A Call for Recovery of the Visual Arts in Anabaptist Worship

Traditionally, Anabaptists have been wary of the visual arts in worship. This article, however, observes that modern culture presents unique challenges that were not present during the early Anabaptist opposition to the arts and that can be met by artists. Thus, the article calls for a union of art and ethics and a dual concern for both the transcendent and immanent, resulting in the intentional and imaginative use of the visual arts in worship.

Our problem with the arts is rooted in our rather uncritical adherence to Anabaptism. Any resolution must begin with a recognition that the Anabaptists joined other reformers in throwing out the baby with the bathwater. All the senses were employed in Roman Catholic faith and worship. But in the interest of reforming the church of the day, or even recreating the New Testament church, a significant narrowing occurred; the Word—the written Word and the heard Word—became the front and center focus for the mainline reformers. The Anabaptists added a significant qualifier: the acted Word, or better, the incarnate Word.

In the reformation process, what happened to all the other senses—sight, sound, smell, touch, taste? Particularly for the Reformed and the Anabaptists, these senses were at best adiaphora, at worst dangerous distractions from the true Christian faith. The arts were thus casualties of the Reformation, and to this day they struggle to regain legitimation within the reformational traditions—not least the Mennonite tradition.

Proposal with Reference to Mennonites and the Arts. A series of theses—not ninety-five, only an immodest eight—outline a modest proposal regarding Mennonites and the arts.

Thesis I: All theologizing, and all thinking about the Christian faith, is relative to a context, to a historical situation. Language, culture, economic conditions, and political dynamics shape the questions and provide a contour to the answers.

The discussion of Mennonites and the arts in our day is not without context, not without history. Certain internal and external dynamics to the Mennonite tradition bring us to this moment when artists consider their corporate place in the larger Mennonite community. Space need not be taken here to analyze why this discussion arises now rather than some years ago. A comparative note may, however, be interesting. Whereas in earlier centuries the arts flourished among the Mennonites in Holland, they are less prominent today. The current renaissance of the arts among Mennonites is primarily a phenomenon of the immigrant Mennonite cultures like those of North America. Why this is so is a question for another essay.

Thesis II: Anabaptist theology in the sixteenth century was defined, at least in part, over against a Roman Catholicism that was rich in its sense of the transcendent world and its aesthetic correlates, but weak in its response to the immanent world and its ethical correlates.

The restitutional impulse tends to overreact, to confuse manifestation with essence. The Anabaptists largely assumed traditional theological commitments; they assumed the reality of the transcendent order, so they paid little attention to such matters. In order to recapture ethics, they abandoned aesthetics. The two were considered alien to each other. Anabaptists joined Zwingli in his iconoclasm, smashing organs and even, for a time, negated the legitimacy of singing. Aesthetic perversions required the exorcising of the aesthetic, they seemed to say. (This is detailed in Rodney J. Sawatsky’s “Symbol as Reality: Christianity as Art” an unpublished lecture presented to the symposium on “The Arts and the Prophetic Imagination: Expressions of Anguish and Hope” at Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, January 13, 1991.) The degree to which the aesthetic served as a necessary pillar of the transcendent was apparently unrecognized. Transcendence, however, was not their problem.

Thesis III: Mennonites, in their quest to be faithful to their Anabaptist origins, have wrongly assumed that they must continue to emphasize precisely what the Anabaptists emphasized because they have failed to contextualize theological emphases. Accordingly, four centuries later Mennonites still do not have a place for aesthetics.

The Editorial Committee of the recently published Mennonite Encyclopedia V did not include an article on aesthetics. I must, as a member of that Committee, take part of the blame for this omission. My sense is that even Mennonite artists tend to reduce aesthetics to ethics, and so they too may not have noted this oversight. If Mennonites think in terms of the classical trinity of the good, the true, and the beautiful, they have a limited place for beauty and are concerned primarily with the good. This parallels another tendency among Mennonites, namely reducing theology to ethics or collapsing the question of truth into the quest for goodness. Such narrowing of the agenda fails to consider the late twentieth-century context and functions as if the sixteenth-century worldview remains alive and well.

Thesis IV: Since the world in which or over against which we shape our theology is so profoundly different today than in 1525, we are not faithful to our forefathers and foremothers by repeating their response to their culture. Indeed in our day, we may well need to say precisely the opposite of what was said on some matters in the sixteenth century. (For a parallel discussion see: Walter Klaassen, “The Quest for Anabaptist Identity,” in Anabaptist-Mennonite Identities in Ferment, Leo Driedger and Leland Harder, eds. [Elkhart, Indiana: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1990].)

We live in a world where a transcendent and a personal God is not assumed. The opposite is true. We are the measure of all things; we will make and remake the world; we are the creative and the creators; we will mold, make, and realize ourselves. If there is a god at all it is a god of self, of nature, or of community, or of justice. All is immanence! Human action and human beings are all.

The Anabaptist concern to recapture a place and role for the immanent, for human decision and human action is victorious in our day, but with the victory has also come defeat. For the Anabaptists, ethics were always related to God; they were a response of obedient faithfulness to God. The transcendent referent of our action is, for the most part, lost in modernity.

Sadly, the sense of a transcendent God is being eroded not only outside but also inside the church. We struggle against great odds to maintain a sense of the superhuman dimension in our understanding of reality. Theology is so readily reduced to psychology and politics. Perhaps this is why some are drawn to Anglicanism, Pentecostalism, or even the occult, where transcendence still seems a reality.

Hence to be countercultural, to challenge the world, to be nonconformist, to be biblical, to be faithful to Jesus today will necessarily mean being different from the reformers of the 1500s. Today we need less human action and much more of God’s reality, or better said, we need to place all human action in relation to God’s reality.

Thesis V: Words, literal words, are very limited vehicles to communicate transcendent reality. Metaphors, symbols, icons, and harmonies nurture the imagination with rumors of angels. If ethics were a necessary corrective in the sixteenth century, aesthetics is the necessary corrective for the late twentieth century.

Our artists carry a heavy burden in our day. We need them today more than ever before to create new metaphors, symbols, and icons that connect us spiritually, emotionally, and imaginatively with the God who is beyond our grasp.

Thesis VI: While in the sixteenth century we emphasized ethics and basically negated aesthetics, today we should not follow suit by emphasizing aesthetics to the exclusion of ethics. The two need not be and ought not to be over against each other, but rather close partners in the Christian cause.

