AT 01: Anabaptism Today: Introductory Editorial

By Stuart Murray
Originally published in Anabaptism Today, Issue 1, November 1992

Welcome to the inauguaral issue of Anabaptism Today,the magazine of a recently formed Anabaptist Network in the UK! For a number of years a small study group has met in London to explore Anabaptism and its contemporary significance. Drawn from several denominational backgrounds, members of this group have become convinced that the Anabaptist legacy is attractive and has much to teach Christians today. In December 1991 we wrote to eighty people asking whether they would welcome the formation of an Anabaptist Network and the production of a magazine. By autumn 1992, more than two hundred people had asked to join the Network, and most endorsed the idea of a magazine.

Steps toward a new magazine

Because of this level of interest, an ad hoc committee of people involved in the original study group met to make plans for a new magazine. The committee asked the following individuals to serve as an editorial board for the publication:

Eleanor and Alan Kreider - Mennonite authors who live in Manchester, where they are Theologians in Residence" at Northern Baptist College.

Nigel Wright - A Baptist minister, author, and tutor in theology at Spurgeon's College in London. He chairs the Baptist Mainstream group.

Judith Gardiner - A Mennonite specialist in church history who lives in East London and teaches at London Bible College.

Noel Moules - The Director of Workshop, a discipleship and leadership training programme. He lives in Clapham in South London.

Trisha Dale - A free-lance editor and National Secretary of Men Women and God. She is Baptist and lives in Surrey.

David Nussbaum - A director of a packaging company who holds two degrees in theology. He is from Bucks and is a non-executive director of Traidcraft.

The committee asked the following to serve as editors:

Stuart Murray, former church planter in the East End of London and member of Team Spirit (a House Church network). He recently completed a doctorate in Anabaptist hermeneutics and is now Oasis Director of Evangelism and Church Planting at Spurgeon's College in London.

Nelson Kraybill, a Mennonite minister from the United States who recently completed a doctorate in biblical studies. In 1991 he moved to London to become Programme Director of the London Mennonite Centre.

Many people in the traditions to which the editorial board belong recognize in Anabaptism a source of inspiration and instruction. For Mennonites, this means rediscovering their own historical roots. For Baptists, this means acknowledging the influence of Anabaptist ideas even if the historical connection between Anabaptism and early Baptists is unclear. For House Church people, this means discovering significant parallels with Anabaptism and learning from an earlier restoration movement.

The Anabaptist Network is already broader than these three traditions, however, and our intention is that it be as ecumenical as possible. Some people in other traditions are interested in Anabaptism as a historical movement; others are concerned about its contemporary relevance. Some are attracted by Anabaptist emphases on community, consensus and economic sharing; others value the commitment to nonviolence and enemy-loving. Some find the Anabaptist approach to Scripture refreshing; others find challenge in a radical Jesus-centred tradition. Our aim is to reflect this range of interests in magazine articles, and to draw on insights of members of the network.

A way of being church and following Jesus

We struggled over terminology for the network and the magazine. We considered "Radical Reformation" or 'believers' church", but decided in the end to stay with "Anabaptist". Of course this label was originally an insult, and Anabaptist ("re-baptizer") is an inaccurate term: Anabaptists regarded infant baptism as invalid, and thus insisted they were baptizing believers, not re-baptizing. Although using the term "Anabaptist" today could suggest our interest is mainly in a sixteenth-century movement, we have found it to be the most recognizable and helpful label. We are interested in the sixteenth-century Anabaptists, but see them as representatives of a way of being church and following Jesus that has had other expressions throughout history. We want to draw on this broader tradition and to explore what it means to follow Jesus at the end of the twentieth century.

This first issue of Anabaptism Today introduces themes that the magazine will address regularly: "The Search for Roots" locates Anabaptism in a broad "alternative church history" tradition; later issues will explore other groups from this stream of church history. "Zurich: Seedbed of Radical Change" introduces the Swiss Anabaptists; subsequent issues will contain similar articles on other sixteenth-century expressions of the Radical Reformation. "Catching the Bell Rope" considers ways in which the contemporary church is rediscovering and endorsing convictions held by Anabaptists; future articles will explore other contemporary topics. Other regular features will be book reviews and samplings of original Anabaptist documents or illustrations. We welcome letters and offers to write articles.

A stimulus to action and reflection

In addition to the magazine, the Anabaptist Network includes study groups in several parts of the UK. Already there are groups meeting in London and Sheffield, and during the winter more groups may begin. Details of these groups appear in this issue. Anabaptism Today will act as a resource for these study groups, together with other material we will suggest.

Further ahead lies development of an Anabaptist Institute to enable research into topics dealt with in this magazine. Whilst there is no facility for this at present in the UK, there is growing interest in such research. We are eager to provide resources, facilities and supervision for those who want to undertake study on Anabaptist topics. As a step towards this, we hope to set up resource centres in several parts of the UK, with books and other materials available for those who want to explore Anabaptism. At present the main resource is the London Mennonite Centre with its Metanoia Book Service, library and Cross-Currents seminars. The Anabaptist Network is independent of the Mennonite Centre but is working closely with it.

Sixteenth-century Anabaptism was largely a movement of the poor, powerless and uneducated; it was not a scholarly elite. Anabaptists had their heart in discipleship and mission rather than in doctrinal discussion or historical research. Whilst we recognize the need today for research to rediscover this legacy, we want the network to be earthed in local church life, mission and practical social concern. We hope this magazine will be a stimulus to reflection as well as action.

AT 01: Catching the Bell Rope

by Nigel G. Wright
Originally published in Anabaptism Today, Issue 1, November 1992

There are moments in history that contain an element of mystery, a sense that something innovative, creative and arguably divine is being forged. Karl Barth's rediscovery of the Bible and his consequent "Copernican revolution" in theology is one such moment. By his own confession, Barth "stumbled into the strange world of the Bible". He felt himself to be like one who climbed a bell tower, inadvertently caught hold of the bell rope and caused all around to hear the ringing of the bell.

