ProQuest Dissertations - The University of Arizona Campus Repository

Redekop. Ainlay and Siemens 1995; Smucker 1976). The following quote illustrates this
unique principle of salvation:
... the individualistic emphasis and secular rationality that modern
capitalism presumes and fosters [described by Weber], are ... directly
antithetical to the religious ethos and teachings of Anabaptism.
Anabaptism presumed that human beings are by nature self-centered,
aggressive, and antisocial, but it argued that the individual could only be
saved from the self-destructive tendencies of selflshness or egotism by
becoming member of the religious community and submitting to the
collective will (Redekop, Ainlay. and Siemens 1995:38).
Persecution and Survival The social and political reaction to Anabaptist beliefs and
practices, which contradicted and threatened medieval socio-cultural, economic and
political conditions, including the material interests of the clergy and the nobility,
resulted in ferocious measures of persecution. Persecution began immediately after the
Anabaptist church first emerged in 1525 and took the form of legal policy, projected and
executed by governmental authorities (Bender and Smith 1974:47-48; Redekop, Ainlay.
and Siemens 1995:7).
Detailed descriptions of persecution on the part of the Catholic and Lutheran
churches, as well as the political leaders linked to those churches, dominate the literature"
on early Mennonite history. In 1529. Emperor Charles V of the German Empire passed a
law against the Anabaptists, under which 30.000 people were killed by the Inquisition.
The Martyrs' Mirror"* lists 800 names, many of these representing groups of up to ten
' For example, see Bender and Smith (1974). and Wedel (1901).
Original accounts and testimonies of this suffering were collected and published as early as IS62. This
publication was later enlarged and became the famous Martyrs' Mirror by Thiehman Jansz van Braght.
published in Holland in 1660. In 1748, Mennonites in Pennsylvania translated the book from Dutch into
German, and in the 1880s it appeared in English (Bender and Smith 1974:30; Loewen and Nolt 1996:170-
171).
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