The Rise of the Radical Anabaptists: 
Re-institution instead of Reformation
by Dr. C. Matthew McMahon

During the 16^th century Reformation in Europe three specific groups are commonly identified: the Roman Catholics, the Lutheran and Reformed Protestants, and a third group which has been called by historians “the Radicals.”  Within this “radical” group three sub-groups can also been recognized: the Anabaptists, the Spiritualists, and the Socinians.^[1]  This paper is concerned with the rise of the “Radical Anabaptists.”  The term “Anabaptist” simply means “baptized again” or “re-baptizers” (Wiedertaeufer).[2]  “Radicals” referred to the manner in which they desired reinstitution of a new church.  As Schaff says, “Radicalism was identical with the Anabaptist movement, but the baptismal question was secondary. It involved an entire reconstruction of the Church and of the social order.  It meant revolution.”^[3]  The Reformers desired to reform the existing church, the “Radicals” desired to create a new church based on their theological convictions.[4]

            Some contend (incorrectly in this writer’s opinion) that the Anabaptists began with Thomas Müntzer (1490-1525).    Müntzer was the spiritual revolutionary of the Peasant’s War that occurred in 1525, a leader in the social revolution of his time.  He was a student of medieval realism, well studied in church history and the German mystics, and read many Reformation tracts and books.  In 1520 he took on a pastorate in the Saxon city of Zwickau, where he lobbied for a role in the government council so that he could affect, first hand, the freeing of the city from ecclesiastical authority.  There is no evidence of a “conversion experience” for Müntzer.  Müntzer’s conversion seems more akin to a type of Gnostic experience that gave one faith  - not on the regenerating power of the Spirit of God through the objective reality of the written Word, though he held the Word in high esteem.  He was capable, and often quite brilliant.  At times, he was brave. He refused to take his ideas at second-hand, and studied for himself. He was an attractive preacher. As a liturgist he ranked with the best. His estimate of the Scriptures was high. There is no doubt that he sympathized with the poor of both town and country.  But when a man believes in direct revelation, whether by dreams and visions or otherwise, there is always an overthrow of sound theology and guidance.  Unfortunately, Müntzer did not have the virtue of common sense.  “He never knew how to plan, how to bend circumstances to his will, to take advantage of situations for the cause of righteousness.  He had a streak of the cowardice of the ill-taught man.”^[5]

            Müntzer desired to bring this new kind of faith to the common man all through the world, and that this common man would ultimately turn into “the elect of God” by which a democratic theocracy would emerge.  Before his social plan could be executed, some contested whether or not his pastorate was official and lawful, and he was summoned to give a sermon before Duke John and his son Frederick, where Frederick was already convinced of the truthfulness of Luther’s Reformation.  His sermon was unsuccessful before them, and Müntzer left Allstedt under duress in August of 1524 for Muhlhausen.  There he joined the Peasant’s Revolt in the Black Forest, and was convinced of their cause believing that the “confrontation forthcoming at Frankenhausen was the last judgment and that the ensuing conflict would put the common man in direct contact with God.”[6]  The war was a disaster.  Six thousand peasants and six princes met their death at Frankenhausen on May 15^th 1525.  Müntzer was proven wrong in the worst way.  He was captured, tortured, and executed by beheading on May 27^th of the same year.  

            Müntzer contributed to the Anabaptist movement by giving them a bad name, other than “possibly” being associated with them in certain social concerns.  Theological differences would have been too strained between them. Müntzer believed in being in a state office.  However, though they took issue with Müntzer’s use of the sword and state, they did identify with his insistence that the inner experience of faith affected totally the actions of both the individual and the fabric of society.  It is more historically reasonable to pinpoint the rise of the Anabaptists from amidst the Zwinglian Swiss reform.

