Posted on 05/02/2013 6:40:01 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
I am often asked, “What is an Anabaptist?” and “Who are the Anabaptists?” If one listened to everyone who claimed an Anabaptist connection, it would be easy to be confused. For many today a progressive politics is Anabaptist; for others it means being either Yoderian (John Howard Yoder) or Hauerwasian (Stanley Hauerwas). Fair enough, but neither of them is the full representation of Anabaptism.
So today I want to sketch the view of the one description of Anabaptism that shaped the 20th century the most. I refer to Harold S. Bender‘s classic essay called “The Anabaptist Vision.” No, it is not true that all Anabaptists agree with Bender, and no, some today (like Thomas Finger, in his big study, A Contemporary Anabaptist Theology, or J. Denny Weaver, Becoming Anabaptist) want to frame things in a different way, but it can be said that Bender’s sketch is the most influential view of Anabaptism of the 20th century.
There are three major dimensions of the Reformation: Luther and the Lutherans in Germany, Calvin and the Reformed in Switzerland, and Zwingli-generated (and then finished later by others) Anabaptism. Anabaptism spread through Switzerland, South Germany, Moravia and then into the Netherlands. The early Anabaptist theologians and statements of faith were uniformly Protestant in theology (justification, salvation by faith) yet were not simply Lutheran or Reformed. Their emphasis on adult baptism, upon profession of faith, as part of commitment to be a disciple, and to form into a fellowship of discipleship distinguished the Anabaptists from both the Lutherans and the Reformed, not to mention the Catholics.
Anabaptism is largely responsible for the nonconformist impulse of the church — to be sure, it has some connections to those before it, like the Waldensians of Italy, but the Anabaptists were radical in their nonconformity to the State and to State-sponsored churches — that is, the Catholic Church, Lutherans and the Reformed. All non-State churches in the U.S., and that’s most, owe some debt to the Anabaptists.
They were a courageous lot — thousands were put to death. They paid their life to be nonconformists, and there’s a positive way to put this: they died in order to be faithful to their commitment to follow the Bible, the New Testament and Jesus Christ.
For Bender, the Anabaptists are the full implementation of the Reformation. Neither Luther nor Calvin went far enough. Bender’s focus is Luther, not Calvin, and he cites evidence that Luther late in his life realized his “mass church,” which was basically everyone born into the community/State would be baptized and be Lutheran, was ineffective in transforming the life of the person. The early Anabaptists, like Conrad Grebel, observed the lack of discipleship among the Lutherans of the Reformation. So the Anabaptists carried through the Lutheran reforms and broke with 1,500 years of the church.
Bender is famous for three features of the Anabaptist vision:
The essence of Christianity, or the Christian life, is discipleship — a committed following of Christ in all areas of life. The word on the street in the 16th century — and this word repeated often enough by bitter enemies of the Anabaptists — was that they were consistent and devout Christians. If Luther’s word was “faith,” the word for the Anabaptists was “follow.” The inner conversion was to lead to external transformation.
A new conception of the church as a brotherhood of fellowship. The ruling image of a church among the Catholics and Reformers was more national and institutional and sacramental, while the ruling image for the Anabaptists was fellowship or family. Joining was voluntary; the requirement was conversion; the commitment was to holy living and fellowship with one another. Thus, the Anabaptist separated from the “world” to form a society of the faithful. This view of the church led to economic availability and liability for one another.
A new ethic of love and peaceful nonresistance. Apart from rare exceptions like Balthasar Hubmaier and the nutcases around Thomas Müntzer, the Anabaptists lived a life shaped by love and nonviolence. They refused to coerce anyone.
Thus, for Bender, the focus was on discipleship not sacraments or the inner enjoyment of justification. The church was not an institution or a place for Word proclamation in emphasis but instead a brotherhood of love. In addition, against Catholics and Calvinists who believed in social reform, like the Lutherans the Anabaptists were less optimistic about social transformation. But, unlike the Lutherans who split life into the secular and sacred, the Anabaptists wanted a radical commitment that meant the creation of an alternative Christian society.
We’re in a war to defend our faith. They’re in a war to propagate theirs (because reason doesn’t work for them).
It’s often why wars are fought.
Yes, and I do not understand the reasoning behind it. All that death because of non-conformity?
Arguably the Unitarians or the Jehovah's Witnesses were the full implementation of the Reformatting. Luther, Calvin nor the Zwinglists went far enough.
I'd go further than that and point to Westboro Baptist or Joel Osteen as an even greater fulfillment of the Reformation.
I don’t know why you’d want to conform to people who are dead set on imposing their set of beliefs on you because of who they think God is.