Yet, Mennonite aesthetics has too often been subsumed under ethics. Out of their own sense of alienation and marginality in relation to both the church and the larger society, as well as out of their own sensitivities to the injustices around them, Mennonite artists have repeatedly painted the picture of human brokenness and played the sounds of human discord. Their message has been that of the ethical prophets crying “woe, woe.” Surely little can sensitize as profoundly to human evil as the arts can.

But does our world not know all about brokenness? Is such imitation of brokenness really prophetic, or is it simply falling into lockstep with cultural inertia? What we lack is a vision of peace and of wholeness rising out of the ashes. We have all kinds of pretty and nice and superficial, but above all, we lack beauty! We desperately need a recovery of aesthetics.

Thesis VII: The modern assumption that aesthetics is all in the eye of the beholder must be challenged. Aesthetics in this century has been completely relativized. Beauty no longer is premised on any objective criteria. Subjectivism and individualism reign. In turn, self-indulgence is the constant temptation of the artist.

If the arts can be a major means to regain a sense of the transcendent in our materialistic, scientific, technological world, then art and the artist will necessarily move beyond subjectivism and individualism to consider both the larger community and a more objective understanding of beauty.

Art, by definition, is a lonely task. It is not a function of a committee. It is an expression of individuality, of individual imagination and creativity, but not necessarily an expression of individualism. Art at its best is not created simply for the artist, or for fellow artists, but for the edification of the larger human community.

Regaining some objective criteria for beauty is difficult. Yet we desperately need to try. Ethics have faced the same morass. Yet ethicists, especially Christian ethicists, have refused to opt for a complete relativistic subjectivism. Surely Christian artists must do the same with aesthetics.

The cultural norm says aesthetics is dead. A countercultural response insists that normativity in the arts as in ethics is alive and well and living in the Christian community.

Thesis VIII: A primary arena, although definitely not the only arena, for the artist’s call in the postmodern world is in public worship. It is in and through worship that the God who is not limited by time and space, by human action and imagination, is best known (See John Rempel, “Christian Worship: Surely the Lord is in this Place,” The Conrad Grebel Review: A Journal of Christian Inquiry 6 [Spring 1988]: 101-118).

Words are of great importance in worship. Our preaching and our prayers desperately need to relearn the power of well-crafted and well-delivered words. Indeed words, both written and spoken, need to be reclaimed for their symbolic and poetic possibilities and power. Yet words are limited. The nonverbal arts offer us vehicles to realize the reality of the transcendent more powerfully than can any preached word.

If the arts are to fulfill their calling in worship, they will point not to the artist, but through the art to God. This kind of art in recent decades is relatively rare. But it is the kind we all long for, and which is vital to a renewal of a multidimensional cosmos in which God is alive, moving, and being.

An Anabaptist Theology of Worship

Anabaptists see the church as a radical body of believing disciples. Worship arises out of this community of faith and is simple and egalitarian. It recounts God’s story of redeeming love through the ongoing experience of the community of faith.

Worship says In the beginning God … and worship says, Yes, God’s actions are working out in our history for good. Worship respects and recognizes the various vitalities by which we enjoy life, the various values that govern it, and the various visions which transform it. Anabaptist worshipers respond to such revelations. Worship is therefore the interaction of the revelation of God and the response of the people who follow Jesus. We bring the phenomena of our living into the phenomenon of the living Jesus. We carry our various realities in into the presence of God.

Anabaptists have a faith-vision that calls forth unique worship patterns. The Anabaptist vision is almost five hundred years old and includes Mennonites, Brethren, and various Baptist and Congregationalists with sixteenth-century Anabaptist theological roots. The faith components may look very similar to those of other faith families, but what distinguishes Anabaptism is a combination and a configuration of “ABC’s”:

A. Authority of Scriptures, no t as a creed or code but as our stories and story to be believed and obeyed—that which forms and expresses our identity;
B. Baptism of believers (not infants) whereby one’s own faith in God, much like one’s love for another, evokes a public commitment;
C. Church as a community of the transformed, working out with others who are also a part of the body of Christ, thus a rejection of rugged individualism;
D. Discipleship of life, following Christ in imitation and participation;
E. Ethic of love in all relationships, an agape stance affirming even adversaries, seeking justice, building peace, reconciling relationships, confronting waste, living simply, honoring ecology, giving relief, sharing faith.

In worship, Anabaptists are consciously and communally responding to God. The purpose of worship is, all at once expressing gratitude to God and renewing, reaffirming, and reforming all aspects of life according to the ABCs of faith.

Worship and Liturgy

What does Anabaptist worship include and what does it look like? We’ve already alluded to the two necessary ingredients of divine expression and human experience—revelation and response. Simply put, worship is being present with Presence. We now examine three things that make liturgy happen in Anabaptist worship: experience, expression, and environment.

The Experiences We Have. Worship includes actual settings: It is involvement, taking place in the active and concrete here and now: a blessing for this meal, going to church, a dedication for this child, a consideration of this question and that issue.

Worship has to do with the wholeness of our various separations and sectionings. God gives us his peace, bringing harmony to our various dissonances. The biblical metaphor of the potter is telling: God taking clay and answering our song, “Spirit of the Living God, fall fresh on me, … mold me, make me, … fill me, use me.” Biblical precedents include the Corinthians’ love feast fiasco, Jacob’s wrestling with the Lord’s angel, Mary’s new vocation, Peter’s awareness that Cornelius is “in.” One cannot discard weekdays and have a weekend, or this pain and have that promise, or that brother and have this sister. Each fragment has a larger view, a larger setting, a greater dimension.

Worship has to do with all of our struggles; it takes them all seriously. Honest worship pays attention to our human conflicts; they are “tools at hand.” Life-stages and life-developments are the stuff that makes for worship. Anabaptist liturgy puts struggle where it belongs—in worship.

The Expressions We Make. With what symbols shall we tell the story—to us, to others, to God? Language comes in word and deed, helping us to praise, confess, commit, speak, and listen. In worship, language is always inclusive. Music both glorifies God and builds the body of Christ through expression in thought and feeling. It uses a variety of styles. Actions can be natural and spontaneous as well as planned, as in the examples of drama and dance. Silence also speaks: it is the still small voice of quietness. Preaching is allowing the Scriptures and the sermon to address us and then to respond to the living God. The sermon also allows for congregational preaching expressing itself as incarnation into today’s life and, therefore, as a redemptive sign and event.

