The Radical Resurgence

Today I come to my final essay in our series on Anabaptism. A question may legitimately be asked by those who have had the patience to complete the reading of the preceding sketches in this series: Why should a committed Baptist so vigorously promote Anabaptist ideals? The answer is that Anabaptist principles can be applied to many modern problems of church life –  restoring church discipline to our nominal memberships, fostering the ministry of the “laity,” furthering religious liberty, promoting global missions – to name but a few.

I must insist that I did not produce these essays because I am in favor of belittling the work of the Magisterial Reformers. For clarity’s sake I must repeat that I am thus indicting the Reformers only because they were inconsistent with their own principles of reformation. Here, of course, I am not alone in my thinking. As far back as 1914, Henry C. Vedder, in his book The Reformation in Germany (p. 345), had this to say about the Anabaptists:

They were the only party among those protesting against the errors of Rome who were logical and thoroughgoing. They alone accepted in absolute faith and followed to its necessary consequences the principle avowed by the leading reformers, that the Scriptures were the sole source of religious authority…. The Anabaptists alone had penetrated beneath the surface of traditional Christianity and comprehended the real Gospels of Jesus…. In a word, the Anabaptists were the real reformers, and the only real reformers, of the Sixteenth century.