Did the Reformers Persecute the Anabaptists

4/7/2021

Several people have challenged us over organising Reformation Conferences and claimed that the Reformers persecuted the Anabaptists just because they “were not willing to baptise babies.” One correspondent wrote that rather than celebrate the Reformation “would it not be preferable to study the Scriptures…”
Back to the Bible

Here is our response:
Of course, our highest priority is to “study the Scriptures daily to see if these things be true”. In fact that is the heritage of the Reformation. The Reformation gave us back the Bible freely available, translated into our own languages, and the Reformers championed “Scripture alone is our final authority”. The Reformation succeeded in bringing about greater freedoms than had ever been experienced before in human history.

Understand the Times
We would encourage you to read How the Reformation Changed the World, and How the Reformation Changed the Church, both available on our www.ReformationSA.org website.

Violent Revolutionaries
Those who accuse the Reformers of persecuting Anabaptists are being unfair and selective in not reporting the whole context. Anabaptists were not so much opposed and convicted for not being willing to baptise babies, but because the Anabaptists in the 1520’s and 1530’s were radical, violent revolutionaries.

Radical Extremists
While the Anabaptists claimed to be the only true Christians, they denied many key elements of the Faith. They rejected Biblical Law, Christian ministry, worship and sacraments. Anabaptists in the 16th century proclaimed socialism, egalitarianism and revolution. They claimed “it is impossible to be Christian and wealthy at the same time”; “all authorities, secular and clerical, must be deprived of their offices once and for all, or be killed by the sword…”

Death Threats
Igor Shafarevich, in his book The Socialist Phenomenon, documents the teachings and activities of two important Anabaptist leaders, Thomas Muntzer and John of Leyden. Muntzer, an itinerant preacher and organiser of rebellions, established his revolutionary base in Muhlhausen from where he issued proclamations damning landowners, magistrates and Reformers. “I would like to smell your frying carcass” he wrote to Professor Martin Luther.

Peasants Revolt
In 1524, Muntzer was successful in rousing up many of the peasants of central Germany in the bloody, so called Peasants Revolt, which it should be noted attracted several nobles to his side. “Let your swords be ever-warm with blood!” Muntzer exhorted his faithful followers. Muntzer’s army of Anabaptists struck terror throughout the countryside, robbing, burning and destroying the property of the faithful, killing many thousands.

Socialist Utopia
Frederick Engels praised Muntzer’s “robust vandalism” and explained “by the Kingdom of God Muntzer meant a society without class differences, private property and the state authority…. All the existing authorities…were to be overthrown, all work and property shared in common and complete equality introduced.”

Atheism in Religious Disguise
Engels praised Muntzer’s doctrines in this way: “Under the cloak of Christianity he preached a kind of pantheism, which curiously resembled modern speculative contemplation and at times even approached atheism. He repudiated the Bible both as the only and as the infallible revelation. The real and living revelation, he said, was reason, a revelation which existed and always exists amongst all people at all times. To hold up the Bible against reason, he maintained, was to kill the spirit with the letter, …faith is nothing but reason come alive in man, and pagans could therefore also have faith…just as there is no heaven in the beyond, there is no hell and no damnation. Similarly, there is no devil…Christ was a man, as we are, a prophet and a teacher...”

Brutal Oppression of the Liberators
In 1534, Anabaptist leader Jan Matthijs seized the town of Munster. “Armed Anabaptists broke into houses and drove out everyone who was unwilling to accept second baptism. Winter was drawing to a close; it was a stormy day and wet snow was falling. An eyewitness account describes crowds of expelled citizens walking through the knee-deep snow. They had not been allowed even to take warm clothing with them. Women carrying children in their arms, old men leaning on staffs. At the city gate they were robbed once more.” (The Socialist Phenomenon – Shafarevich)

Reign of Terror
Jan Matthijs and Johan Bokelson then instituted a reign of terror in Munster, ordering the socialisation of all property, ordaining apostles of revolution to preach throughout Europe. The communist paradise of Munster attracted thousands of Anabaptists from throughout Germany and Holland. Matthijs was killed in one of the early battles. Johan Bokelson took command and established a dictatorship in Munster. He then issued the order for holding everything in common, including wives.

Violating Every Law
As Frederick Engels observed: “It is a curious fact that in every large revolutionary movement the question of free-love comes to the foreground”. No woman was allowed to be exempt – there was a law against being unmarried, which meant that every girl was forced to be passed around amongst the men. Every woman in Munster became fair game for the lusts of these Anabaptist males. Rapes, suicides, severe punishments and mass executions took place almost every day. On one notable occasion, Bokelson himself beheaded a virtuous woman who had refused his sexual advances. As he ceremoniously chopped her head off in the public square, a choir of his wives sang “Glory to God in the Highest”! (Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators by David Chilton).

You Reap What You Sow
This reign of terror continued for a year and a half until the city was freed by Protestant forces who put Bokelson and his lieutenants to death for their crimes – crimes committed in the name of love, equality and spirituality.

Suppressing Violent Revolution
We have left out most of the sordid and horrifying details of the 1524-1525 Peasants Revolt and the 1534 Anabaptist “Kingdom of God” established in Munster. But these few examples should be sufficient to explain why Anabaptists were opposed. It was not that they were being persecuted for taking the Scriptures seriously, but because they were violent revolutionaries subverting the entire social order and guilty of the deaths of many thousands of innocent people.