Barth's "accidental" rediscovery of the power of the Word of God has had a prolonged impact upon the theological world. It came about during the First World War, during a period of intense political pressure and social dislocation. Barth's personal experience proved significant far beyond his own life because it came at a particular time into a world which, whether it knew it or not, was ready for it.

The English Civil War of the seventeenth century was a similar moment of innovation and creativity. In the midst of that huge social, military, economic and religious clash, new ideas came to birth. Creativity found political and institutional expression in ways which marked have the western world ever since. English society crossed thresholds in its conceptions of what is politically right and good, and could not go back. People who at other times and places merely would have gone their way in obscurity actually incarnated these changes in their lives. Revolutionary times made revolutionaries of the most unlikely people.

The days and weeks of Christ's resurrection appearances rank supreme in a Christian view of history. Here something radically new took place, difficult though it is to fathom within categories of secular history. New ideas, new language and new experiences came to birth in the white heat of that event. Followers of Jesus came to understand the world in radically new ways.

I am tempted to describe each of these moments as "revelatory". For the theologically fastidious, however, I shall reserve this language for the resurrection alone and speak of other historical events as "illuminatory". In the events cited, and others not listed, illumination took place in ways beyond ignoring. It is possible to see in each event a conjunction of revolutionary historical circumstances, human longing and activity of the Spirit of God. These were breakthroughs leading to paradigm shifts in the way a significant number of people viewed reality.

Anabaptism as a threshold moment

Both by its role in history and its impact on my own life, Anabaptism is such a paradigm shift. The more I read about it, the more I sense that the emergence of Anabaptism was yet another "magic" moment, a breaking in of illumination through the hard crust of resistant humanity.

As far as I am concerned, the pivotal event in the emergence of Anabaptism took place at Zürich on January 21, 1525.¹ The political and religious landscape of Europe was in a period of tumultuous change. A growing dissident group of Zwingli's followers had come under censure from the town council and had now met secretly at the home of Felix Mantz. Conrad Grebel and a fiery newcomer to town, Georg Blaurock, were among those present.

Suddenly the breakthrough came. Georg Blaurock requested Conrad Grebel to baptize him with true Christian baptism. Grebel did so, after which Blaurock baptized those present in the room by pouring water. This was a threshold moment. No one had dared do this since the time of the Donatists over a thousand years before. It was a proscribed act since it was regarded as re-baptism, a breach of church discipline. The church was backed by the power of the state, and could exercise discipline with real force. Re-baptism was a simple act, yet it had immense implications.

Discipleship embracing responsibility

Re-baptism had implications for the nature of the church. To baptize upon profession of faith was to imply that up till this time these people had not been true Christians. Simply being baptized as a baby into a "Christian" society was not enough. Something more was necessary for the fashioning of a true Christian, some act of discipleship that embraced responsibility. The church had to be a committed fellowship of those who freely believed and in so doing set themselves, in matters of faith, beyond the dictate of monarch or town council.

The Anabaptist view of discipleship and church also had implications for society. Anabaptists saw society in a radically different way from their contemporaries. Theirs was a protest movement operating under extreme conditions, and they did not usually produce carefully honed or systematic theology. Yet their theology did emerge through a ragged series of insights and encounters. It amounted to a rejection of the sacral state, a rejection of both the ideological use of religion by the state and the oppressive use of secular power by the church. This understanding of church and state anticipated freedoms which later became the heritage of western nations. Although it may not be possible to draw a straight line from Anabaptism to religious tolerance and freedom, it is possible to draw some sort of line.

The emergence of Anabaptism shed light upon western religious and political structures, and enabled improvement. Anabaptism marked both a return to the sources of faith in Jesus Christ and a belief in the possibility of progress in society. The first of these predominated for the Anabaptists. But the movement is evidence that where people take Jesus Christ seriously and adhere to him, their witness has power beyond expectation and imagining.

A source of renewal for church and mission

Anabaptism still has power to illuminate, and this conviction undergirds my interest in the movement. The illumination continues to concern the way of being the church and the consequences of this for Christian witness to society. Anabaptism may act, therefore, as a source of renewal for the church and its mission.

In the present era, the whole church must come to terms with the fact that its existence is a sectarian one. It does not occupy the dominating, central ground in society. It no longer provides a canopy embracing the whole of reality for substantial masses of humanity. It must come to terms with this existence as a dissenting minority which nonetheless has immense transformative potential. It is here that a return to the paradigms of Anabaptism has ecumenical significance. There is something here for the whole church to learn.

My interests lie particularly in the area of mission and the ways in which renewal of the church offers potential for renewing the wider community. Anabaptists wanted to restore the true church on biblical and supremely on christological foundations. The consequent missionary impetus manifested by the movement was in stark contrast to other Reformation traditions.

If various traditions of Christianity need to heed the Anabaptist witness, they do not need to cease being what they are. Rather, the church ecumenical might benefit from the leaven of Anabaptist thought as it relates to responsible discipleship, the believers' church, and freedom of the church from dominance by state and culture. The outcome of this is beyond immediate prediction, but not beyond creative imagination. The motive for renewed interest in

Anabaptism is not narrow sectarianism, but ecumenism in the belief that illumination is here for us all.

Fruitful impact as voluntary minority

Along the way we need to revise the language of "church" and "sect" which often predominates in these discussions. When Ernst Troeltsch developed his typology along these lines he was using the language in precise terms. However, it is too easy to use the word "sect" pejoratively. What the church needs to recognize is that a sectarian reality now confronts us all. Increasingly the church's existence will be as a voluntary minority which does not hold the centre ground in our cultures.

