IT WAS THE YEAR 1524.
In Zurich, Switzerland, Conrad Grebel, George Blaurock and Felix Manz, among others, met regularly for Bible study and fellowship. They gathered to talk about their spiritual journey and to pray for wisdom and God’s direction for both themselves as leaders and the churches they served.
The mood among their contemporary leaders in the European Roman Catholic constituency was unsettled. Reformation was in the air. In Germany, Martin Luther bravely challenged the status quo, raising serious objections to church practices that he, as a result of intense study of the Bible, concluded were unbiblical. Luther identified the selling of indulgences as means of forgiveness of sins and release from purgatory as particularly egregious. Swiss pastor Ulrich Zwingli and French theologian John Calvin also sought to bring correction and renewal to the Christian faith.
Based on their understanding of Ephesians 2:8-9 among other passages, Luther and his partner reformers taught salvation by grace, justification by faith and the priesthood of all believers in an effort to separate the church from its entwined relationship with the state and restore it to biblical foundations. However, because Luther and other reformers sided with political authorities to quell an uprising of German peasants against the church, they lost footing for the reformation and failed to accomplish some of the reforms they envisioned.
Contemporaneously, Grebel, Blaurock, Manz and their companions carried on their journey of prayer and Bible study.
As they wrestled over the Scriptures, I imagine this type of conversation among the three reformers:
BLAUROCK: We must not fall back into the old ways. Now that we have experienced the joy and freedom of knowing that Jesus is Lord of our lives by the presence of the Holy Spirit, and that the Sermon on the Mount and the Gospels light the way for us, we cannot go back.
MANZ: It’s grievous to think that we have lost some strong momentum for healthy spiritual reform and restoration of the church to its biblical foundations. It’s not right to allow our parishioners to go on believing that infant baptism is biblical and that it provides salvation and automatically and officially registers an infant into a blend of spiritual and civic life.
GREBEL: Can you imagine how the Holy Spirit would empower his church if we would humbly and boldly submit to the Scriptures, and to Jesus Christ as Lord, by renouncing the powers of the state church, and by reforming the church to its first century missional beliefs and practices?
BLAUROCK: What if we, right here and now, as authentic obedient followers of Jesus, declare our faith and commitment by believers baptism?
A movement is born
On Jan. 21, 1525, the three men baptized one another and others present in Manz’s home. Thus, the movement of the “re-baptizers” was born. The civil context was that believers baptism was a radical and powerful symbol of both a commitment to follow Jesus and a declaration of refusal to align with the state or Roman Catholic church’s rules and regulations. Belonging to Jesus and his church meant not belonging to the state or the institutional church. People viewed this as an extreme choice, and soon, both the state and church began aggressively persecuting the re-baptizers.
The Reformers knew that the Catholic church, in which they belonged and served, had over the centuries chosen and eventually systematized and catechized some unbiblical beliefs, practices and systems. That reality was a strong signal to the need to reemphasize the Scriptures being the final authority for faith and life. The Catholic understanding was that the papacy and the institutional church had the last word and were in essence the purveyors of grace and providers of salvation. The church taught that the priests mediated between the church faithful and God. The Anabaptists had come to believe in the priesthood of all believers. That practice alone labeled them as rebellious and unfaithful.
The practice of indulgences stood in direct contrast to the clear biblical teaching that salvation was by faith and not by works, but the Anabaptists also strongly emphasized that genuine salvation by faith would naturally demonstrate itself in one’s life.
Anabaptism precipitated significant persecution by both church and state and yet spread rapidly in Europe. After the movement had grown to about 2,000 members, Anabaptist leaders met in Schleitheim, Switzerland, to draft a common confession of faith. They developed a biblically founded document, including statements about: (1) the meaning and practice of baptism and communion; (2) living exemplary lives that demonstrated separation from evil; (3) the “ban”—excluding the sinful from the church; (4) the responsibilities of pastors; (5) declining oaths in favor of simply speaking the truth; and (6) refusal to participate in violence.
In 1536, Menno Simons rejected the Catholic church and the priesthood and joined the Anabaptists. By that time, most of the pivotal initiating leadership had died, and the movement was floundering. He bravely and aggressively marginalized a group of radical extremists from Münster, Germany, and effectively coalesced the fragmented Anabaptists. He wrote extensively and, as a result, provided much needed cohesion and traction for the movement.
As a result of his itinerant travel and subsequent notoriety, his “followers” came to be known as Mennists, and later Mennonites. The most often quoted line from his writings is saturated with foundational truths: True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant, it clothes the naked, it feeds the hungry, it comforts the sorrowful, it shelters the destitute, it serves those who harm it, it binds up that which is wounded, it has become all things to all creatures. (paraphrased)
What made Anabaptists distinct
Those early Anabaptist Mennonites came to be known for several of their distinctives. While Catholics had holy words, rituals, places and persons, the Anabaptists had none of those. Choosing the Gospels as key biblical texts, they identified as being transformed by being “born again.” While it may not have been intentional to differentiate them, it did have a different ring than being “justified by grace through faith,” as was common among the reformers.
In the centuries following, the Schleitheim Confessional statement has been reviewed and revised in several contexts. Our U.S. Mennonite Brethren conference was founded as a renewal and missionary movement on Jan. 6, 1860, in South Russia. The current USMB confession is available at usmb.org/confession-of-faith-4/.
It is reassuring that the unswerving commitment to the Scriptures has been foundational in Protestant belief for centuries, as attested by Charles Spurgeon in the 19th century: “The Scripture alone is absolute truth, essential truth, decisive truth, authoritative truth, undiluted truth, eternal, everlasting truth.”
While they don’t encompass all our confessional commitments, the core tenets of historic Anabaptism stand reliably today: The Bible is not negotiable. Jesus matters most. We live Holy Spirit-powered, “born again” lives. Jesus’ free church is our committed community. We invite others into faith in Jesus. We pursue peace and reconciliation. Those theological foundations are as powerful today as they were then.
While the legacy of their Reformation leadership lives on, it is noteworthy that the three aforementioned founding fathers moved on to paradise not long after the birth of Anabaptism. Conrad Grebel (1498-1526) succumbed to the plague at the age of 28. George Blaurock (1491-1529) was burned at the stake for his faith. Felix Manz (1498-1527) was martyred by drowning.
References
- Murray, S.: (2010). The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith. Herald Press.
- Becker, P.: (2017). Anabaptist Essentials: Ten Signs of a Unique Christian Faith. Herald Press.
Ed Boschman serves as the head coach for the USMB LEAD Coaching initiative, giving leadership to a national team of trained LEAD coaches and facilitating connections with those individuals. Boschman served as the USMB executive director from 2007 to 2014.
