Anabaptist movement concurrent with the Protestant Reformation
The
Radical Reformation
represented a response to perceived corruption both in the
Catholic Church
and in the expanding
Magisterial
Protestant movement
led by
Martin Luther
and many others. Beginning in Germany and Switzerland in the 16th century, the Radical Reformation gave birth to many radical Protestant groups throughout Europe. The term covers Radical Reformers like
Thomas Muntzer
and
Andreas Karlstadt
, the
Zwickau prophets
, and
Anabaptist
groups like the
Hutterites
and the
Mennonites
.
In Germany, Switzerland and Austria, a majority sympathized with the Radical Reformation despite intense persecution.
[1]
Although the surviving proportion of the European population that rebelled against Catholic,
Lutheran
and
Reformed
Churches was small, Radical Reformers wrote profusely, and the literature on the Radical Reformation is disproportionately large, partly as a result of the proliferation of the Radical Reformation teachings in the
United States
.
[2]
[
page needed
]
History
[
edit
]
Some early forms of the Radical Reformation were
millenarian
, focusing on the imminent end of the world. This was particularly notable in the rule of
John of Leiden
over the city of
Munster
in 1535, which was ultimately crushed by the combined forces of the Catholic
Bishop of Munster
and the Lutheran
Landgrave of Hesse
.
[3]
After the
Munster rebellion
, the small group of the
Batenburgers
continued to adhere to militant Anabaptist beliefs. Non-violent Anabaptist groups also had millenarian beliefs.
The early Anabaptists believed that their reformation must purify both theology and the lives of Christians, especially their political and social relationships.
[4]
Therefore, the church should not be supported by the state, neither by tithes and taxes, nor by the use of the sword; Christianity was a matter of individual conviction, which could not be forced on anyone, but rather required a personal decision for it.
[4]
Many groups were influenced by
Biblical literalism
(like the
Swiss Brethren
),
spiritualism
(like the south German Anabaptists) and mainly absolute pacifism (like the Swiss Brethren, the Hutterites and the Mennonites from northern Germany and the Netherlands). The Hutterites also practiced
community of goods
. In the beginning, most of them were strongly
missionary
.
Later forms of Anabaptism
[
edit
]
Later forms
[
clarification needed
]
of Anabaptism were much smaller and focused on the formation of small, separatist communities. Among the many varieties to develop were Mennonites,
Amish
, and Hutterites.
Typical among the new leaders of the later Anabaptist movement, and certainly the most influential of them, was
Menno Simons
, a Dutch Catholic priest who early in 1536 decided to join the Anabaptists.
[5]
Simons had no use for the violence advocated and practiced by the Munster movement, which seemed to him to pervert the very heart of Christianity.
[5]
Thus, Mennonite pacifism is not merely a peripheral characteristic of the movement, but rather belongs to the very essence of Menno's understanding of the gospel; this is one of the reasons that it has been a constant characteristic of all Mennonite bodies through the centuries.
[5]
The Anabaptists of the Radical Reformation continue to inspire current community groups such as the
Bruderhof
and movements such as Urban Expression in the UK.
[6]
[7]
Non-Anabaptist Radical Reformers
[
edit
]
Though most of the Radical Reformers were Anabaptist, some did not identify themselves with the mainstream Anabaptist tradition. Thomas Muntzer was involved in the
German Peasants' War
. Andreas Karlstadt disagreed theologically with Huldrych Zwingli and Martin Luther, teaching nonviolence and refusing to
baptize infants
while not rebaptizing adult believers.
[8]
Kaspar Schwenkfeld
and
Sebastian Franck
were influenced by
German mysticism
and spiritualism. In 17th-century England, the tumultuous climate of the
English Civil War
and
English Revolution
saw the emergence of several movements that were influenced by or could be considered part of the Radical Reformation, such as the
English Dissenters
. One of these dissenting groups that developed along convergent lines with the continental Radical Reformation was the
Religious Society of Friends
, commonly known as Quakers, led by
George Fox
and
Margaret Fell
, among others.