We may either lament this status as a fall from past glory or embrace it as the way it should have been all along, as a return to the normative mode for existence of the church. To recognize our marginalisation is not to capitulate to paganism, or to abdicate social and political responsibility, or to accommodate to the privatisation of religion - although all of these temptations lie to hand. It is rather a return to the mode of existence in which the church makes its most fruitful impact as it actively waits and prays for the kingdoms of this world to become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ.

On a more personal level, it is impossible to read of the Anabaptists without admiring both their heroism and their Christian character in adversity. As a British Baptist, I am aware of the suffering endured by my own forebears. But the tally of martyrs produced by the Anabaptists exceeds anything in my own tradition.

Some years ago I stood by the River Limmat in Zürich, not far from Zwingli's church, at the place where Felix Mantz was bound before being carried off to the middle of the river to endure the "third baptism" of martyrdom. Mantz was the first Anabaptist to die at the hands of fellow Protestants, and he did so testifying cheerfully. His mother and brothers in Christ urged him to be faithful to the last. While being bound he sang with a loud voice: In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum ("Into your hands I commit my spirit, O Lord"). Mantz was consciously echoing Stephen, the first martyr for Christ, the shedding of whose blood furthered the Christian mission no less than his life. In such a testimony there is more than intellectual force, but a quality of commitment which exemplifies the offering of the whole of life in discipleship. I felt myself to be at a place of breakthrough, and that instinct has not lessened.

Notes

I See articles on pages 12-16 and 24 of this issue of Anabaptism Today.

AT 01: The Search for Roots

by Alan Kreider
Originally published in Anabaptism Today, Issue 1, November 1992

Anabaptism Today? This may sound somewhat immodest. Anabaptism, in its generative and expansive form at least, was crushed over four centuries ago. The established churches, often for understandable reasons of responsibility and institutional survival, rejected its insights. Its leaders were killed or cowed into quiescence. Its writings remained unpublished and unread. The very word "Anabaptism" became a byword for fanaticism and tumult.

Beginning about a century ago, however, and gaining momentum in the past twenty years, there has been a growing readiness on the part of many Christians to listen to the Anabaptists. There is new interest in listening not only to the Anabaptists, but also to marginal Christians from other times and places who had parallel insights. At a time when Christianity manifestly is in trouble, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, a growing number of Christians are turning to unexpected sources for ways forward.

Christians are turning to the past, not out of nostalgia, but to reawaken subversive memories. Things have been and can be other than they are. There is no God-given inevitability about forms of Christian witness and church life that past generations have bequeathed to us. God's Spirit, who reminds us of everything Jesus taught (John 14:26), also reminds us of undomesticated forms of Christian living. Though crushed and marginalized in the past, in our time these can address us with new possibilities for thought, action and common life. Anabaptism's new influence today is an expression of this. It indicates the transforming potential of a repressed memory brought back into consciousness.

This article examines three ways Anabaptism is important: for its intrinsic significance, for its representative function as part of an alternative strand of Christianity, and for the invitation it presents to rediscover Christian origins.

Intrinsic significance

In a burst of creativity in the 1520s and 1530s, individuals and groups sprang up across western and central Europe to challenge received notions of what it means to be Christian. There were many dimensions to this challenge. After a millenium in which most Europeans were compelled to belong to locally established churches because they had been born in a "Christian" country, the Anabaptists pioneered a voluntarist model of Christianity. Christians should be those who, having counted the cost, had chosen to follow Jesus. Baptism should be given, not to everyone who was born, but to those who had experienced rebirth and were committed to the Christian way.

Faith, the Anabaptists believed, could not be compelled. They sensed that linking church to state polluted the mission of the church without strengthening the state. Theirs was a nonconformist vision of Christianity, and adherents of Anabaptism lived in alternative ways, by different standards from the bulk of the populace. For support in this, Anabaptists developed a variety of communitarian lifestyles. As communities of faith they shared their worship and their possessions, their lives and their sufferings.

The generative core of Anabaptism was its Christocentric understanding. Jesus, whom Christians worship, must also be listened to and obeyed. "Why should God manifest his will", Michael Sattler reasoned shortly before his execution in 1527, "if he did not desire that it be done?"¹ Possibly Sattler's contemporaries did not heed the teachings of Jesus because it was inconvenient, when Christian Europe was being threatened by Turkish invaders, to espouse nonviolent enemy-love. Possibly because, if people were obedient to Jesus' injunction to comprehensive truth-telling and prohibition of swearing oaths, civil courts might cease to function. Possibly because, if people insisted on sharing their possessions with the needy, the economic foundations of European society might be shaken.

These reasons for obedience to God, Anabaptists felt, were not enough. Instead, there were persuasive reasons why communities of faith should test and experiment with the teachings of Jesus and demonstrate their applicability to wider society. Jesus, the Anabaptists were convinced, is God's authoritative Word. He is the key to the rest of the scriptures. He is the source of hope for a humanity experiencing violence, oppression and despair.

Voluntarist, nonconformist, communitarian, Christocentric: these themes emerge from Anabaptist writings and court records that scholars have uncovered in recent decades. The Anabaptists, whose memory was persecuted by powerful people who write histories, now for the first time in over four centuries have been able to speak for themselves. Their voices have given new impetus and self-respect to the groups with uninterrupted Anabaptist lineage: Mennonites, Brethren in Christ, Amish and Hutterites.

Beyond these groups, however, people in other traditions are also listening to Anabaptist voices. Some, in hot disagreement, will point out "That's an Anabaptist argument!" But this put-down doesn't work as well as it used to. Less and less can people categorize an alternative point of view as Anabaptist and think that they have thereby dismissed it. An increasing number of Christians, finding that traditional Christian formulations and folkways no longer fit the world in which they live, are discovering intriguing relevance in the Anabaptists' word and way.