I mean if the Taliban were to walk into your state legislature with guns and proclaim they were taking over your system you would not be willing to take up arms against them or at the very least support those who did?
That’s what the thread is about, isn’t it?
What system are you talking about?
Pretty sure. They expelled the entire Lutheran and Catholic population of Munster naked in a snow storm. Then they sent out pamphlets encouraging Anabaptists to come to Munster, which they did by the thousands. Matthys had anyone who so much as hesitated to accept his policies put to death. After his death, Bockelson instituted full communism and polygamy, killing everyone who resisted that. The Anabaptists were fairly conservative and huge number of them were resisted and were killed. All of Europe began rounding up and executing Anabaptists, fearing that their movement might spread. Add to that two large scale attacks by the Prince-Bishop's army, both of which were repulsed with huge loses. Then when the Prince-Bishop finally retook the town he had everyone found in it put to the sword.
Hmmmm... Better make that:
After Matthys's death, Bockelson instituted...
Perhaps you are correct. After all one is known by one’s fruits...
read about the Anabaptists in Munster...
Yes. 10’s of thousands.
The Anabaptists pretty much had a “our way or the highway” attitude towards any residents of the city who didn’t get in line with their program. The lunacy continued for quite a few months while they were effectively cut off from the outside, and people started starving as well.
When the final siege started, the Anabaptists said that anyone who wanted to flee the city could, and hundreds of people took the chance to flee the impending sack of the city. Only problem was, when the ran into the Catholic lines, they were all slaughtered.
Well, yes, but the women in the town were raped just one more time, for good measure, before being put to the sword.
All this because some people didn’t believe in God the same way as they did?
I’d like to see the evidence for tens of thousands dead. Not those starved, but killed by policy. They only had a few months before they were surrounded, and none of the accounts I’ve found say anything about them killing people by the thousands, let alone by the tens of thousands.
Nor were their enemies exactly models of restraint and Christian charity:
“The army of Münster was defeated in 1536 by the prince bishop Franz von Waldeck, and John of Leiden was captured. He was found in the cellar of a house, from where he was taken to a dungeon in Dülmen, then brought back to Münster. On January 22, 1536, along with Bernhard Krechting and Bernhard Knipperdolling, he was tortured and then executed. Each of the three was attached to a pole by an iron spiked collar and his body ripped with red-hot tongs for the space of an hour. After Knipperdolling saw the process of torturing John of Leiden, he attempted to kill himself with the collar, using it to choke himself. After that the executioner tied him to the stake to make it impossible for him to kill himself. After the burning, their tongues were pulled out with tongs before each was killed with a burning dagger thrust through the heart. The bodies were placed in three cages and hung from the steeple of St. Lambert’s Church and the remains left to rot. About fifty years later the bones were removed, but the cages have remained into the 21st century.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Leiden
I’ve been looking, and I can find no verification that the Anabaptist extremists killed thousands or tens of thousands.
The fury at the Catholic Church was bottled up for hundreds of years, and then Luther came forward with two HUGE developments:
1. A version of the Bible written in the common language - German - instead of Latin. The Luther Bible was one of the forces that set off the firestorm in Germany - people realized upon reading the Bible in their own language, translated by a man with Luther’s credibility, that they had been lied to, and lied to in a huge, lasting way.
2. After the Reformation started, you were going to see all manner of factions and schisms start, as doctrines of theology got going. Once it was no longer impossible to question the manifestly corrupt Catholic Church, it was no longer impossible to question anyone, including Luther.
Lastly, after the atrocities perpetrated by the Catholic Church, there was serious payback coming. The Church earned it, so they got it.
That’s the stuff I can’t understand...how can churches and religious belief matter so much, that governments (and the resulting death and wars), become governing bodies? Seems to me, that one’s belief in God should just be an individual thing.
What system. The judeo christian system which has created so many of our institutions.
I'm not sure why you can think beliefs don't or shouldn't matter.
Everyone's worldview results in a way of doing things and these are funnelled into political movements. This is true whether you are atheist, christian, muslim, hindu, or have the environment as your God. An example...you can see how the green movement has tried to usurp the power of everyone else by squelching the fossil fuel business, thereby destroying prosperity for all of us. Or how the homosexuals are trying to get power in the school system now.
Why would you think people who believe this actions are wrong should stand down, not fight back or keep it to themselves?
That’s what I don’t understand. How did religious beliefs become so powerful as to control governments?
Throughout history, there have been people that want what others want, or are power crazy. I can understand that.
But I don’t understand why/how one’s belief in God can be used so effectively to rally people behind them. To me, religion is just being used as a tool for this behavior.
I never said anything about standing down or not fighting back. I just said that I don’t understand how or why people rally behind religious causes.
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