sinful allegiance to the state. Hubmaier, however, argues that secular governments are legitimate and that Christians should be involved in policy making. Unlike most Anabaptists, he likewise maintains that that there are occasions to take up arms.

Although Hubmaier seeks to avoid stirring up controversy with government and church officials, his months of preaching and writing come to an abrupt halt as the political landscape changes. The following year he relocates to Austria, where officials arrest him along with his wife. He remains in prison until his execution date in the spring of 1528. He is convicted of being a heretic—the very label he denies so vehemently. With his wife pleading with him not to again recant, he is burned in the Vienna town square. Three days later she is executed in true Anabaptist fashion. Fastened to a large rock, she is cast into the Danube.

ANABAPTISTS TURN BACK TO BIBLICAL BASICS

The Reformers aimed to reform the old Church by the Bible; the Radicals attempted to build a new Church from the Bible. The former maintained the historic continuity; the latter went directly to the apostolic age, and ignored the intervening centuries as an apostasy. The Reformers founded a popular state-church, including all citizens with their families; the Anabaptists organized on the voluntary principle select congregations of baptized believers, separated from the world and from the State.

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church

AN ANABAPTIST PRAYER FOR COURAGE AMID TORTURE

O holy God, O mighty God, O immortal God, that is my belief, which I confess with heart and mouth and have witnessed before the church in water-baptism. Faithfully, graciously, keep me in that till my end, I pray thee. And though I be driven from it by human fear and terror, by tyranny, pangs, sword, fire or water, yet hereby I cry to thee, O my merciful Father: Raise me up again by the grace of thy Holy Spirit, and let me not depart in death without this faith. This I pray thee from the bottom of my heart, through Jesus Christ, thy best-beloved Son, our Lord and Saviour. For in thee, O Father, I hope; let me not be put to shame in eternity. Amen.

Balthasar Hubmaier

An Anabaptist woman being drowned

Hubmaier left behind writings that inspired the Anabaptist movement for generations. Indeed, so influential was his preaching ministry and his many written works that he was condemned as a heretic in 1545, by the Catholic Council of Trent along with the three most prominent Magisterial Reformers, Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin.

Michael and Margaretha Sattler: Faithful to Death

Born in the German village of Staufen, Michael Sattler (c. 1490–1527) enrolled at the University of Freiburg at a young age and then took vows as a Benedictine monk, serving at a monastery in the Black Forest. His schooling included a broad theological education as well as biblical studies in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Highly regarded by the Benedictines, he was elected to the position of prior.

While yet in his twenties, he becomes engrossed in Reformation ideas. Though living in relative seclusion in a monastery, he is influenced by the new religious ideas swirling around him. As an avid student of Scripture he is most interested in Luther’s examination of Paul’s epistles. His studies convince him that monasticism is not the path to true righteousness, but his first personal face-to-face encounter with the new teachings comes through Anabaptists, specifically through peasants with both a social and spiritual agenda. During the Peasants’ War of 1525, while living in the Black Forest region, Sattler is converted to the Anabaptist cause.

Turning away from his monastic vows, he marries Margaretha, a former nun who has also converted to Anabaptist beliefs. Later that year he defends his position biblically in a series of disputations in Zwingli’s Zurich. In hindsight, the outcome for any such public debate is fixed: that an Anabaptist would lose is obvious. But one after another of the young Anabaptist theologians take the bait, only to be caught in the tangle of political determinism. Sattler is recants and promises not to return to Zurich. His expulsion, like the expulsion of first-century Christians from Jerusalem, only serves to spread the message. He journeys as a missionary in exile and baptizes converts along the way. Unlike other early Anabaptist leaders, he maintains close contact with Magisterial Reformers, interacting on controversial theological issues with Martin Bucer and others in Strasbourg.

By 1527 he is one of the recognized leaders of the movement and helps to formulate the Schleitheim Confession, which outlines Anabaptist beliefs, including the concept of a called-out community of believers separated from the world. The confession also lays out a pacifist position, clearly taking issue with the more radical militants. So significant is this document among the growing movement of Anabaptists that Zwingli caustically concedes: “There is almost no one among you who does not have a copy of your so well founded commandments.” Not long after drafting the confession, Michael and Margaretha are arrested by Catholic authorities led by Austrian regent Ferdinand. Ferdinand regards the crime of a monk converting to Anabaptism so heinous that he argues Sattler should be drowned without the courtesy of a trial. But other officials, conscious of public opinion, are determined to at least go through the motions of a court interrogation.