Alternative strands of Christianity

People who warm to Anabaptist insights quickly discover that Anabaptism is not an isolated phenomenon. Instead, it stands in a tradition of radical alternatives to conventional Christianity. Outside the dominant Christian traditions are medieval Waldensians, Lollards, the Czech Brethren, early Baptists, Quakers, Moravians, early Methodists, Christian Brethren, Pentecostals and African Independent Churches. Within the great traditions themselves (often uncomfortably) are monks and friars, missionary orders and societies, the Confessing Church and a variety of communities including Base Ecclesial Communities.

Among Catholic and establishment Protestant groups a lineal descent is often traceable. Some writers have sought to trace a similar genealogy, a kind of alternative apostolic succession, among the nonconformist groups. These attempts have not convinced most scholars; direct connections between them usually are untraceable.

Yet repeatedly the four Anabaptist themes noted above recur in these groups. They appear in differing forms and combinations, to be sure, and especially are evident in the first generation or two of a movement. In their voluntarism these groups have tended to empower the weak and (at least initially) to give new room for women to offer their gifts. In their nonconformity these groups have explored ways of living simply, and often have rejected oath-swearing and life­taking (including war and capital punishment).

Alternative approaches to life issues led many of these groups to explore new ways of being communitarian. All of these are expressions of a Christocentrism that is sometimes sophisticated and sometimes naive, but that always points to the perpetual freshness of Jesus' undomesticable teachings.

Why have these diverse movements, so widely scattered in space and time, come to similar conclusions? Perhaps it is because God's Spirit keeps reminding people of the teachings of Jesus. These people, often in groups that are unrespectable and on the edges of their societies, are ideally placed to say, "Why not? What would happen if ... ?" Then they proceed to give social expression to another sample of Jesus' gracious imprudence.

Anabaptism, by and large, was not genetically connected with these intriguingly similar groups. As some scholars have recently suggested, Anabaptism itself may have been partly a product of an early sixteenth-century monastic renewal movement. It may also have had considerable influence on the early Baptist movement as it developed in the Netherlands and England.

But genes are not the point. Anabaptism has proved significant, not as a link to other groups, but as a symbol of an alternative strand of church history and as a means of providing coherence for it. Two terms derived from Anabaptist study have been especially useful as organizational categories: "Radical Reformation" (Williams; Yoder) and "Believers' Church" (Weber; Durnbaugh).² The Anabaptists, therefore, do not stand alone. They are representatives of a tendency that is durable and recurrent.

An invitation to rediscover origins

The third importance of Anabaptism is its invitation to rediscover origins. As one recent writer put it, Anabaptism "has provided a unique point of identification for many from an evangelical heritage who are taking the call of discipleship seriously in our time". The Anabaptists would have been bemused by this sentence. Their concern was not to be a model for anyone, but to participate with others in a rediscovery of the genius of early Christianity.

Most groups mentioned above had the same concern. According to Elizabethan divine Richard Hooker, so did the Church of England: "The first state of things was best, that in the prime of Christian religion faith was soundest, the Scriptures of God were then best understood by all [people], all parts of godliness did then most abound".³

There is life in the roots. Almost any Christian tradition can experience renewal by rediscovering insights and energies that first brought it into existence. So it is not surprising when modern Methodists in search of renewal appeal to the evangelistic zeal and communitarian instincts of early Wesleyans; or when contemporary Quakers seek to rediscover the earth-shaking understandings and spiritual dynamics of George Fox and his circle of Friends; or when religious orders, following the impetus of Vatican II, seek to rediscover "the spirit of the founder" of each order;⁴ or when Mennonites seek a "recovery of the Anabaptist vision".⁵

The sixteenth-century Anabaptists' ultimate concern, similar to that of the early Quakers, Methodists, Plymouth Brethren and Anglo-Catholics, was to rediscover a pattern of faithfulness to Christ according to the pattern of the Early Church. Therefore, valuable though Anabaptist or Anglican or Pentecostal roots may be to the renewal of these traditions today, these roots especially are valuable insofar as they lead to roots that go deeper still, roots embedded in the memory of Christians of the earliest centuries.

Life-givingly dangerous memory

An indication of the power of this memory comes from a statement by the US Roman Catholic bishops: "It is clear today, perhaps more than in previous generations, that convinced Christians are a minority in nearly every country of the world ... As believers we can identify rather easily with the early Church as a company of witnesses engaged in a difficult mission. To be disciples of Jesus requires that we continually go beyond where we now are ... One must take a resolute stand against many commonly accepted axioms of the world."⁶ This statement, which the Anabaptists would have been astounded to applaud, indicates the substance of agreement that is currently emerging between Christians of many traditions.

Of course, the early church is not our ultimate place of meeting final authority; that we find in the generative events described in the New Testament. Most crucially we find our authority in the person, the life and teaching, the death and resurrection of Jesus whom we worship and follow as Messiah. It is Jesus whose memory is the most life-givingly dangerous of all memories. But the early church, across three centuries, continued in boldness and "foolishness" to live the way of Jesus. It was, according to German Catholic exegete Gerhard Lohfink, a "contrast society" which continued the "foundational reception of Jesus' praxis of the reign of God".⁷ Or, to use other language, it was the first nonconformist church.

The church, of course, later changed course. It adapted its structures and assumptions to the maintenance of dominance in a unitary Christian society, in alliance with the State. According to Anglican biblical theologian Christopher Rowland, it engaged in a "process of neutralization of the subversive ideas which threatened the status quo"⁸ Precisely for this reason the monks and Anabaptists, along with other renewal groups, arose to make their witness.

