2C - The development of the radical reformation
Radical reformers disagreed both with established churches and with one another. This lesson explains the development of Anabaptism, the exceptional attempt to create a religious kingdom in Münster, and why that episode cannot represent every radical movement.
Believers' baptism and a gathered church
The radical Reformation developed from dissatisfaction with the limits of Catholic and mainstream Protestant reform. Some reformers trusted direct spiritual inspiration; others sought a church more closely governed by the example of the New Testament. These positions could overlap, but did not amount to one programme of revolution.
In Zurich, Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz and other former associates of Zwingli rejected infant baptism. In 1525 they began baptising believers who consciously professed repentance and faith. Opponents called them Anabaptists, meaning rebaptisers, because they had already been baptised as infants. They themselves rejected the validity of that earlier baptism, so regarded the believer's baptism as the first true baptism.
Gathered church
A congregation formed by people who voluntarily professed faith and accepted its discipline, rather than by everyone living within a ruler's or town's territory.
This principle challenged a religious order in which citizenship, birth and parish membership largely overlapped. Both Catholics and territorial Protestants could see voluntary separation as a threat to social cohesion and government authority. Swiss Brethren rejected the council's right to determine faith, whereas Zwingli used the council to implement reform and retained infant baptism.
It is therefore misleading to label every critic of Luther a Swiss Anabaptist. Karlstadt's dispute over images and communion, Müntzer's prophetic politics and the Swiss Brethren's congregational model had different origins and implications. Grebel's letter to Müntzer in 1524 already reveals concern to distinguish acceptable reform from coercive methods.
Schleitheim and the variety of Anabaptism
The Schleitheim Articles of 1527, associated with Michael Sattler, expressed the beliefs of a group of Swiss and south German Anabaptists. They limited baptism to professing believers, regulated discipline through the ban, and associated communion with membership of the believing community. Separation from worldly religious practices was intended to protect the community's holiness.
These articles rejected the use of the sword by Christians and participation in the office of magistrate. They also rejected oaths. Such positions could be peaceful in intention yet alarming to governments which relied on sworn loyalty, courts and military service. Church discipline through exclusion differed from government punishment through force. The articles themselves make that distinction explicit.
Persecution by Catholic and Protestant authorities forced communities to move, meet secretly or seek safer settlements. It did not make their beliefs uniform. Communal groups associated with Jacob Hutter in Moravia organised shared property; other communities concentrated on congregational discipline. In the Netherlands and northern Germany, some followers of Melchior Hoffman expected an imminent transformation of the world and a New Jerusalem. Apocalyptic expectation meant anticipating the approaching fulfilment of God's judgement and the end of the existing order.
Peaceful separation and an expectation of imminent judgement could produce very different conduct. Schleitheim is evidence of a particular agreement, not a constitution binding every person called an Anabaptist. This distinction becomes essential when studying Münster.
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