The Environment We Need. The preacher and liturgists do not need “to be up there.” The best liturgical aid is people—seated in a semicircle allowing for a sense of community and communication. Visual aids (banners, paintings, free-standing cross, an open Bible, a candle, a globe, a Communion cup) can powerfully suggest, “We now have met to worship thee.” Biblical liturgy doesn’t occur only in the meetinghouse. Worshipers meet also in Sunday school rooms and in living rooms. A lit candle on the table in business and committee meetings reminds us of our purpose.

Worship and Rituals

The previous section shows that Anabaptist liturgies include the entire range of human experience. Here we see that all of life’s pilgrimage is the stuff of ritual performance—the locus where God is met. Assembling with others on the first day of the week is a repeated action and sign of our worship of God. Each Sunday service proclaims the giving of Christ anew. Sunday worship, like all repeated events, can deepen both revelation and response. Special acts of worship that signify God’s self-giving, and our self-giving in return, are properly called sacraments. Anabaptists are suspicious of this word, however, because of the track record in which sacred things have been exploited—in instances in church history when sacraments have become cultic objects. In Anabaptist worship ordinance has replaced sacrament, a radical and far-reaching switch. Ordinances, rites, and rituals are troublesome words for Anabaptists. “Performances” that God’s people enjoy might be better received.

Baptism is an initiation into the body of Christ, not only by believing in Jesus but in being part of the church. It marks the beginning of a pilgrimage of a lifelong journey of worship and witness. It is ordination into co-ministry with Jesus. It symbolizes cleansing and new life, an outward sign of new birth and new creation. Anabaptists practice believer’s baptism (sometimes referred to as adult baptism)—an experience akin to marriage in that baptism is a service of two parties who have consciously fallen in love with the “ring” (the water) as a sign and seal of that love relation.

The Lord’s Supper engages in living memory; it implies being present for a living memorial. It promises that something more is coming, particularly as one opens oneself to “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” The future is present. Christ is present in the taking of the bread, which includes our “taking.” Our openness to Christ, our attitude of acceptance whereby we hunger and thirst after the brooks of eternal life, make this time of taking a junction where we meet God and where we receive drink that satisfies and food that nourishes. If we eat and drink “all of it,” we accept Christ’s joy and pain, fulfillment, and searching. We accept Christ’s continued purposes for the world, and we enlist in that mission. We fine-tune our motivation; we receive manna to carry on.

Other Performances include ordination, healing, reconciliation, marriage, death, agape meals, foot or handwashing, and the various markings (dedication service of a new home, high school graduation, mortgage burnings, child dedications, and commissioning of teachers and officers).

Worship and Living

It’s a cliché in church bulletins—“Enter to Worship … Depart to Serve”—but a cliché rich in meaning for Anabaptists. Biblical, Anabaptist worship begins at church but does not end there; it pushes us into witness and work and then back again to worship where we can be revived. Liturgy means the work of the people (not, as commonly believed the assembling of the saints). What goes on on weekdays follows what goes on on their weekends—the rhythm of the church gathered and the church scattered. Accordingly, Anabaptist worship underscores the biblical learning that believers bring to the world. For Paul, liturgical worship was an exercise of work and witness (taking offerings to Jerusalem, a hoped-for missionary trip to Spain, witness to the high officials of government) (cf. Rom. 15:9, 24–29, where the actual word “liturgy” is used). Later he designates as worship whatever we do as unto the Lord (1 Cor. 10:31).

Conclusion

Anabaptist faith-vision and Anabaptist worship-practice go together. The faith of a Christian as a disciple—can be analogized as a caravan, a people “banded together to make common cause in seeking a common destination,” whose existence is in a continual becoming, a following of its Lord on the way toward the kingdom. This vision is in contrast to a commissary, which has existence in its own being in maintaining its divinely given essence. The faith of shalom—God uniting and integrating holistically all the details of life’s pilgrimages—is found in human experiences, expressions, environments, and life’s repeated events. A life of faith is a response to the living Word, to the Bible as central, not so much as a message-book but a voice-book, speaking not only about worship but also as worship, giving voice to the presence of the living God. Anabaptists are at worship as they meditate on its words—from Genesis to Revelation—experiencing the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

A Reformation Model of Worship: Anabaptist, Balthasar Hubmaier’s “A Form For Christ’s Supper” (1527)

The liturgy below is of an Anabaptist group in Waldshut. Unlike other Anabaptists, this community was not on the run, but settled in a place where the people enjoyed greater freedom of worship. These Anabaptists were also led by a minister who was a liturgical scholar.

Introduction

Balthasar Hubmaier (circa 1480–1528) was the most highly trained of Anabaptist theologians. He matriculated under Johannes Eck at the University of Freiburg and then assumed his mentor’s chair in biblical studies in 1510. In 1512 he followed Eck to the University of Ingolstadt where he earned a doctorate. In 1516 he became dean of the cathedral in Regensburg where he developed a reputation for fiery preaching. In 1521 he became the parish priest in Waldshut. Hubmaier’s interest in liturgy flourished in his years there. He refers to the ceremonial which he added to the Mass during that time. Waldshut lay in the Austrian-controlled territory of south Germany where mass movements in favor of local political and religious autonomy were afoot.

By 1523, Hubmaier had embraced the Reformation and was caught up in Zwingli’s reform initiatives at Zurich. His contributions to the Zurich Disputation of 1523 on worship and images show that he was by then an articulate participant in the radical movement. He and several younger thinkers, like Conrad Grebel, pushed the reform of the church beyond what Zwingli would sanction. But unlike the other Anabaptists, Hubmaier held that a believers’ church could still be a territorial church, publicly sanctioned and supported.

This fact is significant for the present discussion because it means that Hubmaier was creating liturgies for a church in which the majority of the population participated, though, according to his plan, only if they personally confessed Christ and accepted the responsibilities of membership. In addition to this service of the Lord’s Supper, Hubmaier also wrote a baptismal service and one for fraternal admonition. While the Anabaptist community at Waldshut was part of a new order trying to overthrow an old one, it was not a band of refugees worshiping on the run or at least on the sly. Nor were they, like most other Anabaptist congregations, made up of people whose intensely personal piety burst the framework of any formal structure of worship. It is probably that this difference in liturgical expression was due not only to the more settled character of Hubmaier’s churches but also to the fact that they were led by a liturgical scholar.

It is evident from “A Form for Christ’s Supper” that Hubmaier was aware of what he was doing and that is expressed the unusual political and theological commitments he had made. A fixed liturgical form is nicely woven together with an openness to charismatic expression. And repeated references to the inward disposition of the worshiper show the decisive significance the author attributed to the faith of the participant.