Something surprising may happen

The coming years are likely to be difficult for the human family. The current global instability is unlikely to diminish, rooted as it is in a lethal mixture of firepower and nationalism, economic immiseration of the southern hemisphere, and ecological crisis of increasing severity. Domestically Britain and the western world are experiencing a disruption of the social landscape and an unsettling normlessness.

This situation is our fault: important causes of our malaise, both global and local, are phenomena familiar to us and distinctive to the West. Particularly evident is our compulsive obeisance to Mammon (in Wendell Berry's words, our commitment to "limitless economic process based upon boundless dissatisfaction").⁹ A related symptom is our individualism, which expresses itself in what sometimes feels like a comprehensive absence of community. In this kind of world, Christians often seem as confused and complicit as anyone else. Even our acts of warship and witness can be unwitting expressions of corrosive Western cultural norms. Meanwhile, the dechristianization of our societies, unchallenged by any real alternatives, hurtles heedlessly ahead. Do we Christians have anything distinctive to contribute?

Insofar as we have something to contribute, it will not be because we are Protestant or Catholic, Anglican or "New Church". Nor will it be because we are well-informed or sophisticated in our social analysis. Rather, it will be because we have begun to orient our lives around the love and will of God as expressed in the prophetic Jesus of the gospels. Jesus, in turn, will give us a vocabulary, a life-giving narrative and a point of view that "are not of this world" (John 18:36).

None of this will be easy, theologically or spiritually, intellectually or practically. Intrinsic difficulties will be compounded by experiences or feelings of apparent irrelevance. As Jesuit spiritual writer Gerard Hughes states matter-of-factly, 'Whoever lives the gospel is marginalized".¹⁰ To people who find "public truth"¹¹ in Jesus' teaching and way, the cross will be a familiar contemporary reality. But God's Spirit - restless, creative, recreative - will not only provide untold reserves of idea and energy for faithful discipleship; the Spirit will also create community. Will we have the courage to choose as our primary identity membership in the community of believers who "critically disassociate [ourselves], in virtue of free personal decision in every case, from the current opinions and feelings of [our] social environment"?¹² What memories, which heroes and heroines, will we choose to nourish us?

In the critical period we are entering, by God's grace something surprising may well happen. The Anabaptists, after centuries of neglect, may find a voice. Along with their radical brothers and sisters in many traditions from the Early Church onwards, they may well be role models in clarifying the way forward. If that turns out to be the case, Anabaptism Today will not seem an immodest title; it will be soberly descriptive.

Notes

1 Michael Sattler, "On the Satisfaction of Christ", in John H. Yoder, ed., The Legacy of Michael Sattler (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1973), 113.

2. George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962); John H. Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom (South Bend, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1984),105; Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner, 1958), 144-35; Donald F. Durnbaugh, The Believer's Church: The History and Character of Radical Protestantism (New York- Macmillan, 1968).

3. Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, III, i, 10; IV, ii, 1.

4. Walter M. Abbott, ed., The Documents of Vatican Il (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966), 463.

5. Guy F. Hershberger, ed., The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1957).

6. The Challenge of Peace (London: Catholic Truth Society/SPCK, 1983), 78-79.

7. Gerhard Lohfink, Jesus and Community: The Social Dimension of Christian Faith (London: SPCK, 1985), 149.

8. Christopher Rowland, Radical Christianity: A Reading of Recovery (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), 155.

9. Wendell Berry, Home Economics (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987), 145.

10. Gerard Hughes, personal communication, 11 June 1992.

11. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1989), 50.

12. Karl Rahner, The Shape of the Church to Come (London: SPCK, 1974), 23.

AT 01: Zürich: Seedbed of Radical Change

by Nelson Kraybill
Originally published in Anabaptism Today, Issue 1, November 1992

Looking for inspiration among sixteenth-century Anabaptists is a bit like exploring your family tree: along with heroes and saints you are certain to find some dubious characters you would rather not claim as relatives. Dubious characters, in fact, often play a prominent role when modern historians explain the place of Anabaptism in the Reformation. We hear of so-called Anabaptist revolutionaries who agitated mobs in the 1525 Peasants' War in Germany, ^l or millenialist visionaries at the city of Munster who practised polygamy and sought to inaugurate the "New Jerusalem" by force (1534-35). Contemporary opponents of such enthusiasts condemned them as "Anabaptists", and for centuries that was a term of opprobrium no self-respecting religious group wanted to own.

Rehabilitating the Anabaptist label

In the twentieth century a variety of scholars and church leaders have sought to rehabilitate the word "Anabaptism", insisting it is a useful term to describe a creative nonconformist branch of the Reformation.² Modern efforts to reclaim Anabaptism as a valid tradition often highlight two early milestones of the movement: the first re-baptism of believers by radical reformers associated with Ulrich Zwingli at Zürich in 1525 and the Schleitheim Articles of 1527 (a brief Anabaptist statement of ecclesiological distinctives that helped shape the tradition for generations). Eager to find the good in sixteenth-century Anabaptism, some modern scholars point to these two expressions as normative for the early movement. The same interpreters dismiss millenarian or violent expressions of Anabaptism as aberrations.³

An accurate picture of early Anabaptism must reflect complexities and abiguities of the movement. Recent interpreters of the Reformation era tend to emphasize that Anabaptism sprang from multiple roots and exhibited a wide variety of expressions.⁴ Instead of pointing to only one fountainhead of "authentic" early Anabaptism, historians now are likely to identify a range of radical reformers as belonging to a broad movement. The wider scope of Anabaptist studies now encompasses both pacifists and violent revolutionaries,⁵ free church and territorial church advocates.⁶ Historians now note that some early Anabaptists (especially the rebels at Munster) centred their faith and practice on Old Testament models, while others (such as the Zürich circle) were strongly Christocentric.

