Brad S. Gregory - Augustana College

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early German-speaking Anabaptists were following the same insistence on scripture and rejection of merely human teachings that they shared with their anti-Roman opponents such as Zwingli and Luther. According to Anabaptists, the issue was hardly a secondary matter of sacramental theology; it went to the essence of being a Christian. Withdrawing from dreams of remaking Christendom after the utter defeat of the “common man” in the mid-1520s, Anabaptists proved a highly fissiparous lot, disagreeing among themselves in a host of doctrinally and therefore socially divisive ways, beginning already in the late 1520s. 36 By the time of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster in 1534-35, harsh persecution of the south German and Austrian Anabaptists under Ferdinand I had helped to precipitate the formation of the Austerlitz Brethren, Gabrielites, Philipites, and Hutterites, themselves distinct from the Swiss Brethren, who were in turn at odds with the central German Anabaptists and the followers of Pilgram Marpeck. 37 Whatever their particular commitments, with few exceptions Anabaptists miniaturized their efforts to follow Christ after the suppression of the most widespread and concretely urgent expression of the early evangelical movement: the series of uprisings from 1524-26 known collectively as the German Peasants‟ War. According to Luther and those who believed him, the Gospel as such had nothing to do with the remaking of the hierarchical political structures or the altering of the inequitable socioeconomic relationships characteristic of medieval Europe. Because in Luther‟s obstinate Anabaptists to death by drowning, see QGTS, vol. 1, pp. 180-181; see also Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction (Kitchener, Ont.: Pandora Press, 1995), p. 60. 36 See Claus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525-1618. Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, and South and Central Germany (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972), pp. 30-48; Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology; Werner O. Packull, Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); and the contributions on Anabaptism in Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, ed. Roth and Stayer. 37 See Packull, Hutterite Beginnings; John S. Oyer, Lutheran Reformers Against Anabaptists: Luther, Melanchthon and Menius and the Anabaptists of Central Germany (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964); Stephen Boyd, Pilgram Marpeck: His Life and Social Theology (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1992). 14
view salvation and the soul had nothing to do with worldly power, all men and women were bound to remain in their social locations, obliged, following Paul in Romans 13:1-4, to obey political authorities as ordained by God. According to other evangelical reformers, Luther was gravely mistaken. The Gospel was inseparable from social, economic, and political realities that trampled on human beings, soul and therefore body, contravening Jesus‟ clear concern for the poor and downtrodden. In the mid-1520s some of these reformers sought the abolition of existing social and political relationships and their reconfiguration along egalitarian, fraternal lines inspired by scripture. The point of the Gospel in their view was not to soothe neurotically scrupulous consciences through a hyper-Pauline demotion of the book of James, but to rouse sinfully complacent Christians actually to heed Jesus‟ proclamation of the kingdom of God: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt 10:34). Those who drew up the Mühlhausen Articles in September 1524, for example, took “action for themselves” [daselbst gehandelt] and “based their decision on God‟s word” [ir urtell aus Gots wort beschloßen]: according to scripture, they maintained, rich and poor should be treated alike. 38 The most widespread of the commoners‟ reform grievances in the early German Reformation, the Twelve Articles, denounced in February 1525 the feudal rights of lords over serfs, “insofar as Christ redeemed and purchased all of us with the precious shedding of his blood, shepherds as well as those of the highest rank, without exception [kain außgenommen]. Therefore with the scripture it is 38 “Das man in die bibel ader das helig worte Gotes bevel, darnach gerechtigkeit und urtell fellen, ursach, auf das man dem armen tu wie dem reichen.” “Die Mühlhäuser Artikel” [1524], in Flugschriften der Bauernkriegszeit, ed. Laube and Seiffert, pp. 80-82 at p. 80/1-4, 13-16 (quotation at lines 13-15). Six biblical citations immediately follow the quoted passage; the eleven brief articles include dozens of others. 15
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Brad S. Gregory - Augustana College

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