From references throughout Hubmaier’s writings at the time, it may be assumed that his service for the breaking of bread was created at Waldshut, though it was not published until he moved to Nicolsberg, Moravia to give his experiment of a territorial church of believers a second chance. Waldshut was located in the middle of the area where the Peasants War was fought. So, even though the Anabaptists were for a time officially tolerated, the population was constantly under threat by its worried Austrian overlords. Thus, the people must have come to church with a mixture of excitement and insecurity. On the one hand, the common people were really determining their own religious destiny; on the other hand, their radical experiment and the movement of which it was a part were viewed by the Austrian crown not only as heretical but also as seditious.

Hubmaier’s community was apocalyptic in that the intensity of faith asked for by Hubmaier knew no limits: Every baptized believer was asked to be faithful unto death. Just as Christ gave up his life for us, so we ought to give up ours for others in suffering love. That is the promise that makes the bread and wine into a true Lord’s Supper, according to Hubmaier. Though the circumstances, initially, were outwardly settled, Hubmaier (and perhaps those with whom he made common cause) knew that the experiment of the common folk went against everything the people on top stood for. He knew that wolves would soon come to prey on his sheep.

Radical peasant protests were in the air during Hubmaier’s years as an Anabaptist leader in Waldshut. So, people came to church to reenlist in the cause of Christ as the cause of the common person. The liturgy was theirs in two significant ways. Personally, each one was free to speak after the sermon as the Spirit gave utterance. Socially, the form of worship was determined locally by a pastor the people had chosen.

Text: The brethren and sisters who wish to hold the table of the Lord according to the institution of Christ, (Matt. 26:26ff.; Luke 22:19ff.; Mark 14:22ff.; 1 Cor. 11:23ff.), shall gather at a suitable place and time, so there may be no division, so that one does not come early and another late and that thereby evangelical teaching is neglected. Such the apostles desired when they asked Christ, “Master, where wilt thou that we prepare the Passover lamb?” Then he set for them a certain place. Paul writes, “When you come together … etc.,” (1 Cor. 11:20ff). Then they should prepare the table with ordinary bread and wine. Whether the cups are silver, wood, or pewter, makes no difference. But those who eat should be respectably dressed and should sit together in an orderly way without light talk and contention (1 Pet. 3:3; Eph. 4:29; Heb. 12).

Commentary: Hubmaier is in the process of socializing the people to their new worship life. At the beginning, and throughout the liturgy, there are admonitions about everything from promptness to the disposition of the heart which should accompany each part of the service. Hubmaier’s own commentary is woven together with rubrics and the text itself.

Since everyone should begin by accusing himself and confessing his sins and recognizing his guilt before God, it is not inappropriate that the priest, first of all, should fall on his knees with the church and with heart and mouth say the following words:

“Father we have sinned against heaven and against thee” (Luke 15:21). We are not worthy to be called thy children. But speak a word of consolation and our souls will be made whole. God be gracious to us sinners (Luke 19:1ff). May the almighty, eternal and gracious God have mercy on all our sins and forgive us graciously, and when he has forgiven us, lead us into eternal life without blemish or impurity, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.

Commentary: Once the congregants are settled, the “priest” leads them in confessing their sins. He prays with them and together with the people asks God to “have mercy on all our sins.” Here it is not a priest offering absolution to a penitent congregation, but a fellow believer seeking absolution in their company. This was a revolutionary experience for sixteenth-century Christians.

Now let the priest sit down with the people and open his mouth, explaining the Scriptures concerning Christ (Luke 24:31), so that the eyes of those who are gathered together may be opened, which were still somewhat darkened or closed, so that they may recognize Christ, who was a man, a prophet, mighty in works and teaching before God and all people, and how the highest bishops among the priests and princes gave him over to condemnation to death, and how they crucified him, and how he has redeemed Israel, that is, all believers. The priest shall also rebuke those who are foolish and slow to believe all the things that Moses and the prophets have spoken, that he may kindle and make fervent and warm the hearts of those at the table, that they may be afire in fervent meditation of his bitter suffering and death in contemplation, love, and thanksgiving, so that the congregation with its whole heart, soul, and strength calls out to him.

Stay with us, O Christ! It is toward evening and the day is now far spent. Abide with us, O Jesus, abide with us. For where thou art not, there everything is darkness, night, and shadow, but thou are the true Sun, light, and shining brightness (John 8:12). He to whom thou doest light the way, cannot go astray.

On another day the servant of the Word may take the 10th or 11th chapter of Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, or the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, or 17th chapter of John. Or Matthew 3 or Luke 3 on changing one’s life, Sirach 2 on the fear of God, or something else according to the opportuneness of the time and persons. No one shall be coerced herein, but each should be left free to the judgment of his spirit. But there must be diligence so that the death of the Lord is earnestly proclaimed, so that the people have a picture of the boundless goodness of Christ, and the church may be instructed, edified, and led, in heartfelt, fervent, and fraternal love, so that on the last day we may stand before the judgment seat of Christ with the accounts of our stewardship (Luke 16:8), and shepherd and sheep may be held together.

Commentary: Next the Scriptures are opened to the people concerning Christ so “that they may be afire in fervent meditation of his bitter suffering … ” A puzzling comment concerning the procedure follows. What does the text mean when it says, “On another day the servant of the Word may take [another chapter]”? It might mean, in line with Mennonite tradition, that the first gathering is a preparatory service on the day before communion. It might also mean that on another Sunday a different set of suggested texts would be appropriate sources for the proclamation.

Text: Now that the death of Christ has been proclaimed, those who are present have the opportunity and the authority to ask, if at any point they should have some misunderstanding or some lack (1 Cor. 14:26ff); but not with frivolous, unprofitable, or argumentative chatter, nor concerning heavenly matters having to do with the omnipotence or the mystery of God or future things, which we have no need to know, but concerning proper, necessary, and Christian items, having to do with Christian faith and brotherly love. Then one to whom something is revealed should teach, and the former should be quiet without any argument and quarreling. For it is not customary to have conflict in the church. Let women keep silent in the congregation. If they want to learn anything, they should ask their husbands at home, so that everything takes place in an orderly fashion (1 Cor. 11:14). After the sermon, anyone who lacks understanding may ask for it, and anyone who is given a revelation may teach it.

Commentary: Apparently, this freedom for spontaneous expression had been taken advantage of: People had turned to chatter, speculation, and quarreling; Hubmaier saw fit to warn them against this abuse of freedom. One can imagine the thrill, if not also the bewilderment, of being invited to speak in church as an individual with particular needs and insights when formerly only conformity had counted. It would not be hard to get carried away!