In contrast to Zwingli, the Anabaptist ultimately did not want a reformation of the church state; rather, they wanted a re-institution of the true church they thought they possessed.  At first Zwingli tried to persuade the Anabaptists toward sound theology in private conferences, but this was done in vain. Then followed the public disputation, which took place by order of the magistracy in the council hall, January 17, 1525. ^[7]   The magistracy decided against their views, and issued an order that infants should be baptized, and that parents who refuse to have their children baptized should leave the city and canton with their families and goods.^[8]   They argued over the church and state as a primary theological difference, as well as infant baptism.  Bullinger, who was present at the disputation, reports that the Anabaptists were unable to refute Zwingli’s arguments and to maintain their ground.^[9]   The radicals would wait no longer. To continue in submission to the state and to the practice of infant baptism would be contrary to everything that they now believed was true.  A few days later the “radical brethren” met together in the house of Felix Manz. After praying together, one of the brethren, Jorg Blaurock, asked Conrad Grebel to baptize him. He in turn baptized those who were present. This event is considered to be the beginning of the Anabaptist movement.^[10]  The Anabaptists did emerge from the Zwinglian reform in Switzerland, though as dissenters, and the broader movement can be said to have officially begun on January 21, 1525.  This date marked their first meeting after the council at Zurich had formally drawn up laws that forbid any assembly by them. 

As a result of their opposition, the Anabaptists ventured into bold public demonstrations. They “passed as preachers of repentance, in sackcloth and girdled through the streets of Zurich, singing, praying, exhorting, abusing the old dragon (Zwingli) and his horns, and exclaiming, "Woe, woe unto Zurich!"”^[11]  Such actions do not demonstrate a heart of reform, but of revolution and reinstitution.  The Anabaptists desired a new church of professing believers that stood opposed to the relationship with the state that Zwingli, and both the German and Swiss Reformation, stood upon. 

The first generation of this radical group had no “formal” cohesive church body, but did have certain leaders who remained influential: Conrad Grebel (the son of an aristocratic Zurich family), Felix Manz (a clergyman’s illegitimate son), Jorg Blaurock (middle-aged ex-priest of peasant origins), Simon Stumf (parish priest in rural Hongg), Wilhelm Reublin (middle-aged priest in Witikon who was the first Zurich pastor to marry and to persuade parents to refuse baptism of their child), Hans Denck (known as the “pope of the Anabaptists” by Bucer) and Johannes Brötli (priest in rural Zollikon) remain as notable leaders.  Dr. Huebmaier of Bavaria, the most learned among the Anabaptists, and their chief advocate, took part in the October disputation at Zurich in 1523, but afterwards wrote books against Zwingli (on the baptism of believers, 1525, and a dialogue with Zwingli, 1526), was expelled from Switzerland, and organized flourishing congregations in Moravia.^[12]  Later on focused growth for the movement began to rise under men like Menno Simons, Peter Riederman and Hans Schnell. 

Conrad Grebel (c. 1498–1526) and Felix Manz (c.1498–1527) were early comrades of Zwingli. Like Zwingli, Grebel was trained as a humanist, having studied in the universities of Basel, Vienna and Paris. He became an early supporter of Zwingli, even writing a short poem of appreciation to the end of one of Zwingli’s treatises in 1522, the Archeteles . It seemed that he was clearly persuaded by Zwingli’s vision of true biblical Christianity.  During these early years of the Swiss Reformation, Grebel became friends with another follower of Zwingli, Felix Manz.  Manz was a Hebrew scholar and illegitimate son of a canon of the Grossmünster Church in Zurich.^[13]    Together the two were committed to the restoration of “primitive” biblical Christianity and believed that Zwingli was likewise committed.^[14]  By 1523 they came to believe that Zwingli was too conservative and that the reforms he advocated were too few, and too slow.  These “radicals” opposed the tithe, military service, and oaths to town, canton or country.  They claimed that the City Council had no biblical right legislating on matters of religion.  As a result of gaining the Council’s official disfavor and stigmatism, they met secretly in homes for Bible reading and prayer.  Zwingli believed that these radicals were making poor decisions to follow after ecclesiastic anarchy (reinstitution) rather than orderly change (reformation).  He urged moderation and patience and engaged the radicals in a series of public debates, but when the radicals began re-baptizing he had no choice but to side with the Council in its decision to outlaw private meetings and require that all children be baptized.  Grebel and  Manz refused to uphold this doctrine, protested the Council’s decision throughout Zurich, and were arrested as a result.  In May 1525, the first Anabaptist died for his faith in the canton of Schwyz.^[15]  A year later Grebel died of the plague away from home, and in January 1527 Manz was publicly executed in Zurich in the River Limmat by drowning for the crime of rebaptism, by order of the Council.  “He who dips, shall be dipped,” said the Council.  Whether Zwingli consented to the death sentence for Manz is not known, but he did not publicly oppose it.