With such a broad spectrum of theological species early in the movement, it is impossible to state the Anabaptist view on almost any topic. Nor is it possible to tell the Anabaptist story. Because the early movement was often illegal and operated on a grassroots level, it did not develop a stable institutional or geographic base. In the heat of persecution, or in the fever of apocalyptic expectation, early leaders did not develop a comprehensive or systematic theology. Rather than finding one "original" expression of Anabaptism in the sixteenth century, the historian finds a plethora of radical movements that opponents all lumped together under the label "Anabaptist". However, like a genealogist investigating hundreds of ancestors, we can identify those parts of the movement that exhibited healthy genes and produced succeeding generations of a vital Christian movement. We can examine individuals or theological streams that might inspire and instruct us today, without claiming every individual in the story as a hero or role model.

A change in the concept of church

By either measure - inspiration value or enduring legacy - the group of Anabaptists that emerged at Zürich in 1525 deserves careful attention. Frustrated with the slow pace and limited scope of Protestant reform at Zürich, these radical reformers parted ways with their mentor Zwingli, leader of Protestant reform in the city. Baptism was the issue that "broke the camel's back". When the radicals at Zürich re-baptized each other they broke not only with Zwingli, but with a concept and definition of church that had dominated Europe for centuries.

In addition to being a reformer and priest at the Zürich cathedral (Grossmunster), Zwingli was a classics scholar and articulate theologian. Around him gathered a circle of young intellectuals and students with whom he read classical literature, discussed theology and studied the New Testament. Among this circle were Conrad Grebel (theology student from an upper class Zürich family)⁷ and Felix Mantz (Hebrew scholar and illegitimate son of a chief canon of the Zürich cathedral).

Zwingli and his followers began to question whether there was a biblical basis for certain long-standing practices of the Christian church in Europe. Practices in question included celibacy for clergy, indulgences, use of images and fasting during Lent. Zwingli persuaded the Zürich City Council to authorize significant reform in several of these areas, but would not make changes in the church without Council approval. Like all major Catholic and Protestant leaders of his day, Zwingli believed the welfare of society depended on church and state working together in close harmony (a model of church-state relations that goes hack to the fourth century and the Roman Emperor Constantine). At a series of public disputations, Zwingli and his followers presented the case for radical change in the church. Much as Luther emphasized sola scriptura in his reform at Wittenberg, Zwingli and his followers argued from the Bible in pressing for change at Zürich

Faced with a choice

In 1524 differences regarding baptism arose between Zwingli and some of his followers. Despite his earlier reservations about it, Zwingli held to the centuries-old tradition of baptizing infants; Grebel, Mantz and others declared the New Testament taught that only believers should receive baptism upon profession of faith. Zürich city council held a public disputation on the question in January of 1525. In the end, the city council decreed infant baptism was mandatory for all children in Zürich. Such a decision was understandable for people who accepted the Constantinian model of a Christian society. Allowing members of society to make their own decisions about faith might significantly have weakened the social and political influence of a state-sponsored church.

Zwingli's radical associates now faced a choice: should they accept the decision of city council and keep their reform effort legal, or should they follow what they understood to be scriptural teaching on believer's baptism? More was at stake than just baptism; these reformers were on the verge of restoring a voluntary church, free from government control. Apart from sporadic or marginal movements,⁸ such a free church had not existed in Europe for more than a thousand years.

When the city council decided in favour of infant baptism, they also prohibited Zwingli's radical followers from meeting again to discuss the matter further. On the very day the council issued that decree, however, a group of them met in Zürich at the home of Felix Mantz. After earnest conversation and prayer, a former priest named George Blaurock knelt and requested baptism. With no "appointed servant of the Word" present to administer the rite, Conrad Grebel stepped forward and poured water. All present received believers' baptism before the evening was over, making that meeting in a private home the first believers' church gathering of the modern era.⁹

Participants in this circle (soon known as the "Swiss Brethren") were now outlaws, and scattered to the countryside. Near Zürich the first Anabaptist congregation came into being when virtually all the inhabitants of the village of Zollikon received believer's baptism. Radical priests at the villages of Zollikon and Witikon had been in contact with the Zürich circle earlier, and already in 1524 had ceased to baptize infants. Following in the wake of Zollikon and Witikon, Anabaptist congregations sprang up in many Swiss villages and rural areas.

Rapid spread of a grassroots movement

Anabaptism spread quickly throughout central and northern Europe, fueled by the fervour of its proponents and by a combination of theological and sociological tensions. Grebel and certain other Anabaptists denounced payment of the hefty church tithes, an idea attractive to the impoverished peasantry. Some rural districts of Switzerland were eager to escape heavy-handed political control from urban areas, and Anabaptism provided theological justification.

Anticlericalism was already widespread, preparing the way for an Anabaptist concept of the "priesthood of all believers". In Germany, quite independently of the Zürich circle, the discontent of peasants erupted into full-fledged revolt. Thomas Muntzer, with his "Anabaptist" theology, fanned the fires of insurrection. Catholics and Protestants alike responded to the widespread discontent by imprisoning or executing thousands of Anabaptists of many persuasions, including pacifists from the Swiss Brethren circles. Zwingli himself gave approval for the drowning of Felix Mantz in 1527.

In our pluralistic Western society it seems strange that the simple act of rebaptism was once a capital offence. The authorities were correct, however, that Anabaptism (including the nonviolent strain) was a revolution that turned medieval society on its head. By gathering in a private home to baptize each other, Zürich Anabaptists signaled their conviction that New Testament teaching takes precedence over the demands of any ecclesiastical or civil authorities. By making baptism an adult choice, Anabaptists redefined church and reshaped the congregation on a New Testament model. Radicals at Zürich thus challenged the dominant idea that every individual in a given geographic area should join, at infancy, the religious faith of the ruler. Harbingers of the modern idea of religious freedom, Zürich Anabaptists set out to found a "believers' church" made entirely of individuals who voluntarily acknowledge Jesus as Lord and request baptism.

