Baptist scholar William R. Estep wrote in 1963: “If the Anabaptists teach us anything, it is that those who fear freedom and court the governments of this world in the interest of a more moral or ‘Christian’ state are placing their faith in a broken reed. For the Anabaptists, there is only one way, the way of the Cross, for the church to become ‘salt, light and leaven’ in any society and in every age.”
In 2025, perhaps there is no more poignant and perilous “age” in which to confront the 500th anniversary of Anabaptist beginnings than at this moment in America, a country rife with the fear of freedom and churches courting “the governments of this world.”
Bill Leonard
In 1525, Zurich, Switzerland, became a center of Anabaptist origins at the start of the Protestant Reformation. Ulrich Zwingli, humanist scholar and “People’s Priest” at the Grossmünster Church in Zurich, led that Swiss canton in a series of “disputations” with Catholics, after which the town council was asked to decide which tradition would define the city-state’s official religion.
Zwingli was aided by a group of young men who studied the Greek New Testament with him and supported his Protestant sentiments, among them Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz. They joined Zwingli in an October 1523 disputation challenging the use of the Catholic Mass and the reverence for images of the saints. Prior to the debate, Zwingli and his young associates advocated for the abolition of the Mass to be replaced by a service of Protestant-formulated Holy Communion.
Ulrich Zwingli
As the public debate ended, Grebel requested the mass be abandoned. Zwingli responded that the lords of the city council “would decide whatever regulations are to be adopted in the future in regard to the Mass.” With that, a young radical named Simon Stumpf asserted, “Master Ulrich, you do not have the right to place the decision on this matter in the hands of my lords, for the decision has already been made, the Spirit of God decides.”
Zwingli agreed that Scripture was the true guide but distinguished between theological doctrine and the God-ordained authority of the town council to make church-related decisions for the people. That early division became a complete fissure on Jan. 21, 1525, with the repudiation of infant baptism by Zwingli’s young comrades.
The Large Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren describes that January event at the home of Felix Manz:
And it came to pass that they were together until anxiety came upon them, yes, they were so pressed within their hearts. Thereupon they began to bow their knees to the Most High God in heaven and called upon him as the Informer of Hearts and they prayed that he would give to them his divine will and that he would show his mercy unto them. For flesh and blood and human forwardness did not drive them, since they well knew what they would have to suffer on account of it.
After the prayer, George of the house of Jacob (Blaurock) stood up and besought Conrad Grebel for God’s sake to baptize him with the true Christian baptism upon his faith and knowledge. And when he knelt down with such a request and desire, Conrad baptized him, since at that time there was no ordained minister to perform such work.
Conrad Grebel
The mode of baptism was probably trine affusion, pouring water three times on the head in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Grebel baptized George Blaurock, who then baptized the others in the room, and the Anabaptist tradition was born, ultimately producing groups that included the Swiss Brethren, Hutterites, Mennonites and Amish. Some administered baptism by affusion, others by immersion, thus constituting churches outside state authority.
Mennonite historian Harold Bender wrote: “The decision of Conrad Grebel to refuse to accept the jurisdiction of the Zurich council over the Zurich church is one of the high moments of history, for however obscure it was, it marked the beginning of the modern ‘free church’ movement,” the idea of a free church in a free state.
In 16th-century Switzerland, citizenship and baptism were inseparable. To be born into a “Christian state” required baptism into the officially sanctioned church whether Protestant or Catholic. To challenge that regulation was to be guilty of both treason and heresy.
Persecution was immediate. After traveling the countryside preaching and baptizing, Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz were arrested and given unspecified prison terms that were later extended to life sentences. With help from friends, Grebel escaped, only to fall victim to the Plague, dying in 1526.
On Jan. 5, 1527, Manz was sentenced to death “because contrary to Christian order and custom he had become involved in Anabaptism … so that he and his followers separated themselves from the Christian Church and were about to raise up and prepare a sect of their own. . . (and) because he had condemned capital punishment.”
Felix Manz
The sentencing read: “Manz shall be delivered to the executioner, who shall tie his hands, put him into a boat, … there strip his bound hands down over his knees, place a stick between his knees and arms, and thus push him into the water and let him perish in the water; thereby he shall have atoned to the law and justice.”
Manz was immediately taken to Zurich’s Limmat River and drowned. Five hundred years ago, freedom and justice were terribly elusive. They remain so.
Harold Bender characterized the Grebel/Manz group of Swiss Brethren by these distinguishing traits:
- Christian life is grounded in discipleship — Nachfolge Christi, following Christ.
- Faith begins with a religious experience of God’s grace in Christ.
- Christian living is centered in love and “freedom from violence,” the foundation of Anabaptist pacificism; indeed, Anabaptists, Brethren and Quakers represent the “historic peace churches,” a Christian witness against war, violence and the taking of life.
Harvard historian George Williams identified these Evangelical Anabaptists as part of the “Radical Reformation” because they pushed church and culture beyond the political and theological limits of their Medieval times. Five hundred years later, the Anabaptist witness is instructive with valuable lessons for Christians in the crumbling American political and religious context of 2025.
The harshness of their 16th-century state/church society led these Anabaptists to insist that Christians abstain from holding public office. The earliest Anabaptist statement of faith, the Schleitheim Confession (1527) declared: “It is not appropriate for a Christian to serve as a magistrate.” They challenged certain unjust church/state alliances that undermined the life of the gospel in the name of “orthodoxy.”
Case in point, 2025: These days Christians who readily affirm, even sign, documents attesting to their orthodoxy may discover the cruelty and callousness of contemporary politics and/or politicians take them outside the Sermon on the Mount and other Jesus-related orthodoxies.
The Schleitheim Confession notes that “worldly magistrates” had begun to use “the sword,” a symbol of government policing, not only to subdue criminals, but to punish the innocent for holding contrary doctrinal opinions. Such “worldlings are armed with steel and iron, but the Christians are armed with the armor of God, with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation and the word of God.” Sinners should be “warned” to repent but not visited with the sword.
Mike Johnson
Case in point, 2025: Anabaptist Felix Manz recently came to mind when the current speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives asserted that the governor of California should be “tarred and feathered” for his negative response to the presence of Marines ordered into the state without his request. While the action was not specifically religion-related, the speaker consistently acknowledges he is a person of faith, even referring to himself as “a Bible-believing Christian,” and frequently leads public prayers. His office puts him third in line for the U.S. presidency, and he often references his belief that he holds the office through the will of the divine.
Yet amid his continuing Christian profession, the speaker’s call for tarring and feathering a fellow officeholder reflects significant distancing from the gospel while recalling a practice long associated with the KKK. Worse yet, the recent shootings of Minnesota state legislators and their spouses sadly illustrate the rising political violence activated against individuals, not for lawbreaking, but for their opinions.
As a self-defined Baptist, Speaker Johnson might consider “rededicating his life” some Sunday soon. As the early Anabaptists might say, right now he is spiritually “without one plea.”
Bill Leonard is founding dean and the James and Marilyn Dunn professor of Baptist studies and church history emeritus at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C. He is the author or editor of 25 books. A native Texan, he lives in Winston-Salem with his wife, Candyce, and their daughter, Stephanie.
Related articles:
Baptists were for separation of church and state before they were against it | Opinion by Rodney Kennedy
In spite of dungeon, fire and sword: A Mennonite legacy | Opinion by Alan Bean
What is a Baptist? | Opinion by Stephen Shoemaker