At the house of Felix Manz in Zurich on 21 January 1525, Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz met with fellows of like faith despite opposition from the town council. They had been commanded to stop holding Bible classes and had been warned by the council that all babies were to be baptized within eight days of birth or face banishment from the territory.
When George Blaurock, a former priest, stepped over to Conrad Grebel and asked him for baptism in the apostolic fashion — upon confession of personal faith in Jesus Christ, Grebel baptized him on the spot and Blaurock proceeded to baptize the others. Thus, Anabaptism was born. Today the direct descendants of the Anabaptists are the Mennonites and the Hutterites.
Persecution forced the Anabaptists north. Many of them found refuge on the lands of some exceptionally tolerant princes in Moravia. There they founded a long-lasting form of economic community called the Bruderhof, a Christian commune. In part they aimed to follow the pattern of the early apostolic community. But they also sought community as a means of group survival under persecution. Their communities attempted to show that in the kingdom of God brotherhood comes before self. Consolidated under the leadership of Jakob Hutter, who died in 1536, these groups came to be known as "Hutterites."
[tags]Anabaptists, BlogRodent, Bruderhof, church-history, ChurchRodent, Conrad-Grebel, Felix-Manz, George-Blaurock, history, Hutterites, Jakob-Hutter, Jesus, Mennonites, Persecution[/tags]
This writer would do well to give credit where credit is due: his material regarding the Anabaptists is taken word-for-word from Bruce Shelley’s book, CHURCH HISTORY IN PLAIN LANGUAGE (1995), chapter 25. Please have the decency to cite Dr. Shelley when you write, or do your own writing!
Good point, I used to have a big page out there describing the history of this thing. When I moved it into my WordPress blog, that got lost. Here’s a link to it in case you find it edifying, meanwhile, I’ll look into modifying my template to provide the credit that used to be there on every page:
web.archive.org/ … /users/rtatum/glossary/
This page dates back to January 11, 1997. The contents themselves date back to 1991.
Thanks for the explanation. I’m in the midst of a similar-but-less-thorough project with Shelley’s book, which is how I came across your blog. I checked out your link today. Too bad those old definitions aren’t archived; I could have made excellent use of them!!