Text: Let the priest take up for himself the words of Paul (1 Cor. 11), and say:

Let every one test and examine himself, and let him thus eat of the bread and drink of the drink. For whoever eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment upon himself, as he does not discern the body of the Lord. And if we thus judge ourselves, we would not be condemned by the Lord.

Now such examination comprises the following: First, that one believes, (Matt. 26:26ff.; Mark 13:22ff.; Luke 22:19f.; 1 Cor. 11:24ff.), utterly and absolutely that Christ gave his body and shed his crimson blood for him on the cross in the power of his words, as he said: “This is my body, which is given for you, and this is my blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of his sins.”

Second: Let a person test himself, whether he has a proper inward and fervent hunger for the bread which comes down from heaven, from which one truly lives, and thirst for the drink which flows into eternal life, to eat and drink both in the spirit, faith, and truth, as Christ teaches us in John 4; 6; and 7. If the spiritual eating and drinking do not first take place, then the outward breaking of bread, eating and drinking is a killing letter (2 Cor. 3:6; 1 Cor. 11:29), hypocrisy, and the kind of food and drink whereby one eats condemnation and drinks death, as Adam did with the forbidden fruit of the tree in Paradise (Gen. 3:6).

Third: Let one also confirm himself in gratitude, so as to be thankful in words and deeds toward God for the great, overabundant, and unspeakable love and goodness that he has shown him through his most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ (John 3:16; Rom. 8:32). Namely that he now gives praise and thanks from the heart to God. Further, that he be of an attitude and ready will to do for Christ his God and Lord in turn as he had done for him. But since Christ does not need our good deeds, is not hungry, is not thirsty, is not naked or in prison, but heaven and earth are his and all that is in them, therefore he points us toward our neighbor, first of all to the members of the household of faith, (Matt. 25:34ff.; Gal. 6:10; 1 Tim. 5), that we might fulfill the works of this our gratitude toward them physically and spiritually, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, consoling the prisoner, sheltering the needy. Then he will be ready to accept these works of mercy from us in such a way as if we had done them unto him. Yea, he will say at the last judgment, “I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was naked, in prison, and homeless, and you clothed me, visited me, and housed me” (Matt. 25). He says, “I, I, I, me, me, me.” From this, it is certain and sure that all the good that we do to the very least of his, that we do to Christ himself. Yea, he will not let a single drink of cool water go unrewarded (Matt. 10:42). If one is thus inclined toward his neighbor, he is now in the true fellowship of Christ, a member of his body, and a fellow member with all godly persons (Col. 1:4).

Fourth: So that the church might also be fully aware of a person’s attitude and will, one holds fellowship with her in the breaking of bread, thereby saying, testifying, and publicly assuring her, yea, making to her a sacrament or a sworn pledge and giving one’s hand on the commitment that one is willing henceforth to offer one’s body and to shed one’s blood thus for one’s fellow believers. This one does not out of human daring, like Peter (Matt. 26:33), but in the grace and power of the suffering and the bloodshed by our Lord Jesus Christ, his (i.e., meaning Peter’s) only Savior, of whose suffering and death the human being is now celebrating a living commemoration in the breaking of bread and the sharing of the chalice.

This is the true fellowship of saints (1 Cor. 10:16). It is not a fellowship for the reason that bread is broken, but rather the bread is broken because the fellowship has already taken place and has been concluded inwardly in the spirit since Christ has come into flesh (John 4:27). For not all who break bread are participants in the body and blood of Christ, which I can prove by the traitor Judas (Matt 26:25). But those who are partakers inwardly and of the spirit, the same may also worthily partake outwardly of this bread and wine.

A parable: We do not believe because we have been baptized in water, but we are baptized in water because we first believe. So David says: “I have believed, therefore I have spoken” (Ps. 116:10; Matt. 16:16; Acts 8:30). So every Christian speaks equally: “I have believed, therefore I have publicly confessed that Jesus is Christ, Son of the living God, and have thereafter had myself baptized according to the order of Christ, the high priest who lives in eternity.” Or: “I have fellowship with Christ and all his members (1 Cor. 10:16), therefore I break bread with all believers in Christ according to the institution of Christ.” Without this inner communion in the spirit and in truth, the outward breaking of bread is nothing but an Iscariotic and damnable hypocrisy. It is precisely to this fellowship and commitment of love that the Supper of Christ points, as a living memorial of his suffering and death for us, spiritually signified and pointed to by the breaking of bread, the pouring out of the wine, that each one should also sacrifice and pour out his flesh and blood for the other. Herein will people recognize that we are truly disciples of Christ (John 13; 14; 15; 16; 17). All of the words which Christ spoke about the Last Supper tend toward this. For just as water baptism is a public testimony of the Christian faith, so is the Supper a public testimony of Christian love. Now he who does not want to be baptized or to observe the Supper, he does not desire to believe in Christ to observe the Supper, he does not desire to believe in Christ nor to practice Christian love and does not desire to be a Christian. How much someone cares about the flesh and blood, that is about the suffering and death of Christ Jesus, about the shedding of his crimson blood, about the forgiveness of sins, about brotherly love and communion in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, yea the communion of the whole heavenly host and the universal Christian church outside of which there is no salvation, just this much he should care about the bread and the wine of God’s table. Not that here bread and wine are anything other than bread and wine; but according to the memorial and the significant mysteries for the sake of which Christ thus instituted it. If now one had no other word or Scripture, but only the correct understanding of water baptism and the Supper of Christ, one would have God and all his creatures, faith and love, the law, and all the prophets. So whoever makes a mockery of the Supper of Christ, the Son of Man will mock before God and his angels. So much for self-examination.

Commentary: It is interesting that the self-examination is not concerned with a long list of proscribed attitudes or behaviors (as might be expected from the rigor of the Pledge of Love we find later in the service) but with matters of the heart. Do I believe “utterly and absolutely” that Christ gave his body and blood for me? Do I hunger for that bread that comes down from heaven? Am I grateful for the fact that I am loved?

