Baptist churches today can, in part, trace their roots back to the Anabaptist movement of the Protest Reformation. Radical Protestants, the Anabaptists challenged or denied many traditional Catholic beliefs. So radical were they that even mainstream Protestants, like the followers of Luther, often persecuted them just as fiercely as they were persecuted by Catholics.
The name anabaptist derives from Greek terms for re-baptism. It was a applied to a variety of extreme and revolutionary groups during the Reformation of the 16th century who questioned the validity of infant baptism. Groups today which trace their roots most directly back to the Anabaptists include the Amish and the Mennonites.
Although the term Anabaptist was used negatively and the groups had a variety of goals, all were generally dedicated to returning to a “simple faith†which they believed to be more like what Jesus actually prescribed. The first such congregation was organized by Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel in Zollikon, Switzerland in 1525 and became known as the “Swiss Brethren.†Many Anabaptist groups adopted the name “brethren†in an effort to distinguish them from people who became Christian simply because they were born in a Christian society.
These early Anabaptists were heavily influenced by the ideas of the Protestant reformer Ulrigh Zwingli, but they objected to his perceived subservience to secular authorities and they grew impatient in their desire to institute more radical measures to change Christian practices. Zwingli debated a number of the early leaders, but without managing to persuade them to change â€" so, they were ordered by the Zurich town council to change or leave.
Other Anbaptist groups were later established around Germany, for example in Moravia by Jacob Hutter. Anabaptists often regarded their leaders as divinely inspired prophets, sent by God to bring back to them the truth faith and true Christian beliefs. Because this could lead to near-absolute submission to the authority of some leaders, problems resulted later on.
Unlike other Protestant groups, the Anabaptists were not interested in “reforming†the current church organization. Instead, they sought to recreate the church along the lines of what they thought it originally looked like. This church, for them, was simply the community of the redeemed which should separate itself from the state. Because of this, and because of their insistence that membership in the church was something which can only be achieved through an informed and personal profession of faith, Anabaptists opposed the use of the state to enforce any Christian principles, even their own.
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