            After the death of Manz, and the exile of Grebel, other Anabaptist radicals around Europe became greatly influential: Hans Hut was an “evangelist” who was exceedingly prominent in Moravia and Austria, converting more people to Anabaptism that all other Anabaptist preachers combined; Jacob Hutter formed the group known as the Hutterites under Anabaptist teachings; Menno Simons wrote extensively for Anabaptist causes - his Foundation of Christian Doctrine is still used by the Mennonites of today; Pilgrim Marbeck was an influential Austrian Anabaptist, and his son Obbe Philips became the Netherlands’ Anabaptist leader; and Brent Rothman became a German Anabaptist leader.[16] 

Anabaptists did not make up one cohesive body, or “denomination.”  The Anabaptists were driven from place to place, and traveled as fugitive evangelists.^[17]  They were scattered throughout Europe preaching their convictions, but there still remained internal confusion and a lack of leadership for the movement as a whole.  When Anabaptism was only two years old it was almost eradicated by 1527.  However, in February of that year in the Swiss-German border town of Schleitheim a small group of Anabaptists met.  This meeting, and the resulting document that was produced, has also been considered to be the real birth of Anabaptism.  It outlined a rigorous discipline that earned Anabaptists the charge of establishing a “new monkery.”^[18]  This record was not a complete confession of faith but rather pointed to articles in which there could be no disagreement among Anabaptists.  Largely Michael Sattler authored it (a former Benedictine monk and follower of the Swiss Anabaptist Conrad Grebel).  In these seven articles of faith included adult baptism, the autonomy of the local congregation, the “gathered church” of baptized believers, closed communion, excommunication of offenders and the rejection of human supremacy both in religion and politics.[19]  Sattler is one of the more prominent lights of the Anabaptist cause.  He married a Beguine “nun” of sorts (the Beguines being a lay order) Margaretha, and joined the Anabaptists around 1526.  On their way back from Schleitheim they were captured, along with nine others, by Roman Catholics who despised Anabaptism, and tried them all in court on the basis of nine heresies.  Sattler refused the charges on behalf of the group, yet it was done in vain to the purposes of the Catholic court. “One and one-half hours later, the judges returned with the sentence: “Michael Sattler shall be committed to the hangman, who shall take him to the square and there first cut out his tongue, then chain him to a wagon, tear his body twice with hot tongs there and five times more before the gate, then burn his body to powder as an arch-heretic.” ^[20]

As the Anabaptist reinstitution reached its peak, some veered off into an extreme form of utopianism.  Jan Mattys and Jan of Leyden led 1,700 men and 6,000 women to the walled city of Münster, where they aimed to establish a theocratic kingdom in preparation for the dawn of Christ’s millennial reign.  Rather than erecting a holy city, the leaders fell victim to their own unholy lust for power and women. The Bishop of Waldeck together with Protestant troops laid siege to the city, bringing to an embarrassing end “this strange experiment on June 24, 1535.”^[21]

            The primary aim of the Radicals was not (as is usually stated) the opposition to infant baptism, still less to some theological convictions surrounding sprinkling or pouring, but the establishment of a pure church of converts in opposition to the mixed church of the world.^[22]  The Reformers founded a popular state-church, including all citizens with their families.  However, in opposition to this, the Anabaptists organized themselves on the voluntary principle (or individualism) of select congregations of baptized believers, separated from the world and from the State.  As Phillip Schaff says cogently, “Nothing is more characteristic of radicalism and sectarianism than an utter want of historical sense and respect for the past.”^[23]  The Anabaptists did not have a sense of ecclesiastical tradition, or a theologically rich heritage to rely upon.  As a result, few reformers tolerated them (Wolfgang Capito did sympathetically, Martin Bucer tolerated them during their beginnings, Calvin attempted to convert them back to the faith, and Luther denied their salvation calling them heretics and devils (though he did not desire to see the sword set upon them by the state as such.)).