Other Anabaptists are arrested along with Sattler, but he alone is charged with abandoning his vows as a monk and marrying a nun. Among the other charges are denial of transubstantiation, rejection of infant baptism, corruption of the Lord’s Supper, failure to properly honor the Virgin Mary, and refusal to take oaths. The matter of pacifism also draws criticism; anyone unwilling to fight invading Turks is deemed a traitor. He responds to the charges with biblical evidence, but the judges are not in the mood for a debate. Their verdict leaves no room for compromise:

Michael Sattler shall be committed to the executioner. The latter shall take him to

the square and there first cut out his tongue, and then forge him fast to a wagon

and there with glowing iron tongs twice

tear pieces from his body, then on the

way to the site of execution five times more as above and then burn his body to

powder as an arch-heretic.

Eyewitness reports claim that even after his tongue is cut out, Sattler continues praying for his enemies to the very end. The following week Margaretha is executed by drowning in the Necker River. The multiple martyrdom of Sattler, his wife, and several followers only serves to spread the word and bring greater attention to the Anabaptist confession that is read and studied in households and conventicles all over Europe.

Menno Simons: Father of the Mennonites

Recognized as the father of the Mennonites, Menno Simons (1496–1561) represents the Dutch faction of the Anabaptists, though he traveled widely to other regions of Western Europe. He was raised in a peasant family and as a young boy was sent to a monastic school to train for the priesthood. His education included philosophy, Latin, and Greek. In his late twenties, he was ordained a priest and assigned a parish near his childhood home. In 1531 he accepted a call to the parish in Witmarsum where he had been baptized as an infant. By his own testimony, he spent much of his time in “playing cards, drinking, and frivolities of all sorts.”

“Out of the ashes of Münster, a new Anabaptist group emerged, led by Menno Simons.”

John D. Roth, Historical Committee & Archives

of the Mennonite Church

By the time Menno is transferred to Witmarsum, the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland is well underway. He had studied the writings of the Reformers as well as those of Erasmus, but his study of the Bible, more than anything else, spurs spiritual renewal. His initial concerns relate to transubstantiation, but as he digs deeper he begins to study the Bible and Anabaptist writings on baptism. Infant baptism, he concludes, is not the biblical way. By the late 1520s, he is preaching an evangelical gospel while remaining a Catholic priest.

Like other Anabaptists, Menno emphasizes the necessity of a conversion experience—an experience of saving faith that is a prerequisite to baptism. His own transformation comes in stages, beginning with his ministry as a priest. In 1525, as he is officiating the Mass, he begins to question whether the bread and wine are actually the body and blood of Christ. Initially fearing that the devil is tempting him, he later becomes convinced the doctrine is man-made. But his actual evangelical conversion comes a decade later.

Menno Simons

Menno is not the first of the Dutch Anabaptists. Some of those preceding him were social radicals who gave Anabaptism a bad name. He simply wants to preach what he is discovering in the Gospels and shift the Reformation in a different theological direction. Luther had placed the emphasis on justification by faith alone. Menno, like other Anabaptists, focuses more on the ministry of Jesus—on outward deeds and inner holiness.

In 1531 Menno is forced to decide whether he will continue his Anabaptist preaching or turn back. He is well aware of the Swiss Brethren who have been drowned in Zurich and others who have been executed at the hands of Austrian Catholic officials. Some had openly defied the law. But now he is confronted with a different situation. In a nearby village a “God-fearing, pious hero,” Sicke Freeriks Snijder, is executed for the crime of having been re-baptized. Menno realizes that if he does not stop preaching his evangelical gospel he may be the next preacher to be killed. So, although convinced that there is no biblical support for infant baptism, he nevertheless continues to carry out his duties as a priest.

In the meantime, certain groups of Anabaptists are adding authoritarian militarism, visions and voices, and apocalyptic drama to their message. It is this radicalism that brings Menno into the movement, defending Anabaptist beliefs while insisting that the extremists are not true followers of Christ. John of Leiden is the most extreme of these radicals. Revolutionaries in a town close to where Menno serves as priest are drumming up support for John and his kingdom in Münster. Their involvement comes even closer to home for Menno when members of his own congregation, including Peter Simons, his brother, are killed in the uprising. Menno denounces the violence and the claims of revelations and visions, insisting that becoming a disciple of Jesus is above all a pilgrimage of peace and willingness to suffer. With the fall of Münster and its outlying supporting towns, Menno vows to bring stability to an Anabaptist movement.

The decision is difficult: “Pondering these things my conscience tormented me so that I could no longer endure it,” he recalled. “If I through bodily fear do not lay bare the foundation of the truth … oh, how shall their shed blood, shed in the midst of transgression, rise against me at the judgment of the Almighty and pronounce sentence against my poor, miserable soul!” During this time he prays to God “with sighs and tears that He would give to me, a sorrowing sinner, the gift of His grace, create within me a clean heart, and graciously through the merits of the crimson blood of Christ, he would graciously forgive my unclean walk and unprofitable life.”

