• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Anabaptist

At the close of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 there ran through Protestant Germany a broad line; upon the one side of that line stood the followers of Luther and Zwingli, of Melancthon and Calvin — these were called the church people; upon the other side stood Menno Simons, Dietrich Philips, Casper Schwenkfeld, the Silesian Knight, and "The Separatists" — these were called the sect people. It was a line which divided persecution by new boundaries, and left the fagot and the stake in new hands, for the Peace of Westphalia had thrown the guarantees of its powerful protection only over one side of this Protestant division.

The widely extended Anabaptist movement paralleled the history of the Reformation. In the sixteenth century the Anabaptistsy were to be found in all Europe, but especially in Switzerland, Upper Germany, and Holland. Crushed and practically wiped out everywhere else, they rooted themselves deeply in the soil of Poland, in Northern Germany, and above all in the Low Countries. And thence, whenever persecution passed beyond the sustaining-point, they crossed the channel and moved to England, where their history is closely interwoven with that of the Non-conformists in general and especially with the nascent history of the English Baptists and therefore with the Baptist denominations of the world.

The sale of indulgences was the spark which exploded the magazine of the revolt. Its beginnings hide themselves in those days when the rebellious Anabaptists and the peaceful Baptists (Doopsgezinden) were identified by all men. A special sale of indulgences for three years was to have precedence over every other, and its proceeds were intended to finance the needed repairs to the dikes or levees, those ramparts of Dutch safety. No one was to escape the net. A fixed tariff settles the price each is to pay, from the highest to the lowest. Even abbots and cathedral priests are not allowed to go free. One third of the proceeds was for the pope, the rest went into the treasury of the levee work. The clergy is admonished to preach on this sale, as the American pulpit was exhorted to promote the sale of Liberty bonds.

From the beginning there was among the Anabaptists a left wing and a right wing, a conservative and a radical party. In 1527, Michael Sattler warned his people against "some, who prided themselves on inspiration." Three years later, in 1530, Erasmus wrote about Anabaptist people, of whom they say tfiat there are many in their company, who have been converted from the most wicked to the best life; and even if some of their opinions are foolishly erroneous, yet they never stormed cities and churches, nor have they conspired against the government, nor driven any one from his land or possessions. Here he evidently distinguished between such Anabaptists as formed the Minister party and others of the sect of a milder type, although both parties were identified by his contemporaries. Only after the reorganizing labors of Menno Simons, the name Baptist (Doopsgezinde) appears as distinct from the generic name of the entire movement, Anabaptists.

The followers of Thomas Munzer and the Zwickau leaders in 1521 prided themselves on an inner light, rejected infant baptism, and preached a millennial kingdom of Christ, in which believers would rule the world, lead an idyllic life, and enjoy social equality and communistic wealth. Baptism was the cardinal article of faith in Anabaptist doctrine, that is to say, adult baptism, based on the confessed faith of the candidate. No regular priesthood, great simplicity of worship, no bearing of arms, no oath, but simple affirmation, separation between Church and State, and rebaptism of those who joined them from the old Church. The Anabaptists did not suffer a woman to speak in their meetings, nor had they a vote in the election of elders and deacons.

The Swiss Anabaptist movement stands entirely outside this cycle. The cradle of the Anabaptist movement was Swiss. Protestant historians usually date the Anabaptist movement from 1521. In February 1524 the magistrates of Zurich had already begun to arrest Anabaptists, The struggle between Zwingli and the bold dissenters waxed hot. The ideals of the new movement were wholly foreign to the plans and hopes of Zwingli. He wanted to form a strong Protestant State Church; they demanded a Church absolutely free from the State. He wanted to reform the old; they wanted to build something wholly new. He tolerated all who had been members of the old Church; they wanted a Church of believers only.

The diet of Spires, in 1529, made the extirpation of the Anabaptists the duty of the empire, involving Catholics and Protestants alike. No trial was even necessary before a spiritual judge. The mere fact that one was an Anabaptist was in itself a death-warrant.74 In the Tyrol and Gorz, by 1531, the number of martyrs exceeded one thousand. Martyrdom became an Anabaptist hallmark, not so much as an externally inflicted injustice, but rather as a way of expressing their vision of Christian renewal, judged by the yardstick of early Christianity.

The Emperor Ferdinand caused Jacob Hutter to be apprehended, and his body to be burned at the stake at Innsbruck, in 1535, after he had been killed in an attempt to escape from prison. Thus his little flock was left behind. But they had been strongly organized, after a purely communistic type, which greatly reminds us of the later Shakers. Only during the second half of the century they obtained toleration, but they stood forever apart from the other Anabaptists, and called themselves "Hutterites" after their founder.