            The treatment of the Anabaptists is a great blot on the page of the Reformation, Strassburg being the only center that tolerated them.[24]  Grebel and Manz were not the only ones to be persecuted.  Six executions in all took place in Zurich between 1527 and 1532.  The last executions took place March 23, 1532, when Heinrich Karpfis and Hans Herzog were drowned.  Blaurock was scourged, expelled, and burnt in 1529 at Clausen in the Tyrol.  Haetzer, who fell into carnal sins, was beheaded for adultery and bigamy at Constance, February 24, 1529.  Huebmaier, who had fled from Waldshut to Zurich, December, 1525, was tried before the magistracy, recanted, and was sent out of the country to recant his recantation.[25]  He labored successfully in Moravia, but was burnt at the stake in Vienna, March 10, 1528. Three days afterwards his faithful wife, whom he had married in Waldshut, was drowned in the Danube. 

Other Swiss cantons took the same disciplinary measures against the Anabaptists as Zurich.  In Zug, Lorenz Fuerst was drowned, August 17, 1529.  In Appenzell, Uliman and others were beheaded, and some women drowned.  At Basle, Oecolampadius held several disputations with the Anabaptists, but to no avail.  The Council there banished them with the threat that they should be drowned if they returned (November 13, 1530).  The Council of Berne adopted the same course. 

In Germany and in Austria the Anabaptists were persecuted still worse.  In April of 1529 the Diet of Speier decreed that, "every Anabaptist and rebaptized person of either sex be put to death by sword, or fire, or otherwise."  The decree was severely carried out, except in Strassburg and the sphere of influence of Philip of Hesse, where they were treated more leniently. 

They were treated most horribly by the Roman Catholic countries.  In Goerz the house in which the Anabaptists were assembled for worship was set on fire.  ““In Tyrol and Goerz,” says Cornelius, "the number of executions in the year 1531 reached already one thousand; in Ensisheim, six hundred.  At Linz seventy-three were killed in six weeks. Duke William of Bavaria, surpassing all others, issued the fearful decree to behead those who recanted, to burn those who refused to recant...throughout the greater part of Upper Germany the persecution raged like a wild chase...the blood of these poor people flowed like water so that they cried to the Lord for help...but hundreds of them of all ages and both sexes suffered the pangs of torture without a murmur, despised to buy their lives by recantation, and went to the place of execution joyfully and singing psalms.””^[26]

            Though physical persecution took place from the State against the Anabaptists, individual Reformers, though not lifting the abuse of the sword upon these people, disagreed with the persecution but retained the title of “heretic” upon them.[27]  Luther said, “The devil, on the contrary, disorganizes and ruins everything through his factious and disturbing spirits, his ratling and boisterous servants, in the external and worldly government and life as well as internally in the hearts of men, whom he really makes insane and blind by his evil spirits, as we now have experienced with his insurrectional prophets, fanatics, and Anabaptists.”[28]  Calvin called them, “furious madmen,”[29] “supercilious,”[30] and “delirious.”[31]  However, Calvin was used as a means to convert many Anabaptists (those who were wisely tolerated in the territory of Strassburg while Calvin was present there for three years) and they brought to him from the city and country their children for baptism.^[32] 