Since now these ceremonies and signs have to do completely and exclusively with fraternal love, and since one who loves his neighbor like himself is a rare bird, yea even an Indian phoenix on earth, who can sit at the supper table with a good conscience? Answer: One who has thus taken to heart and has thus shaped himself in mind and heart and senses inwardly that he truly and sincerely can say, “The love of God which he has shown to me through the sacrifice of his only-begotten and most-beloved Son for the payment my sins (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9; Rom. 8:32), of which I have heard and been certainly assured through his holy Word, has so moved, softened, and penetrated my spirit and soul that I am so minded and ready to offer my flesh and blood, furthermore so to rule over and so to master it, that it must obey me against its own will, and henceforth not take advantage of, deceive, injure, or harm my neighbor in any way in body, soul, honor, goods, wife, or child, but rather to go into the fire for him and die, as Paul also desired to be accursed for his brethren and Moses to be stricken out of the book of life for the sake of his people” (Rom. 9:3; Exod. 32:32). Such a person may with good conscience and worthiness sit at the Supper of Christ.

You say: “This is humanly impossible.” Answer: Certainly for the Adamic human nature. But all things are possible to the Christian (Mark 9:23), not as persons, but as believers, who are one with God and all creatures, and are (except for the flesh) free and independent of themselves. For God works such willing and doing in his believers (Phil. 2:14), through the inward anointing of his Holy Spirit, so that he stands in complete freedom to will and to do good or evil. The good one can do is through the anointing of God. The evil comes from one’s own innate nature and impulse, which evil will one can, however, master and tame through the grace given by God (Deut. 30:1ff.; Gen. 4:17; Rom. 10; Matt. 19; John 1:12).

It is not sufficient that sin be recognized through the law, nor that we know what is good or evil. We must bind the commandments on our hand, grasp them, and fulfill them in deeds (Deut. 6:8; Matt. 11:30; John 3). To do this is easy and a small thing to the believer, but to those who walk according to the flesh, all things are impossible. Yet the believing and newly born person under the gospel is still also [a person] under the law. He has just as many trials as before, or even more. He finds (however holy he may be) nothing good in his own flesh, just as Saint Paul laments the same with great seriousness regarding the conflict and the resistance of the flesh (Rom. 7:18). Nevertheless the believer rejoices and praises God that the trial is not and cannot be so great in him, but that the power of God in him, which he has received through the living Word which God has sent, is stronger and mightier (1 Cor. 10:13; Rom. 8:11). He also knows certainly that such resistances, evil desires, and sinful lusts of his flesh are not damning for him if he confesses the same to God, regrets them, and does not follow after them, but reigns and rules mightily over the restless devil of his flesh (1 Cor. 9:27), strangles, crucifies, and torments him without letup; holds in his rein, does not do his will, cares little that breaks his neck (Exod. 34:20). So every one who is a Christian acts and behaves so that he may worthily eat and drink at the table of the Lord.

Know thou further, righteous Christians, that to fulfill the law it is not enough to avoid sins and die to them. Yea, one must also do good to the neighbor, (Ps. 37). For Christ not only broke the bread, he also distributed it and gave it to his disciples. Yea, not only the bread, but also even his own flesh and blood. So we must not only speak the word of brotherly love, hear it, confess ourselves to be sinners, and abstain from sin, we must also fulfill it in deeds, as Scripture everywhere teaches us.

Forsake evil and do good (Ps. 37).

Brethren, work out your salvation (Phil. 2:12).

While we have time, let us do good, for the night comes when no man can work (Gal. 6:9).

Wilt thou enter into life, keep the commandments (Matt. 19:17).

For not those who hear the word are righteous before God, but those who do the law will be justified (Rom. 2:7).

Not all those who say to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven, will enter into the kingdom of heaven, says Christ, and adds: Everyone who hears my words and does them, he shall be likened unto a wise man who built his house upon a rock. But everyone who hears my word and does it not shall be likened to a fool who built his house on sand (Matt. 7:21–27).

In sum: God requires of us the will, the word, and the works of brotherly love, and he will not let himself be paid off or dismissed with words (Matt. 15; Luke 8:21; Rom. 8:1; Luke 17; Isa. 64:5ff.; Col 2:10; Ps. 32:1f.; Rom. 4:5; 5; 7; 8). But what innate weaknesses and imperfections constantly are intermingled with our acts of commission and omission because of our flesh, God—thanks to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ—will not reckon to our eternal condemnation; for in Christ we have all attained perfection, and in him we are already blessed. What more do we lack?

Since now believers have inwardly surrendered themselves utterly to serve their fellow members in Christ at the cost of honor, goods, body, and life, yea even to offer their souls for them to the point of hell with the help of God; therefore, it is all the more needful sincerely to groan and pray to God that he may cause the faith of these new persons to grow; also that he may more deeply kindle in them the fire of brotherly love, so that in these two matters, signified by water baptism and the Lord’s Supper, they might continually grow, mature, and persevere unto the end.

Here shall now be held a time of common silence, so that each one who desires to approach the table of God can meditate upon the suffering of Christ and thus with Saint John rest on the breast of the Lord. After such silence, the “Our Father” shall be spoken publicly by the church, reverently, and with hearts desirous of grace as follows (Matt. 6:9ff.; Luke 11:2ff.):

Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed by thy name
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
Amen.

Commentary: That part of the service must have evoked openness and tenderness in its hearers. Then comes the great “but.” Christ does not need our love expressed to him in a mystical way; he bids us love him in our neighbor. Only the one who desires to love Christ in the person of the neighbor is ready to meet him in the Supper. This is the gist of Hubmaier’s theology of worship and his belief about the Lord’s Supper. The fulfillment of the sacrament is to pour out one’s flesh and blood for the other. Without this pledge, it is all hypocrisy.

How might people have felt in the face of this challenge? Relieved that someone finally said that you can’t call yourself a Christian if you don’t put your money where your mouth is? Or crushed by the extremity of the challenge?

Appropriately for Hubmaier’s purposes, silence follows to allow intimate meditation on Christ. He describes the contemplation as resting on the breast of the Lord. Silence was so important to Hubmaier because it afforded worshipers an opportunity to internalize the words of the liturgy. This concern for the coincidence of outer words and inner commitment gained significance the further left one went on the Reformation spectrum. The radical reformers feared that in the mass, liturgy was more an expression of religious conformity than personal conviction. Hubmaier wanted to be existentially radical and liturgically conservative: He sought worshippers who know Christ and his way personally, yet he valued their collective expression in continuity with the tradition. The silence is broken by the most traditional of all Christian formulations, the Lord’s Prayer.

Text: Now the priest shall point out clearly and expressly that the bread is bread and the wine, wine and not flesh and blood, as has long been believed.

Commentary: Lest the people’s minds still harbor false teaching on the Eucharist, the priest is to instruct them “that the bread is bread.”