The shores of the North German ocean and of the Baltic became the veritable breeding-grounds of the Anabaptist movement. The people grew with amazing rapidity. It seemed as if the lands of the North had been waiting for their coming. Especially the mass of the common people heard their doctrine gladly. They grew to be specially numerous in Frisia, Groningen, East Frisia, Gelderland, Holland, and Brabant. But the entire shore of the Baltic, as far as Livonia, soon knew them. They were practically everywhere recognized as desirable citizens; quiet, industrious, obedient, thrifty, and Godfearing — and yet they were hated. The fever of Munzerism touched only a comparatively small faction of them, and the bulk of the Anabaptists were not responsible for the excesses of the few. And yet the thought of discriminating between them seems never to have entered the mind of their opponents.

Early in 1534 Anabaptists proclaimed the town of Munster in norther Germany as the New Jerusalem. It soon became evident that the establishment of the theocratic kingdom was to be attended by the merciless slaughter of the ungodly. The fate of Europe hung in the balance; what Bolshevism is today, radical Anabaptism was then. The Munster tragedy was an epoch, it was the hinge on which the future of Europe turned. Success for the Munsterites would have brought chaos to the whole continent, for Argus eyes in every city were watching the experiment. As it was, the Munster experience wrought irreparable harm to the Reformation, and thousands, who blindly identified all branches of Protestantism with those riotous Anabaptists, drew back with a sigh of relief in the embrace of the old Church, which after all seemed like a harbor of refuge in the dreadful cataclysm of human passions. The communism practised by the Munster Anabaptists between 1533 and 1535 was no new thing. But the Anabaptist regime at Münster was finally overthrown after a long siege by the bishop of Münster, the terrible orgy ending in massacre and cruel torture. In Germany and other continental countries the odium of Munster still attaches to the Baptist name.

The millennial frenzy seemed to have worked itself out. The fanaticism of the Anabaptists abated. They became sane and sober, and the alien elements, drawn into their circles by chiliasm, soon were purged out. The name " Anabaptist " became a synonym for violence, outrage, rebellion, sensuality, and every kind of outrage. The new party eschewed the hated name Anabaptist (Wederdooper) and adopted for themselves a new and pacific name, by which they were known in subsequent Dutch history, that of Baptists (Doopsgezinden).

Thus began the life-work of Menno Simons. Doopsgezinden or Mennonites chose for their formal principle the doctrine of the new creature. If the other Protestants found the center of gravity in doctrine, they placed it in life. The persecution of the Mennonites continued long after the death of Menno Simons. The Mennonites abandoned all chiliastic dreams and tendencies. They leave the future to God. Eschatology, the future, heaven, and hell do not occupy the commanding position in their theology which they possess in the Protestant theological systems of their day. They were compelled to flee from one country to another. The band of followers of the Mennonite doctrine was compelled to disperse. Some of them went to Russia, others to Prussia, Poland, Holland and Denmark, and others to America. The alleged peculiarity of the faith of the Mennonites, even after they came to America, was still the subject of unfavorable comment and much ridicule. The Mennonites do not parade their doctrine like other denominations, and their form of religious worship is free from every semblance of ostentation.

In Holland they had obtained religious freedom and a civil status — the right of citizenship — in 1672. But neither England, Switzerland, nor Germany was as yet willing to give them the same privileges. There the Doopsgezinden were still identified with the old rebellious Anabaptists, whose enormities were still fresh in the minds of the magistrates. Their refusal of the oath and their denial of church-membership to magistrates of every description, may have had a great deal to do with this.

The Baptists came to England in vast numbers, they remained there in large numbers; and they set their stamp as indelibly on the land that gave them sanctuary as they did on the land of their birth. The distance between Holland and England is small, and in the turbulent times of the great persecution, in the Lowlands, refugees by the thousands left Holland for the harbor of refuge in the great island kingdom. As early as 1546 several refugees, mostly from Antwerp, came to London, where Catherine Parr, the wife of Henry VIII, made the Reformed party welcome. It was well known to the authorities that large numbers of Anabaptists had sought asylum in England, but nothing was done about it so long as they kept quiet. The only difference between the Continent and England lay in the fact that England did not search them out whereas the Continental States did.

And many of these people not only joined the Church of the land, but they intermarried with the daughters of the land; but the inherited traits of the old view-points remained in evidence, even in their children's children. It is from the mass of these folk that the ranks of the various non-conformist bodies in England were originally largely recruited. A glance at the map of England is furthermore evidence that the Roundheads of Cromwell mainly sprang from the same districts and counties where these people had originally settled in large numbers.

The fathers of the English Baptists were Dutch Anabaptists, whose views on many of their old doctrines were modified in the course of time, and who had largely been assimilated by the English nation. Baptists of England did not inherit immersion from the Dutch Anabaptists, but reintroduced the practise, in 1641, from independent study of the word of God and of the past history of the church. In the year 1644 the name "Baptist" was first used, as close a translation as is possible of the Dutch word Doopsgezinde, then quite generally used to denote the Anabaptists in Holland. The English Baptists were affected by Arminianism, and half a century after their birth, in the very year in which they were officially recognized by the Act of Toleration of William III, in 1689, they split on this rock into General and Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists.