Liberty Is Their Monument
There are no stone or brick-and-mortar monuments to the Anabaptists, but Harold Harker finds something better.
No cathedral stands as a monument to them, no city has a museum filled with their memorabilia and no leader has been honoured in a country’s history, yet all Christian faiths of today owe a debt to these believers for the concept of freedom of worship and of conscience that they pioneered and earned with their blood.
The group is the Anabaptists, whose beliefs have been incorporated into major denominations worldwide, such as Baptists, Assemblies of God and Seventh-day Adventist, arose in the early part of the 16th century, first in Switzerland, then southern Germany and finally in the Netherlands.
The almost-forgotten group were a product of the Reformation, which the monk Luther began when he nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, in 1517. Swiftly the concept of salvation “by grace alone, through faith alone, and in Christ alone as revealed in the Scriptures alone” became established dogma of Luther’s church, and quickly spread from Germany into Switzerland.
There, Ulrich Zwingli led the Reformation forward in Zurich, and John Calvin in Geneva. Other believers joined the reform surge, bringing revival to churches across all of Europe.
In Zurich a number of these believers, armed with recently printed Bibles, began to read them deeply and in earnest. Small groups began to meet and it was amazing the discoveries they made in Scripture.
One that was to give them their identity came from the words of Jesus: “He that believes and is baptised will be saved” (Mark 16:16). The concept of baptism as a fundamental belief took root, and the expression “believer’s baptism” became their catchcry. And, in contrast to the practice of the day, they saw the rite of baptism of infants as having no biblical support, and opposed it.
Luther, Zwingli and Calvin all stressed the right of a believer’s direct access to the salvation of God, but they also believed very strongly that worship should be tied to the leaders of society. At this time the Reformation had given choice of belief and also of faith tradition—Catholic or Protestant—to the princes. The people within that country or kingdom were bound to the faith of their prince or king.
It was believed that society would unravel if individual freedoms were allowed in these matters. The Diet of Speyer, in 1529, confirmed this arrangement.
During 1525, near Zurich, under the leadership of Conrad Grebel, a group of believers met to study the Scriptures.
Grebel was well educated. He met with George Blaurock, a priest from the town of Chur, and together they studied with other priests and those interested in discovering new truths from the Bible.
Eventually they came to conclusion that baptism as Jesus was baptised—by complete immersion—was an imperative of faith. As a consequence, they also rejected infant baptism.
The city of Zurich had recently considered the issue and declared that these believers’ objections to infant baptism were not valid. Thus on January 21, 1525, Grebel and Blaurock, together with Wilhelm Reublin and Johannes Brötli, also priests, met together and the rite of baptism by immersion was formalised for believers.
They also began to hold communion from house to house, as in the days of the apostles. But such dissent and alternate practice was unappreciated by the local Reformation leadership. Zwingli was guiding the church in Zurich away from the Church of Rome, and these believers with their new ideas were seen as schismatic, splitting the fledgling Protestant church.
Zwingli, as did Melanchthon, began to use the magisterial powers of the city to try to “heal” the rupture in the solidarity of city and church. These radical believers were shamefully arraigned, imprisoned, tried and sentenced to death by the misguided Protestant church and leadership.
Some were mocked: “You want to be baptised! Then we’ll baptise you all right!” They were immersed in the freezing waters of the streams, held under until they drowned! Others had their hands and feet tied and were thrown into the icy rivers, often at night. Some were subjected to such barbaric practices as branding with red-hot irons. The number of Anabaptists martyred is estimated in the tens of thousands.
The persecution—by both Protestant reformers and Catholic church—was done in an effort to quash doctrinal dissent, and went on for 30 years.
The growth of Anabaptists continued despite the persecution, but because of it, the group never achieved anything like establishment status, so that today there are no churches or cathedrals dedicated to their worship style.
Many Anabaptists, as they had come to be known, were sympathetic to or had participated in the Peasant’s War in Germany, in 1525. This, plus their non-conformist beliefs, added to their outlaw status.
As Anabaptists scattered across Germany and northward into the Low Countries, a variety of beliefs evolved among the scattered groups. While they remained conservative in their belief in Switzerland, in more distant areas they became quite radical, even moving into communal forms of living. Those who followed Thomas Müntzer, for example, became extremely radical and were involved in anarchy as they took over the city of Münster.
However, these Reformed believers left a broader legacy. Not only has the practice of the “believers’ baptism” become a core doctrinal belief of many churches, the Anabaptists’ focus on apocalyptic events and prophecy also had an impact.
They also stood for discipleship, which identified Jesus and the Bible as the ultimate authority for belief and practice. They believed strongly that new life in Jesus brought with it power to obey Him. Their belief that with a person’s knowledge of salvation came an obligation to share it, based on Jesus’ Great Commission to “Go into all the world . . .” (see Matthew 28:19, 20).
Today there are many communions of faith based in the Reformed branch of the Protestant church, including the less wellknown Hutterites and more familiar Mennonite and Amish peoples in the US.
So while the Anabaptists may not have left any grand churches or stone monuments, yet their legacy lives on, not only in their beliefs as adopted by other churches, but in the concept of freedom of conscience that they pioneered, something that we all, no matter what our religious persuasion, still cherish.
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