Text: Brothers and sisters, if you will to love God before, in, and above all things, in the power of his holy and living Word, serve him alone (Deut. 5; 6; Exod. 20), honor and adore him and henceforth sanctify his name, subject your carnal and sinful will to his divine will which he has worked in you by his living Word, in life and death, then let each say individually:

I will.

If you love your neighbor and serve him with deeds of brotherly love (Matt. 25; Eph. 6; Col. 3; Rom. 13:1; 1 Pet. 2:13ff.), lay down and shed for him your life and blood, be obedient to father, mother, and all authorities according to the will of God, and this in the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, who laid down and shed his flesh and blood for us, then let each say individually:

I will.

If you will practice fraternal admonition toward your brethren and sisters (Matt. 18:15ff.; Luke 5; Matt. 5:44; Rom. 12:10), make peace and unity among them, and reconcile yourselves with all those whom you have offended, abandon all envy, hate, and evil will toward everyone, willingly cease all action and behavior which causes harm, disadvantage, or offense to your neighbor, [if you will] also love your enemies and do good to them, and exclude according to the Rule of Christ (Matt. 18) all those who refuse to do so, then let each say individually:

I will.

If you desire publicly to confirm before the church this pledge of love which you have now made, through the Lord’s Supper of Christ, by eating bread and drinking wine, and to testify to it in the power of the living memorial of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ our Lord, then let each say individually:

I desire it in the power of God.

So eat and drink with one another in the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. May God himself accord to all of us the power and the strength that we may worthily carry it out and bring it to its saving conclusion according to his divine will. May the Lord impart to us his grace. Amen.

Commentary: So that their praise of God might be spiritually and theologically authentic, the worshipers are not asked to make a true moral response to the Supper in the Pledge of Love. It is a fine balancing act: the prayers are full of gratitude and grace, the exhortations full of challenges and demands. But after communion, the balance is lost. The liturgy becomes moralistic, filled with praise and warnings. The closing blessing is too concise to return the focus to Christ.

Text: The bishop takes the bread and with the church lifts his eyes to heaven, praises God, and says:

We praise and thank thee, Lord God, Creator of the Heavens and earth, for all thy goodness toward us. Especially hast thou so sincerely loved us that thou didst give thy most-beloved Son for us unto death so that each one who believes in him may not be lost but have eternal life (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9; Rom. 8:32). Be thou honored, praised, and magnified now, forever, always and eternally. Amen.

Now the priest takes the bread, breaks it, and offers it into the hands of those present, saying:

The Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was betrayed, took the bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and said: “Take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in my memory.” Therefore, take and eat also, dear brothers and sisters, this bread in the memory of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he gave unto death for us.

Now when everyone has been fed, the priest likewise takes the cup with the wine and speaks with lifted eyes:

“God! Praise be to thee!”

and offers it into their hands saying:

Likewise the Lord took the vessel after the Supper and spoke: “This cup is a new testament in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink, in memory of me.” Take therefore also the vessel and all drink from it in the memory of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins.

When they have all drunk, the priest says:

As often as you eat the bread and drink of the drink, you shall proclaim the death of the Lord, until he comes (1 Cor. 11:26).

Now the church is seated to hear the conclusion.

Commentary: How would the people have felt as they returned from church to everyday life? Some of them must have rejoiced in the fact that they were being made the subjects of their own destiny; they were assured that they—simple people who had had no say in their own lives—were the body of Christ, able to extend the incarnation into a hostile world. Others must have been overwhelmed by the expectations placed on them, fearing—as the liturgy warns in its words of dismissal—that a millstone might be tied around their neck.

Text: Most dearly beloved brethren and sisters in the Lord. As we now, by thus eating the bread and drinking the drink in memory of the suffering and shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of our sins, have had fellowship one with another (1 Cor. 10:17; 12:12; Eph. 4:4; Col. 1:3; Eph. 1; 4; 5), and have all become one loaf and one body, and our Head is Christ, we should properly become conformed to our Head and as his members follow after him, love one another, do good, give counsel, and be helpful to one another, each offering up his flesh and blood for the other. Under our Head Christ we should all also live, speak, and act honorably and circumspectly, so that we give no offense or provocation to anyone (Matt. 18; Mark 9; Luke 17; 1 Cor. 8; Rom. 14). So that also those who are outside the church might not have reason to blaspheme our Head, our faith, and church, and to say: “Does your Head Christ teach you such an evil life? Is that your faith? Is that your baptism? Is that your Christian church, Supper, and gospel, that you should lead such an ungodly and shameful life in gluttony, drunkenness, gambling, dancing, usury, gossip, reviling, cursing, blasphemy, pride, avarice, envy, hate and wrath, unchastity, luxury, laziness, and frivolity? (Matt. 18:6). Woe, woe to him who gives offense! It would be better for him that a millstone should be hung around his neck and he should be cast into the depth of the sea. Let us rather take upon ourselves a righteous, honorable, and serious life, through which God our Father who is in heaven may be praised.

Since our brotherly love requires that one member of the body be also concerned for the other, therefore we have the earnest behest of Christ (Matt. 18:14ff.), that whenever henceforth a brother sees another erring or sinning, that he once and again should fraternally admonish him in brotherly love. Should he not be willing to reform nor to desist from his sin, he shall be reported to the church. The church shall then exhort him a third time. When this also does no good, she shall exclude him from her fellowship. Unless it should be the case that the sin is quite public and scandalous; then he should be admonished also publicly and before all, so that the others may fear (1 Cor. 5:1; 1 Tim. 5:20; Gal. 2:11).

Whereupon I pray and exhort you once more, most dearly beloved in Christ, that henceforth as table companions of Christ Jesus (Luke 22:15), you henceforth lead a Christian walk before God and before men. Be mindful of your baptismal commitment and of your pledge of love which you made to God and the church publicly and certainly not unwittingly when receiving the water and in breaking bread. See to it that you bear fruit worthy of the baptism and the Supper of Christ, that you may in the power of God satisfy your pledge, promise, sacrament, and sworn commitment (Matt. 3:8; Luke 3:8). God sees it and knows your hearts. May our Lord Jesus Christ, ever and eternally praised, grant us the same. Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters, watch and pray lest you wander away and fall into temptation (Matt. 24:42; 25:15; Luke 16). You know neither the day nor the hour when the Lord is coming and will demand of you an accounting of your life. Therefore watch and pray. I commend you to God. May each of you say to himself, “Praise, praise, praise to the Lord eternally!”