[9]
Other movements
[
edit
]
In addition to the Anabaptists, other Radical Reformation movements have been identified. Notably,
George Huntston Williams
, the great categorizer of the Radical Reformation, considered early forms of
Unitarianism
(such as that of the
Socinians
, and exemplified by
Michael Servetus
as well as the
Polish Brethren
), and other trends that disregarded the
Nicene
Christology
still accepted by most Christians, as part of the Radical Reformation. With Servetus and
Faustus Socinus
,
anti-Trinitarianism
came to the foreground.
[10]
Beliefs
[
edit
]
The beliefs of the movement are those of the
Believers' Church
.
[11]
Unlike the Catholics and the more Magisterial Lutheran and Reformed (
Zwinglian
and
Calvinist
) Protestant movements, some of the Radical Reformation abandoned the idea that the "
Church visible
" was distinct from the "
Church invisible
."
[12]
Thus, the Church only consisted of the tiny community of believers who accepted Jesus Christ and demonstrated this by adult baptism, called "
believer's baptism
".
While the magisterial reformers wanted to substitute their own learned elite for the learned elite of the
Catholic Church
, the radical Protestant groups rejected the authority of the institutional "church" organization, almost entirely, as being unbiblical. As the search for original Christianity was carried further, it was claimed that the tension between the church and the
Roman Empire
in the
first centuries of Christianity
was normative,
[
clarification needed
]
that the church is not to be allied with government
sacralism
, that a true church is always subject to be persecuted, and that the
conversion of Constantine I
was, therefore, the
Great Apostasy
that marked a deviation from pure Christianity.
[13]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Horsch, John
(1995).
Mennonites in Europe
. Herald Press. p. 299.
ISBN
978-0836113952
.
- ^
Euan Cameron (2012).
The European Reformation
(2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
ISBN
978-0-19-873093-4
.
- ^
Donald B. Kraybill,
Concise Encyclopedia of Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites
, JHU Press, USA, 2010, p. 12
- ^
a
b
Gonzalez,
A History of Christian Thought
, 88.
- ^
a
b
c
Gonzalez,
A History of Christian Thought
, 96.
- ^
"Why the Bruderhof is not a cult ? by Bryan Wilson | Cult And Sect | Religion And Belief"
.
Scribd
. Retrieved
2017-07-12
.
- ^
"Eberhard Arnold: Founder of the Bruderhof"
.
www.eberhardarnold.com
. Retrieved
2017-05-25
.
- ^
Hein, Gerhard.
"Karlstadt, Andreas Rudolff-Bodenstein von (1486?1541)."
.
Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online
. Retrieved
19 April
2014
.
- ^
Anderson, Caleb.
"Reformation Europe: George Fox"
.
sites.duke.edu/project_refeurope
. Duke University
. Retrieved
30 July
2023
.
- ^
Gonzalez,
A History of Christian Thought
, 101.
- ^
Donald B. Kraybill,
Concise Encyclopedia of Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites
, JHU Press, US, 2010, p. 25
[
ISBN missing
]
- ^
Robert S. Ellwood, Gregory D. Alles,
The Encyclopedia of World Religions
, Infobase Publishing, US, 2007, p. 912
[
ISBN missing
]
- ^
Justo L. Gonzalez,
A History of Christian Thought
(Abingdon: Nashville, 1975)
[
ISBN missing
]
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Estep, William R.
,
The Anabaptist story: An introduction to sixteenth-century Anabaptism
(1996).
- Roth, John, and James Stayer, eds.
A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521?1700
(Brill, 2007).
- Williams, George H.,
The Radical Reformation
, 3rd ed (Truman State Univ Press, 2000).
- Beno Profetyk (2020)
Credo du Christocrate ? Christocrat's creed
(Bilingual French-English edition)
External links
[
edit
]
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Background
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Groups
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History
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Theology
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Practices
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Notable
Anabaptists
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