Schleitheim and the enduring legacy

Christian groups today that trace their spiritual heritage back to the Swiss Brethren at Zürich include Hutterian Brethren, Amish and Mennonites. An early document that had an impact on all three movements is the Schleitheim Confession (1527). This brief statement of Anabaptist distinctives describes a church in which believers experience conversion and voluntarily join a disciplined faith community. It envisages a church of individuals committed to nonviolent love (even of enemies) and mutual aid. It calls on church members to be accountable to each other under the Holy Spirit and the Bible. The Swiss Brethren (and generations of followers in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, America and elsewhere) believed Christians can and should follow the example of Jesus, living out practical directives of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).

These classic elements of Swiss Anabaptism - conversion, imitation of Christ, nonviolence and community - constitute the core of an Anabaptist movement that has endured for centuries. Because Christians from many traditions seek to be faithful in these areas, insights and experience of early Swiss Anabaptism provide fertile ground for study and ecumenical dialogue.

Notes

1. The most famous being Thomas Muntzer. Though technically not an Anabaptist (he never re-baptized anyone), opponents of sixteenth-century radical reform movements used Muntzer's s reputation to besmirch the entire Anabaptist movement.

2. See, e.g., Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion (London, 1909), 369. Cited by Mennonite historian Harold S. Bender in his presidential address to the American Society of Church History in 1943. Church History in (1944:3-14) and Mennonite Quarterly Review 18 (1944:67-88). Bender's address (and related scholarship) was seminal to a generation of Anabaptist research.

3. See, for example, Fritz Blanke, "Anabaptism and the Reformation," in Guy F. Hershberger,

ed., The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1957), 57­68.

4. For a recent treatment of diversity among early Anabaptists, see J. Denny Weaver, Becoming Anabaptist.- The Origin and Significance of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1987), and James M. Stayer et al, "From Monogenesis to Polygenesis: The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins", Mennonite Quarterly Review 49 (1975:83-12 1).

5. See James M. Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1972).

6. For discussion of the territorial church strain of Anabaptism, see Charles Nienkirchen, "Reviewing the Case for a Non-Separatist Ecclesiology in Early Swiss Anabaptism," Mennonite Quarterly Review 56 (1982:2274 1), and Arnold Snyder, "Me Monastic Origins of Swiss Anabaptist Sectarianism", Mennonite Quarterly Review 57 (1983:5-26).

7. Grebel's extant letters provide vivid insight into development of the Anabaptist enclave at Zürich. See Leland Harder, ed., The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1985).

8. Two prominent examples are the Waldenses and Hussites.

9. For an early account of this gathering, see The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren (Robertsbridge: Plough Publishing House, 1987), vol. l, 43-47.

AT 02: Clearing Away the Vestiges

by David Nussbaum
Originally published in Anabaptism Today, Issue 2, February 1993

In the wake of emperor Constantine's embrace of Christianity in the fourth century, practices and theology developed to support a close relationship between church and state. Patterns of behaviour and belief that grew out of the Constantinian epoch became embedded in the fabric of Western society, and some are still with us today.

These practices may seem little more than anachronistic irrelevances, harmless or romantic relics of a former age. Yet proposals to change such practices, or to do away with them, provoke vigorous objections. Could it be that we have not yet freed ourselves from the Constantinian mould? Perhaps it is time for the church to say that it no longer wants the state to support any ecclesiastical privilege.

Vestiges of Christendom are most obvious in established churches, but often appear in other denominations as well. These vestiges include:

1. Too much in a name

Constantinian assumptions stand behind familiar names such as "The Church of England", "The Church in Wales", or "The Church of Scotland". All western countries now have many denominations. Today most Anglicans, for example, would accept that their church in fact is a church of England, one of many.

2. Loss of prophetic voice

An established church's role is often seen (at least by the establishment) to be one of providing stability and continuity, rather than challenging accepted practices or charting new directions. Keeping pax is more important than making shalom. An established church which accepts such a limitation can be reduced to providing religious sanction for the social consensus. This can muzzle prophetic ministry in the church, and can lead to Bible interpretation that questions but does not really challenge the status quo. This orientation also may characterize denominations other than established churches. Indeed, in recent years some members of established churches have been more outspoken than most free church members in challenging prevailing attitudes, values and practices.

3. Comfortable wealth

According to some estimates, the Anglican Church in England is the second largest landowner in the country, next to the monarch. Its economic interests thus are aligned with the preservation of the capital value of land and the maximisation of rents from property. At least in rural areas, church buildings dominate the horizon, symbolizing power, stability and social position - as well as the importance of worship to our ancestors. The maintenance and restoration of church buildings by appeal to public support can imply that these buildings essentially belong to the national heritage rather than to the people of God.

4. The parish system

A parish system allocates every person in a given area to a particular denomination, taking little account of other churches functioning in the same territory. At one level such a system is a sensible geographical arrangement. Yet it reinforces the notion of the church, not as a pilgrim people, but as a settled structure responsible for every member of society.

5. Infant baptism theology

Widespread infant baptism makes church and society practically coterminous. Theology associated with baptism of infants sometimes has sought involuntary incorporation of all members of society into the church. Indeed, a service of baptism for those no longer infants was only added to the Anglican Prayer Book in 1662. The preface to that edition states:

. . . it was thought convenient, that [there] should be added ... an Office for the Baptism of such as are of Riper Years: which, although not so necessary when the former Book was compiled, yet by the growth of Anabaptism, through the licentiousness of the late times crept in amongst us, is now become necessary, and may be always useful for the baptizing of Natives in our Plantations, and others converted to the Faith.

