The Anabaptists (1)

The Birth of the Anabaptist Movement.

Among Zwingli's associates were several men of a more radical type than himself. In particular, Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz. While Zwingli and Luther were content to see change in the understanding of doctrines about the sacraments and Salvation, Justification etc., Grebel and Manz were concerned about the whole concept of a State Church. They shared their concerns with Zwingli and, for a time, Zwingli thought that they might be right. They persuaded him, also, to think about whether baptism should really be reserved for believers as in the primitive Church.

Zwingli, although at one time he expressed sympathy for their view, eventually decided against it. Grebel and Manz also believed that, whatever changes needed to happen within the Church was a matter for the Church alone and was not the province of the magistrates. Zwingli, like Luther, believed that godly magistrates had the right to decide what the Church could do within their area of jurisdiction. Zwingli would not act without waiting for the legal authorities to be persuaded. Grebel and Manz wanted reformation "without waiting for any man". Zwingli, therefore opted for State Religion as Luther had done. Grebel and Manz parted company with him and took the road that led to the institution of a "Free Church".

Radical Reform

The Church, as Grebel and Manz envisioned it, was very different from the mediaeval pattern inherited and adopted by Luther and Zwingli. They believed that a State Church to which all must belong and to which all must conform did not appear to them the Church that is found in the Bible. They believed that the true Church was a society of believers who chose to belong. They were convinced that entry to this Church was through baptism which must, therefore, be reserved for adult believers. Communion was a Fellowship meal in which only believers should partake. Non-believers should not be coerced into membership but should be persuaded, if it were possible, by the preaching of the gospel and the testimony of the believers. They also believed that Christians should be peacemakers and the majority became pacifists.

They were refused permission to preach their beliefs within the Churches and, therefore, met together in the homes of the believers - a sort of House Church Movement of the 16th Century. On January 21, 1525, a George Blaurock asked Grebel to re-baptise him. Grebel did this after which Blaurock baptised all the other believers. This baptism, incidentally, was not by immersion as later Baptists insisted it should be, but by affusion.

From this point forward the Free Church had its birth. Because these believers re-baptised people who had already been baptised in infancy they were soon labelled by their enemies as "Anabaptists" and this name was given to all who refused to conform to the State Church pattern, even those whose beliefs were entirely different from Grebel's and Manz's and who did not practice re-baptism.