CALLED TO BE A CHURCH OF PEACE

The Prince of Peace is Jesus Christ. We who were formerly no people at all, and who knew of no peace, are now called to be … a church … of peace. True Christians do not know vengeance. They are the children of peace. Their hearts overflow with peace. Their mouths speak peace, and they walk in the way of peace.

Menno Simons,

Reply to False Accusations

His forthright stance brings threats against him, and he realizes he can no longer appear in the pulpit. After more than a decade of struggle, he commits himself to the cause, resigns his ministry, and goes into hiding. In January of 1536, he leaves behind his salary and security. “Without constraint,” he later reflected, “I renounced all my worldly reputation, name and fame, my unchristian abominations, my masses, my infant baptism, and my easy life, and I willingly submitted to distress and poverty under the heavy cross of Christ.”

A TRACT ON THE NEW BIRTH

Do you suppose, dear friends, that the new birth consists of nothing but in that which the miserable world hitherto has thought that it consists in, namely, to be plunged into the water; or in the saying, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost?” No, dear brother, no. The new birth consists, verily, not in water nor in words; but it is the heavenly, living, and quickening power of God in our hearts which flows forth from God, and which by the preaching of the divine Word, if we accept it by faith, quickens, renews, pierces, and converts our hearts, so that we are changed and converted from unbelief to faith, from unrighteousness to righteousness, from evil to good, from carnality to spirituality, from the earthly to the heavenly, from the wicked nature of Adam to the good nature of Jesus Christ.

Menno Simons

ANABAPTIST MOTHER’S LAST WORDS TO HER BABY DAUGHTER

My dear little child, I commend you to the Almighty…. Hence, my dear lamb, I who am imprisoned and bound here for the Lord’s sake, can help you in no other way; I had to leave your father for the Lord’s sake, and could keep him only a short time. We were permitted to live together only half a year, after which we were apprehended, because we sought the salvation of our souls…. I had to remain … and give birth to you here in prison, in great pain, they have taken you from me. Here I lie, expecting death every morning…. I must through these lines cause you to remember, that when you have attained your understanding, you endeavor to fear God, and see and examine why and for whose name we both died; and be not ashamed to confess us before the world, for you must know that it is not for the sake of any evil. Hence be not ashamed of us; it is the way which the prophets and the apostles went, and the narrow way which leads into eternal life, for there shall no other way be found by which to be saved. Hence, my young lamb … read the Scriptures … concerning the cross of Christ.

Janneken Munstdorp, Antwerp,

“Letter to Her Daughter,” 1573

Within a year, Menno is ordained an Anabaptist minister, and he soon realizes how heavy the cross will be. There is a reward of five hundred guilders for his capture, but his greatest anguish is that of putting others in harms way. Tjard Reynders, for example, is executed for giving him shelter and taking him downriver to his next hiding place. He travels as an evangelist, seeking to bring together the scattered and suffering believers. Dutch officials are on his trail, but he eludes them. One story in Mennonite lore has Menno seated on top of a stagecoach next to the driver. Armed troops approach and demand to know if the hunted outlaw is hiding in the carriage. Menno leans over and looks down and asks if he is there. The armed men verify the negative response by looking inside, and when they are satisfied that he is not there they ride off.

How he manages to keep eluding the authorities is nothing short of a miracle—at least in the eyes of his followers. After all, he is not traveling alone. His wife Gertrude and three children travel with him. And he stays in one spot long enough to write lengthy tracts defending various Anabaptist beliefs—writings easily understood by artisans and peasants. But the five of them are constantly on the move. Eight years after leaving his parish, he protests that he “could not find in all the countries a cabin or hut in which [we] could be put up in safety for a year or even a half a year.” Two of his little ones die while they are on the run, and then Gertrude also dies. Menno continues on in poor health.

His situation becomes even more precarious when authorities rule that anyone charged with even reading one of Menno’s tracts is guilty of a criminal offense. Yet his tracts continue to be widely circulated.

Menno’s most noteworthy writing is his Foundation of the Christian Doctrine (1540). Written on the run, it defines Dutch Anabaptism; and within a few years his followers are being called Mennists or Mennonites. Despite being hunted by authorities, he continues his ministry and dies a natural death at sixty-five, a quarter-century after he left the priesthood.