Arise and go forth in the peace of Christ Jesus. The grace of God be with us all.

Amen.

Truth Is Unkillable: Hubmaier on the Lord’s Supper

To the noble Lord Buriano of Cornitz, my gracious sovereign.

Grace and peace in Christ, noble and Christian Lord.

The majority of people who stand by the gospel recognize that bread is bread and wine, wine in the Lord’s Supper, and not Christ (Acts 1:9; Mark 16:19; Heb. 1:3; 12:2; Matt. 22:44; Ps. 110). For the same ascended into heaven and is sitting at the right hand of God his Father, whence he will come again to judge the living and the dead. Precisely that is our foundation, according to which we must deduce and exposit all of the Scriptures having to do with eating and drinking. Thus Christ cannot be eaten or drunk by us otherwise than spiritually and in faith. So then he cannot be bodily the bread either but rather in the memorial which is held, as he himself and Paul explained these Scriptures (Luke 22; 1 Cor. 11). Whoever understands them otherwise does violence to the articles of our Christian faith. Yet the restless Satan has invented another intrigue to hold us in his snare. Namely, that such a Lord’s Supper should be established without a prior water baptism, something which again Scripture cannot suffer. When the three thousand men and Paul had been instructed in the Word and believed, only thereafter did they break bread with the brethren (Acts 2:41ff.; Acts 9). For as faith precedes love, so water baptism must precede the Lord’s Supper. So that Your Grace may know in what form the Lord’s Supper is celebrated in Nicolsburg, I have had it printed, for the praise of God, the honor of Your Grace, and the salvation of all believers in Christ, so that no one might think that we fear the light or that we are unable to give reasons for our teaching and actions. May Your Grace be commended to God and graciously accept from me this written token of respect, through my dear brother Jan Zeysinger,

Your Grace’s willing [servant]

Balthasar Huebmor [Hubmaier], etc.

Conclusion

The Reformation was a time in which drastic correctives were applied to conventional patterns of church life. Hubmaier was among those who did their utmost for people to know that Christ “died for all so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (2 Cor. 5:15). This double theme fills “A Form for Christ’s Supper.”

Some of its moralism derives from Hubmaier’s intense desire to retain but purify liturgical worship. For him to be satisfied with an order of service, it had to make the goal of the Christian life unequivocally clear. In doing this, Hubmaier was perhaps more extreme but of the same mind as other contemporary liturgical reformers such as Martin Bucer and Thomas Cranmer. One sees this similarity especially in the exhaustive exhortations to those preparing to come to the Lord’s Table. This comparison should remind us that while his gathering for the breaking of bread bears the marks of Hubmaier’s and Anabaptism’s distinctives, it also reflects the age in which he lived. For all of them, this preparation replaced the no less serious act of individual confession before a priest in the old church. Hubmaier was using liturgy to teach and persuade. It sounds as if this service was written for a congregation that was not yet as fully converted as its pastor thought it should be.

A large part of the lasting value of “A Form for Christ’s Supper” is its corrective, and therefore, incomplete state. The service exemplifies the tensions faced by anyone trying to hold together form and spirit, grace and works. Even though the commentary woven throughout the service shows how mightily the author strove to give forgiveness and obedience their due, the service fell into a kind of perfectionism, perhaps because the sacrament itself had become primarily a human act. Because of Hubmaier’s fear of sacramentalism, the validity of the ceremony depended on the intensity and purity of the human response. But Hubmaier’s service stands as a warning against every attempt to use liturgy to smooth out the rough demands of the Gospel; it invites us to grapple as he did to give voice to the whole counsel of God.

Anabaptist Worship in the Reformation Era

Anabaptists argued for a pure church and a radical discipleship in absolute obedience to Scripture. They refused to countenance any form of worship that could not be substantiated by Scripture.

It is not easy to generalize about the Anabaptist elements of the radical Reformation, known largely today as Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites, but we can trace some common features. Surprisingly, the more radical traditions tend also to be most conservative when it comes to stabilizing and continuing the same worship forms across the centuries.

The earliest Anabaptists, the Swiss Brethren, began in contact with Zwingli in Zurich. But they took his biblicism a step further than he was willing to and argued vehemently against the baptism of any but believers. Their basic premise came to be the need for a pure church of believers who led holy lives. This was impossible to reconcile with the magisterial reformation that relied upon state support. Both Protestants and Catholics vied with each other to persecute Anabaptists, or “rebaptizers” as they came to be known, because of their refusal to accept their own baptisms as infants. Immersion was not an issue, and most of these groups baptized by pouring or sprinkling.

A variety of leaders arose with small groups of followers. The typical congregations met in a secluded spot under a leader called and ordained by the congregation. Because persecution was so constant, martyrdom was frequent and a rich hymnody of martyrdom developed, some of it still in use. For the church to be kept pure, not only must the entrance be narrow in the form of baptism for believers only, but members not living a holy life were expelled by the ban and shunned in accordance with biblical precept (1 Cor. 5:13).

Despite their radical origins, several Anabaptist groups have kept faithful to genuine conservatism. The Old Order (Amish) worship in private homes much as their ancestors did, the Hutterite communities even retain the use of sixteenth-century sermons, and even the larger Mennonite groups resisted most nineteenth-century American influences by remaining relatively isolated communities. Although their numbers continue to be small, the disciplined lifestyle of these people makes them much admired.

Anabaptists

The Anabaptists were the heirs of the evangelical spirit of the German brethren. Stirred by the Lutheran movement, they were more disposed to follow Luther’s example of independent action, though they were not ready to join his movement. With a literal interpretation of the Bible, they reached certain conclusions that were quite unconventional. They were dubbed Anabaptists because they rebaptized those who joined their company, and they refused baptism to infants on the ground that they were not old enough to have conscious faith. They chose their own religious leaders and organized tentatively on a presbyterian basis, rejecting the authority of the Catholic Church. Two men represented divergent types of Anabaptism. Balthasar Hiibmaier was their leader in theological disputation. John Denck represented the prevalence of their mysticism and is related in his spiritual attitude to the later Quakers of England, as Hübmaier anticipated the English Baptists. Lutherans and Catholics alike opposed them. But Anabaptists persisted in the Netherlands, where they took the name of Mennonites from their leader Menno Simons.

Impact: In general the Anabaptists were peaceful and drew disaffected persons of various sorts. Yet, while it was primarily a religious movement, it included some who were fanatical in their anticipation of the second coming of Christ and who were eager to hurry it along.