Anabaptist theology is exceedingly diverse, some tenants being orthodox, many others being heretical.  The Augsburg Confession demonstrates this in its rejection of a number of Anabaptist errors.  In Article 5 they “condemn the Anabaptists and others who think that the Holy Ghost comes to men without the external Word, through their own preparations and works.”  In Article 9 they “condemn the Anabaptists, who reject the baptism of children, and say that children are saved without Baptism.”  In Article 12 they “condemn the Anabaptists, who deny that those once justified can lose the Holy Ghost.”   Because of it’s sectarian nature, such theology often had little control over the pervasive individualism of self proclaimed prophets or teachers.   In its more conservative form, men like Sattler and Grebel wanted to see the reinstitution of the church based on their conceptions of the Word of God.  In its extreme form it rejects even the Bible as an external authority, and relies on inward inspiration.[33] This was the case with the Zwickau Prophets who threatened to break up Luther’s work at Wittenberg.^[34]  Luther had such a disdain for the corrupting influences of these men that after the first martyrs died for their cause, Luther called them “martyrs of the devil.”  However, Luther expressed his dissent from the harsh and cruel treatment of the Anabaptists, and “maintained that they ought to be resisted only by the Word of God and arguments, not by fire and sword, unless they preach insurrection and resist the civil magistrate.”[35]  Others, such as Haetzer and Denck, doubted the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ.^[36]  Most Anabaptists emphasized the necessity of good works, and deemed it possible to keep the law and to reach perfection.^[37]  The Schleitheim Confession of 1526 could be considered a workable outline of Anabaptist theology.  The two most prominent theological ideas of Anabaptism are 1) a reinstitution of a pure church of regenerated believers, and 2) the baptism of believers alone.  These are the fundamental articles of the Anabaptist creed.^[38]

As a general rule, the Anabaptists “rejected the idea of an invisible church, viewing the church as a voluntary association of regenerated saints.”^[39]  Schotchmer says, “The Anabaptist contemporaries of Luther not only separated but divorced the spiritual and secular realms. They transformed Luther’s geistliches Regiment into a visible and circumscribed confessing community (Bekenntniskirche), and deprived the weltliches Regiment of even the individual influence of those who had become transformed by faith in Jesus Christ.”^[40]  This obviously put a great deal of strain on the continuity and progression of covenant thinking for the Anabaptists.  Anabaptists stressed the utter discontinuity rather than continuity of the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Hodge says, “The Anabaptists not only spoke in very disparaging terms of the old economy and of the state of the Jews under that dispensation, but it was necessary to their peculiar system, that they should deny that the covenant made with Abraham included the covenant of grace.”^[41]  In this position the Anabaptists had a strong affinity with the Socinians who dictated the same view of the Old Testament in order to remove the doctrine that a gospel Church, substantially identical with that of the New Testament, existed in the Old Testament with its infant church members.^[42]  Thus, the Anabaptists had little use for the Old Testament.  VanGemeren says, “They judged it to be inferior to the Gospel.”^[43]  This shaped both their conceptions of the church and their conceptions of membership in the church. 

The Anabaptist conception of “church state” relation was that there ought to be no civil authority over the church at all, and if there were, that it was lawful to rebel against it.[44]  They would not, in any way, swear to oaths for city or country.  In countering the Anabaptist interpretation of church and state, Luther, Calvin, Bullinger and others argued in favor of the continuity between the Old and New Testaments and the legitimacy of Christian magistrates to exercise spiritual discipline in the commonwealth.  As heirs of medieval Christendom and biblical theology the magisterial reformers joined forces to oppose the teachings of the Anabaptists.^[45]  The Reformers did not simply take up arms against a “radical” group of those who were searching for truth.  In their attempts at revising the authority of the state by complete and utter separation from it, Anabaptists desired to eradicate the evil that was “lording” over them.  The re-instituted church, according to them, should be the only lawful authority on earth.  J.H. Merle d’Aubigne says, “These fanatics fancied themselves alone to be the children of God, and like the Israelites of old believed that they were called to exterminate the wicked.”[46]  This meant bitter opposition to any imposed authority, overthrowing Romans 13, and intolerance to any “Christian” who would take up a state office.  It was wrong for a Christian to be a magistrate, which is the view of the Schleitheim Confession.^[47]  (The Augsburg Confession opposes this in Article 16 when they “condemn the Anabaptists who forbid these civil offices to Christians.”)

