Anababaptists
The Anabaptist
movement had a varied cast of characters. From it has evolved the Free Church
tradition. From Luther to twentieth century scholar Karl Holl, the opinion
prevailed that Anabaptism began with revolutionaries and spiritualizes such as
the Zwickau and Thomas Munzer and reached its logical conclusion with the
violent Munsterites. In the 1940s Harold S. Bender inaugurated a new era in
American Anabaptist studies. Using primary sources and following up directions
indicated earlier by C.A. Cornelius and other Europeans, Bender distinguished
between Anabaptists and revolutionaries. He placed Anabaptist origins in the
circle of Conrad Grebel, which left Zwingli's reformation when Zwingli insisted
on things they disagreed with. From Zurich the movement was spread by
missionaries from Switzerland to Austria and Moravia, South Germany, and the
Low Countries. Bender described the movement as the logical culmination of the
reform begun but left unfinished by Luther and Zwingli. Its principal
characteristics were discipleship, biblicism, and pacifism. Beginning in the
late 1960s scholars challenged and, to a considerable measure, reoriented
Bender's findings. They described a pluralistic rather than a homogenous
movement with several points of origin and a multiplicity of reforming
impulses.
Swiss Antibaptism.
Anabaptism in Switzerland developed from Zwingli's early supporters. These
future radicals included the Grebel circle, which gathered in the home of
Andreas Castelberger for Bible study, and priests from the outlying towns of
Zurich. For different reasons the urban and rural radicals became disillusioned
with Zwingli's reform. Seeing the Bible as an alternative authority to Rome, the
Grebel circle desired Zwingli to proceed rapidly to purify the city's religious
establishment of such corruptions as the Mass. When Zwingli allowed the city
council to determine the speed of reformation, it seemed to the radicals the
substitution of one oppressive authority for another. The radical movement
developed social as well as religious dimensions when its members joined forces
with rural priests such as Simon Stumpf at Hongg and Wilhelm Reublin at
Wittikon, who sought to establish self-governing Volkskirchen in the rural
communities, independent of Zurich's central authority, both religious and
civil. The rebaptisms which occurred first on January 21, 1525, and from which
come the name Anabaptism, originally expressed an anticlerical opposition to civil
and religious authority outside of the local parish rather than a Free Church
theological concept.
Ultimately the attempts to
become a mass movement failed and there emerged the idea of the church of the
separated, persecuted, and defenseless minority. The Schleitheim Articles of
1527, edited by Michael Sattler, consolidated this Swiss Anabaptism. Its goal
was not the purification of existing Christianity, as it was for the early
Zurich radicals, but rather the separation of congregations of believers from
the world. Thus at Schleitheim first emerged the idea of a "free
church." These Swiss Brethren came to be known for their legalistic
approach to the Bible, a salvation manifesting itself in the creation of
separated congregations, and baptism which symbolized that salvation and made
the baptized a member of the congregation.
South German Anabaptism. In spite of the mutual practice of adult baptism, Anabaptism in South Germany was a quite different movement from the Swiss Brethren. South German Anabaptism stems from the reformulation of ideas from Thomas Munzer by Hans Hut and Hans Denck (ca. 1500-1527). Reflecting a medieval, mystical outlook, Munzer envisioned the inner transformation of persons through the Spirit and an accompanying external transformation of the entire society, with the newly transformed individuals acting in revolutionary fashion to usher in the kingdom of God. This revolution, along with Munzer, died in the May 1525 massacre of peasants at Frankenhausen.
Low Countries Anabaptism. The third major Anabaptist movement was
planted in the Low Countries by Melchior Hofmann (1495-1543). An erstwhile
Lutheran preacher in Sweden and Schleswig-Holstein, always zealously interested
in eschatological speculation, Hofmann found in the Strasbourg Anabaptists
influenced by Hans Denck the ideas which precipitated his break with Luther and
enabled him to develop his own form of Anabaptism. Hofmann believed in the near
in-breaking of God's kingdom into the world, with divine vengeance upon the
wicked. The righteous would participate in this judgment, not as agents of
vengeance but as witnesses to the coming peace. Hofmann's baptism served to
gather the elect into an end-time congregation to build this new Jerusalem. He
died after ten years imprisonment in Strasbourg.