Theology underlying this text is an ideal in which society and church are coterminous. Are "our Plantations" those of the church or of the nation? Theological arguments for infant baptism may be different in today's debate, but earlier ideals have been allowed to stand in the background and may continue to infuse assumptions and preferences.

6. Lack of church discipline

Few churches today understand or practice church discipline. This failure in the face of New Testament teaching to the contrary is, in part, the fruit of a Constantinian mindset. As the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer (in "A Commination") said, "in the Primitive Church there was a godly discipline ... [but] until the said discipline may be restored again (which is much to be wished,) ..." Few contemporary church publications include material for use in relation to church discipline. The wishes of the 1662 authors remain, it would seem, largely unfulfilled.

7. Triumphalism

Persecution of dissenters, either by the church or by the state, is a feature of Constantinianism. There is a long history of established churches persecuting those outside them. Only rarely has a former persecuting church publicly disassociated itself from this part of its history and from the theology that allowed persecution.

In the present more liberal climate most established churches quietly lay aside the theology of persecution. It is striking how some of the newer churches have slipped into a triumphalist mentality. Reconstructionism is a recent example of a theory of the role of the church which has a discernable persecuting mentality. Use and abuse of the Old Testament by proponents of such theories is all too familiar to those who know the history of established churches.

8. "Moral majority" thinking

It is encouraging to see many churches in the UK discovering or recovering interest in social affairs. But it is a mark of Constantinianism to seek special treatment for the church or for Christianity. People making such an appeal may point to the "Christian heritage" of the nation, or to the universal applicability of God's norms for humanity, or to polls which ascribe belief in "God" to over seventy percent of the population. Seeking privilege or patronage for Christians and their faith does not accord with the role of the church envisaged by Jesus.

9. Limits on evangelism

Some people today regard evangelism amongst adherents of other faiths as racism or imperialism. Others, notably certain evangelicals, support dis­advantaging religious traditions other than Christianity. They may do this, for example, by objecting to non-Christian religions such as Islam being taught in state schools. This tendency to identify race or nationality with religious affiliation is infected with Constantinianism. Being a Christian need have nothing to do with racial or national identity.

10. A skewed church history

Already in 1956 Gunter Jacob, a Lutheran church leader in Germany, said, "Aware spirits characterize the situation of Christianity in contemporary Europe by the fact that the end of the Constantinian epoch has arrived."¹ Yet in much popular and even scholarly material, Constantinianism is accepted as normal, and those who through the ages objected to it still receive pejorative treatment from historians. What does church history look like from the underside, from the viewpoint of those who took no patronage or privilege from the state?

11. Church appointments by the state

At least officially, the state often appoints leaders of established churches. This contrasts sharply with the injunction in 1 Corinthians 6 not to involve state authorities in church affairs. Of course if the state too is "Christian", and in some sense within the church, the problem seems not to arise - but that only illustrates the Constantinian reality that remains. For example, in England the Prime Minister has a critical role in appointing the the most senior bishop, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

12. Lack of alternative models for church and state

If churches today truly are moving away from Constantinianism, rather than merely going along with its decline, they should develop new teaching on the relationship between church and state. Lack of coherent alternative models indicates we are not yet in a fully post-Constantinian epoch.

Interim conclusion

Difficulties confront us as we reflect on these vestiges of Constantinianism in the life of church and society. Alternative models for the church-state relationship, such as those developed by Anabaptists, often emerged from a very different and non-democratic context. To what extent are these relevant to our society? One modern Mennonite declares

It is at best questionable whether a definition of the separation of church and state worked out under an autocratic system of government can be made normative for a democratic system in which, theoretically at least, the government is the people and thus inevitably includes every Christian citizen.²

Many free churches are, in a sense, accidentally non-established. They did not become free by choice, and lack a coherent and radical critique of church-state relationships.

This article focused on vestiges of Constantinianism within the church. Part two of the series, Vestiges in Society examines vestiges left in the thinking and practices of larger society, and will make some modest proposals for a way forward.

Notes

1. Cited by Franklin Hamlin Littell, The Anabaptist View of the Church: A Study in the Origins of Sectarian Protestantism, second edition (Boston: Starr King Press, 1958), 56.

2. Erland Waltner, "The Anabaptist Concept of the Church", Mennonite Quarterly Review 25 (1951: 5-16), 15

AT 02: The Gospel of Peace: An interview with Noel Moules

Originally Published in Anabaptism Today, Issue 2, February 1993Noel Moules is Programme Director of Workshop, a Christian Discipleship and Leadership Training programme in which more than sixteen hundred people from many denominations have participated He is a member of the Editorial Board for Anabaptism Today and in this interview he reflects on his commitments to shalom (A Hebrew word often translated "peace").

You always answer the telephone by saying "Shalom, this is Noel " What response do you get to that greeting?

Quite often there's a kind of pause, but most people are too polite to say anything. I suppose some think, "Oh no, it's Noel's gone native! Now he's got some sort of Hebrew greeting!" I use shalom as a greeting because it is a declaration of the Kingdom of God. In Luke 10:5-6 Jesus tells his disciples to proclaim the greeting of peace in their travel and witness; where the greeting of peace is received by people of peace, there peace remains.

What does shalom mean to you?

There's a wonderful rabbinic story that says when God had created all the blessings for humankind he looked around for a pot or vessel in which to put them. When he couldn't find a vessel, he created shalom. We often use "peace" to translate "shalom", but the word "wholeness" is much better. The trouble with "peace" is that it sounds passive. That's why I won't call myself a pacifist. What I do call myself is a shalom activist. Shalom is packed with dynamism; it's not simply everything in quiet harmony. Shalom is the overarching biblical vision. It isn't on God's agenda, it is God's agenda, and the New Testament emphasizes this by saying we shall "proclaim the gospel of peace" (Eph. 6:15). I'm amazed that a peace message is completely absent among many Christians.