Concerning baptism, the mode of baptism was not important, though the subjects of baptism were vitally important.  (For example: in the trial of fourteen Anabaptists, February 7, 1525, Marx Bosshard testified that Hans Bruggbach of Zumikon, after the reading of a portion of the New Testament in a meeting, “confessed and deplored big sins, and requested, as a sign of his conversion, to be sprinkled in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; whereupon Blaurock sprinkled him."^[48]  The first clear case of immersion among the Swiss Anabaptists is that of Wolfgang Uliman (an ex-monk of Coire, and for a while assistant of Kessler in St. Gall).^[49])  Mode had not been contested yet, as it would be in later years among Baptists.  The Anabaptists held that infants could not be church members, and that the sign of such membership cannot properly be administered to any who do not have knowledge and faith.  According to the Anabaptists, children could not have either knowledge of the Gospel, nor faith, and so were excluded from a body of professing believers.  Yet, they could not deny that infants were included in the covenant made with Abraham, and that they received circumcision, its appointed seal and sign.  This is why they contested vehemently for the New Testament over the Old Testament.  As Hodge rightly notes, “It is therefore essential to their theory that the Abrahamic covenant should be regarded as a merely national covenant entirely distinct from the covenant of grace.”^[50]  Anabaptism, then, is essentially Dispensational in its division and discontinuity in the progression of the church through the ages.  Anabaptists would not have viewed Old Testament Israel as the church in any form.  Thus, the New Testament church is marked by a “new” covenant that writes the law on the heart (an un-exegetical understanding of Jeremiah 31:31-34), and visibly recognizes its members by their profession of faith.  Infants, not having such a profession, could not be considered church members.  This radical individualism was seen in the sign and seal of baptism for the Anabaptist, and was deemed the re-institution of what Christ started with Peter’s individual profession that Jesus was the “Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16).” 

            The Anabaptist movement’s chief concern was not “reformation” but “re-institution.”  According to their own theological views on ecclesiology, of necessity, Anabaptists themselves would have to admit that up and until they appeared on the historical scene that, 1) the true church did not exist, 2) biblical theology had been eclipsed so as to hide the truth of the Gospel, and 3) that at no point were there ever any Anabaptists in the church of Christendom since their movement characterized re-institution and not reform.  If the Anabaptist church were part of Christendom, this would mean that their church needed reform.  Rather, their hyper-individualism pressed them toward the realization that they had to plant the true church again in order to advance “Christ’s cause.”  Yet, from the perspective of the Reformers, they simply aggravated the spread and effect of religious pluralism on the efforts of truly reforming the church.

            It is this writer’s opinion that the Anabaptists deserve the name “radical” but should not to be associated with the title of  “The Radical Reformation.”  By their own estimation Anabaptism did not properly belong to the Reformation of the church, but the re-institution of a new church, copying the original Christ-instituted and apostle nurturing church of the first century, or so they thought.  Based on their own theology and social and public tactics, they would be better suited with a name surrounding the concept of “Radical Re-institution of “a” new church.”  To engage in Reformation is to follow the re-discovery of the gospel, and its institution into the remnant of the current church.  It is to revitalize the people of God who have been blinded by the corruptions of a deformed church.  In contrast, to engage in Anabaptism is to overthrow the current church in every form and to attempt to copy the early church that had escaped the scene for so many centuries.  The principles of Anabaptism bend towards a radical re-institution, not based upon past orthodoxy, but based on a via moderna of another kind.

            Today there are around 1,000,000 Anabaptists “in 57 countries, with the largest numbers in North America, Zaire, Indonesia, and the [sic] U.S.S.R.”^[51]  There are over 20 distinct groups including Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, Mennonite Brethren, and Brethren in Christ.  Their theology remains theologically deviant in many of the same areas as when they first appeared in 1525.  It is not to be doubted that the Anabaptists were sincere in their efforts, and they remain sincere in their same practices today.

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