The Radicals

Were they all Anabaptists?

At the time when the Anabaptist movement began, there were many other radical groups. Many of these groups expressed doubts about infant baptism, many were opposed to the idea of a State Church or of kings, princes or magistrates being able to interfere with the doctrine or government of the Church. Because of these similarities they were all classed together, in the eyes of both Catholics and Reformers, as "Anabaptists". This was to cause considerable problems in relations, already strained, between Lutherans and Zwinglians on the one hand and the Anabaptists on the other.

The various groups, all labeled "Anabaptist", can be seen as three separate types of groups which have become known as

Spiritualists
Religious rationalists
Biblical (or evangelical) Anabaptists

In defining the above groups, we must be careful not to confuse the "spiritualists" of the 16^th Century with the modern "Spiritualist" (more accurately "Spiritist"). Theirs was not a preoccupation with the spirits of the dead: they were convinced that the Holy Spirit so guided them that their revelations were either on a par with, or superior to, Scripture. They were concerned with the future, millenarians, often convinced that the return of Jesus was imminent and that they were to herald his coming. They often set up communities believing them to be the "city of God" to which Jesus would come on his return. Others believed that Jesus could only return to a world prepared for him and that the present order must be overturned - by force if necessary.

The Rationalists did not so much rely on revelations of the Holy Spirit to explain Scripture. They used reason. Reason was a spiritual authority alongside the Bible. Like some of the early "Fathers" they used logic and philosophy to inform them of God. The results varied from group to group. Some became convinced of beliefs rather similar to those we now tend to call "New Age", believing in the Christian's absorbtion into godhead. Some allegorised the Bible. Since the doctrine of the Trinity did not fit in with their logic some, like Socinus and Servetus became anti-Trinitarian and from their beliefs, later, sprang the Unitarian Church.

The Biblicists placed all their emphasis on the Bible as the only source of authority. The Bible was not to be allegorized, or spiritualised - it was to be taken literally. Thus, since there is no evidence in the Bible that Jesus or the Apostles would have used force to make someone conform, the Church should not do so. The Bible leaves the running of the Church to its own leaders, so the Church should be free from state interference. The New Testament instructs Christians not to swear, therefore Christians should not swear oaths and therefore cannot become magistrates etc. They were mostly pacifists, some were inclined to be "communistic". They believed that people had the free-will to chose to sin or repent (while believing also that God's grace was needed to exercise the will to repent), they insisted on individual faith and on the baptism of believers after conversion.

It is this last group; the evangelical, Bible dependent, group, that we refer to when we use the term "Anabaptist" today despite the fact that the term was used indiscriminately in the 16 ^th and 17^th Centuries.