Elizabeth Dirks: Teacher, Preacher, and Deaconess

Born into Frisian nobility, Elizabeth Dirks (d. 1549) was reared in a convent. Yet in adolescence, she learns about the courageous martyrdom of Anabaptist Christians and wonders what beliefs would inspire such risk. As she studies her Latin Bible and learns more, she begins to question the validity of monasticism. When her ideas become known, she is charged with heresy and placed under convent arrest. Disguised as a milkmaid, she escapes and finds refuge in an Anabaptist home in Leeuwarden. Here she functions as a teacher and preacher and reportedly serves as the first Mennonite deaconess.

When she is discovered and arrested by Catholic officials in the winter of 1549, her reputation as a leader in the movement has preceded her. Indeed, she is presumed to be the wife of Menno Simons, which she denies, insisting that she has never been married. She is locked in prison, and the authorities demand to know who baptized her and who her teachers and associates are. She refuses to answer, willing only to respond to questions about her beliefs. Interrogated by Catholic clerics, she responds to their questions, often quoting biblical texts in Latin.

“What do you hold concerning our mass?,” they demanded: “My lords, of your mass I think nothing at all; but I highly esteem all that accords with the Word of God.” And what of the holy sacrament? “I have never in my life read in the holy Scriptures of a holy sacrament, but of the Lord’s Supper,” to which they responded: “Be silent, for the devil speaks through your mouth.” And, what about infant baptism—and your own re-baptism? “No, my lords, I have not been rebaptized. I have been baptized once upon my faith; for it is written that baptism belongs to believers.” Are children then damned because they are baptized? “No, my lords, God forbid, that I should judge the children.” Is not salvation assured in baptism? “No, my lords, all the water in the sea could not save me; but salvation is in Christ.” Do not priests have the authority to forgive sins? “No, my lords; how should I believe this? I say that Christ is the only priest through whom sins are forgiven.”

Again they demand, under threat of torture, to know who has baptized her. When she refuses, Hans, her tormenter, employs the screw torture to her fingers and thumbs until her fingernails are spurting blood. As she cries out to God for mercy, he applies the screws to her shins until she is unconscious. When they realize that she is not yet dead, they revive her and tie her to a weight and throw her in the water to drown on a cold spring day in 1549.

The story of sixteenth-century Anabaptists is one of the most appalling chapters in church history. The viciousness meted out to them by Protestants and Catholics alike was beyond the pale. Katherine Zell’s words ring down through the centuries: They “accept Christ in all the essentials as we do”; yet they are “pursued as by a hunter with dogs chasing wild boars.” Shame. Shame. Shame.

What if …

What if Zwingli had been attuned to the Sermon on the Mount and the cry of Katherine Zell for religious toleration and had allowed Anabaptists to go their own way? Did the drowning of these innocent Christians in Zurich give fuel to the fire of the Anabaptist movement? Might evangelical faith look different today if this “cruelest joke of the Reformation” had never occurred?

What if men like Thomas Müntzer and John of Leiden had kept their wits about them and had subscribed to pacifism as did most Anabaptists? Would we even know the term Radical Reformation? Would Menno have felt compelled to join the cause in order to rescue the reputation of the movement? Or, without the burden of being associated with radicalism, might Anabaptists have grown more rapidly?

What if Elizabeth Dirks had recanted and gone back to the convent? Her name is now barely a footnote in history. But her martyrdom in 1549 (four years before Servetus was burned in Geneva), though serving as a deterrent to some, spurred on the movement and inspired others to leave convents and careers behind and join with these persecuted pilgrims.

13. The Anabaptists: Separation of Church and State

13. The Anabaptists: Separation of Church and State

CHAPTER 13

The Anabaptists

Separation of Church and State

PARADE OF HISTORY

ANABAPTIST INFLUENCE ON CHURCH AND STATE

EVERYDAY LIFE

STYLISH FASHION IN GENEVA

Conrad Grebel: Father of Anabaptism

Felix Manz: Execution in Icy Waters

ANABAPTIST BELIEFS ON PACIFISM AND BAPTISM

Thomas Müntzer: Prophet of the Peasants’ Uprising

John of Leiden: Prophetic Revelations and Bible Burning

ANABAPTIST INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Balthasar Hubmaier: Anabaptist Theologian

ANABAPTISTS TURN BACK TO BIBLICAL BASICS

AN ANABAPTIST PRAYER FOR COURAGE AMID TORTURE

Michael and Margaretha Sattler: Faithful to Death

Menno Simons: Father of the Mennonites

CALLED TO BE A CHURCH OF PEACE

A TRACT ON THE NEW BIRTH

ANABAPTIST MOTHER’S LAST WORDS TO HER BABY DAUGHTER

Elizabeth Dirks: Teacher, Preacher, and Deaconess

What if …

Further Reading