Do Not Bear False Witness
Those who would claim that Anabaptists have changed dramatically since that time, should recognise that it is for that very reason therefore unfair to portray the Reformers as supporting the persecution of poor innocent Anabaptist pacifists, as that is plainly not the case. Yes, the Anabaptists have changed since. So we should not continue to propagate the false accusation that Reformers were persecuting pacifist Anabaptists who were seeking to mind their own business. The Anabaptists that were opposed by the Reformers in the 1520’s and 1530’s were violent revolutionaries guilty of abominable atrocities and abuses.

Further Reading
For further reading, I would encourage you to read our articles: When All Men Speak Well of You and Why Is There So Much Hostility To the Bible and Christianity? on our www.frontline.org.za website and obtain these outstanding books: What If Jesus Had Never Been Born by Dr. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe, How Christianity Transformed Civilisation by Dr. Alvin Schmidt, and The Great Christian Revolution by Otto Scott. We all owe a tremendous debt to the Reformation in so many different ways. The Reformation was the greatest movement for Faith and freedom that the world has ever seen.

Dr. Peter Hammond
Reformation Society
P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725
Cape Town South Africa
Tel: 021-689-4480
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.ReformationSA.org

This article has been adapted from The Greatest Century of Reformation book by Dr. Peter Hammond. Available from:
Christian Liberty Books,
PO Box 358,
Howard Place 7450,
Cape Town,
South Africa,
Tel: 021-689-7478,
Fax: 086-551-7490,
Email: [email protected]
and Website: www.christianlibertybooks.co.za.

3 Comments

Steve Blackwell

9/7/2022 03:01:40 pm

You have isolated one element of history which the true Anabaptists had nothing at all to do with and used it to blanket the whole movement. The "Reformers" Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin were all three murders who could not accomplish their reformation without linking arms with the state who used the force of the sword to accomplish what they would not trust the Holy Spirit to accomplish. The true historical facts are availible for anyone seeking the truth so I can only suppose that you have intentionally lied to discolor history to favor your own narrative. What you have written above is not a Christian response to the facts which are well known but surpressed by Protestants. Now, please, tell us the murderous history of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin which Protestants have hidden for many, many, years.

Thomas Martin link

3/17/2023 12:26:06 pm

This is a terrible, terrible misrepresentation of history. There were some anarchists and antinomian Anabaptists in the Netherlands and northern Germany in the sixteenth century, but this article paints all Anabaptists with a too broad brush and is careless in failing to distinguish the various branches of the Anabaptist movement, and their differing doctrines.
The persecution of the Anabaptists in the late seventeenth century was more than 100 years removed from the excesses of the heretics and anarchists of which this article speaks, and many of the contemporaries of the men the article names disavowed them. (including Menno Simons, who himself misunderstood the human nature of Jesus, and should be criticized for this doctrinal error.) The Reformed Church in Switzerland actually apologized to the Anabaptist successors within the past ten or fifteen years because of the scandalous way in which the Reformed Church leaders treated the Anabaptists in the early days. (martyrdom, seizure of lands and possessions, banishment, imprisonment, etc.) They would not have apologized (and should not have) if all of them were as that article describes!
The many mistakes in this article are precisely the reason the history of the Mennonites and Amish and Hutterites needs to be broadly told, especially among Reformed congregations. Otherwise, rank prejudice against devout Christian brothers is perpetuated. I disagree with some of the theological conclusions taken by the early Anabaptists and continued to this day (e.g., strict pacifism, separation form worldly government by not voting, refusal to take oaths, etc.) But such convictions are no more serious errors, in my view, than those embraced by the Reformed today (infant baptism, elevating ordained ministers more highly than they ought, considering the Lord's Supper as something more than a memorial, etc.)

Paul

5/31/2024 09:18:43 pm

I myself have a lot to thank the Reformers, Luther, Calvin and Zwingli for. I too was led by God out from under the chains of the papacy and into the doctrines of grace which these men espoused. This journey however, taught me not to put my faith in or give complete allegiance to any human institution no matter how 'spiritual' or orthodox the window dressing looks, window dressing which does nothing but promote human pride and a carnal sectarianism. I sense, however, that this is not a sentiment shared by vast swathes of the visible Christian church and this unfortunately is true of the Reformed denominations in particular to which I have belonged and which your article (and your sources) falls into the trap of overly defending.

As the above replies have pointed out, you have smeared (in defence of your beloved tradition) with too broad a brush a genuine movement of God with the actions of a detestable early few deserving of judicial restraint. In fact, the historical testimony of many of the Anabaptists who were martyred at the hands of the Reformers, their last faithful words and the love expressed for their persecutors should at once temper the heart of any true child of God from any sectarian excess. If you had of actually bothered to read some of these accounts and the theological views they held (not that different from some modern-day Calvinists but rejecting a “one covenant two administration” theology), their treatment would overwhelm you with a sense of bitter shame. It has certainly caused me to re-evaluate the tall and lofty heights (bordering on idolatry) that I had elevated the Reformers to and though I still esteem these men, I see them now more as the weak earthen vessels of their times but still used by God to further His Kingdom in spite of.

Some advice. Instead of looking for the negative in order to defend the guilty consider Ch 13 of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and look for the positive in those to whom you disagree and give them their due, in what is surely a shameful episode in the history of the Christian church.
The Reformers had the same Scriptures that we do, I certainly do not see in them a mandate to drown or burn your 'perceived' adversary esp when they preached that same gospel delivered once and for all to the saints.
"a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, 2 Ti 2:24–25.

Did the Reformers Persecute the Anabaptists

Leave a Reply.

History Articles

Categories

Archives