The whole concern of Reformation theology was to justify restructuring the organized church without shaking its foundations. – John Howard Yoder

The church’s future lies with the left wing of the Reformation. – Jurgen Moltmann

Photo of the original Radical Reformers.

There are over 80 articles on this site. Here are the most popular.

Gatherings in the Early Church

5 Ways To Actively Deal with Gossip and Slander

THE ANABAPTIST VISION

The Lost Practice of Church Discipline (Excommunication)

What Disqualifies a Person from Ministry?

THE MYTH OF THE PERFECT CHRISTIAN LEADER

Jon Zens – A Voice for Modern Anabaptists

Stanley Hauerwas Interview on Theological Reflection

Adultery According to the Bible

Timeless Words by John Wesley

The Manifestation of the Spirit by D.M. Lloyd-Jones

The Coming Ecclesiastical Mass Extinction

Divorce & Remarriage – What Does the Bible Really Say?

The Christian and the Law

The Early Anabaptists and Their Critique of the Institutional Church

The Hypocrisy of Evangelicals in the US Presidential Election

Today, people who are into “house church” emphasize and focus on things like mutual edification, encouraging one another, exercising spiritual gifts, praying for one another, and gathering in a living room.

That’s all outward, external, and structure-form-related. What’s missing is Jesus Christ. His indwelling. God’s eternal purpose in Him. The kingdom of God.

This is where this new book comes in. Drawing heavily on the works of T. Austin-Sparks, Watchman Nee, Frank Viola, and Jon Zens–voices who have written extensively and rigorously on the themes of the centrality of Christ, the indwelling life of Christ, the kingdom of God, and God’s eternal purpose, Milt Rodriguez explores essential aspects of believers living with Jesus as their foundation, offering readers a focused meditation on one of Christianity’s most profound mysteries.

Drawing from Colossians 1:27, this book centers on the transformative truth that Christ dwells within every believer—a concept that revolutionizes how Christians understand their faith and daily walk.

Rodriguez’s approach is refreshingly singular in focus. Rather than overwhelming readers with multiple themes, he zeroes in on this one central truth: the indwelling presence of Christ.

This narrow focus allows for deeper exploration of what it means to live not from external religious performance, but from an internal spiritual reality. The author suggests that grasping this truth helps believers avoid many common misunderstandings that plague Christian living.

The book serves as both theological exposition and practical guide. Rodriguez doesn’t merely present doctrine; he invites readers to reckon with how Christ’s presence within them changes everything—from their identity and purpose to their approach to daily challenges. This makes the book valuable for both new believers seeking to understand their faith and seasoned Christians desiring to move beyond superficial religiosity.

What distinguishes this work is its insistence that the Christian faith isn’t about striving to reach God or becoming holy through effort. Instead, it’s about awakening to the reality that holiness already dwells within through Christ’s presence. This paradigm shift—from doing to being—offers genuine freedom to those trapped in performance-based faith.

Milt echoes what many others have spoken and written, yet it’s a point that is lost on many proponents of “house church.” That point is that a “house church” isn’t the same as an organic church. House churches are all about the location, organic churches are all about the life of Christ.

The purpose of the church is to reveal and express Him, not to follow an outward pattern. It’s not even about relationships, sharing, praying, fellowship, singing, eating together, etc. A church can have all those things without Jesus and God’s eternal purpose being the center, focus, goal, and reason for meeting.

“The One Thing” is a concise yet profound invitation to experience church as it was meant to be: not as distant belief or ritual observance, but as intimate relationship with the living Christ who makes his home in the heart of those who follow Him.

A related message is Epic Jesus: The Christ You Never Knew – the meaning and definition of an organic expression of the church.

– Donald Park

POPULAR POSTS – BEGIN HERE

I remember well my days of pastoring and working in a denominational district office. Back then, I would get the occasional call from a pastor or church leader asking for a reference concerning a former church member or adherent.

In some cases, they would ask for a letter of recommendation assuring their staff that this person (or family) had been members in good standing and weren’t subject to church discipline.

They especially wanted to know if the person or family in question had a reputation of trouble-making.

The practice of “letters of commendation” is thoroughly biblical. In the New Testament era, if you relocated from one church to another, a “letter of commendation” went ahead of you.

That letter was to inform the church to which you were relocating if you had a “good report” or if you had a “bad report.”

Many organic and simple churches do not follow this practice at all, even though it’s wholly biblical and rooted in practical wisdom.

For example, let’s say that someone from church A (whether an institutional church or not) is excommunicated by the church for gross unrepentant sin.

Of course, “unrepentance” means the person doesn’t acknowledge his or her sin and they don’t stop committing it. In fact, they may even justify it.

So the person is excommunicated from church A as Scripture teaches. Let’s assume that this is a thoroughly legitimate excommunication.

The entire process of Matthew 18 has been followed. The person was approached in private, but they refused correction. They were then approached with 2 or 3 others in the church (perhaps on multiple occasions), and they still rebuffed the correction.

Only as a last resort, the person’s sin was made known to the church and they were asked to leave the fellowship as both Jesus and Paul both taught (see Matt. 18; 1 Cor. 5; Rom. 16).

This person, having been excommunicated, relocates to attend church B.

Church B is completely unaware of this person’s past sinful behavior and excommunication. So church B gladly receives this individual into their fellowship.

In some cases, the excommunicated person may bad-mouth church A, complaining of being “mistreated,” spinning the truth to suit his or her own purposes.

Church B, unfortunately, never thinks to call church A to find out what really happened and hear their side of the story.

This scenario is more common than we might want to believe.

Unfortunately, many people who gravitate toward simple forms of church have had negative experiences with institutional churches and sometimes other simple forms of church.

Sometimes those negative experiences were because of dysfunction or high-handed hierarchical control on the part of those churches.

But others times, it’s not that at all. The reality is that the person was disfellowshipped due to a pattern of causing division or other unrepentant sin.

In the first-century church, letters of commendation — recommending a person or warning others against them — were not just a matter of “protocol.”

It was crucial and sometimes a matter of life or death. A good example of this was Saul, before he was known as Paul, who had a reputation of scourging the church of the living God.

Saul actively hunted down believers in Christ to imprison them and even stood by approving in the case of public executions (Acts 8:1-3).

As we know, this same Saul later became integral within the body of Christ as a leading member, teacher, and preacher of the gospel to the Gentiles.

There was an extended time, however, where the Christian communities had to transition from justified fear and caution to unrestrained acceptance and trust.

This didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen without cautious “baby-steps” that were facilitated by already trusted men within the body who placed their reputations and lives on the line to vouch for Saul and assure others that a genuine change had truly taken place in his life.

Barnabas ended up being the key to Saul becoming Paul, enabling Paul to enter into the local churches with open arms. Barnabas was known and trusted by all within the Jerusalem church as a man who evidenced the fruit of the Spirit.

After Saul’s experience on the Damascus road and an extended time of retreat where he came to know Jesus personally, Saul returned to Jerusalem and sought to meet with the believers there, including the apostles.

Before Paul could be accepted by the church, it took Barnabas’s testimony to assure the church and the apostles that Paul was “safe” to God’s people (Acts 9:26-28). It was only because of the personal relationship that Barnabas had developed with Paul that the concerns of the Jerusalem church were overcome and Paul was able to receive an endorsement from the apostles.

Paul understood the importance of being vouched for in this regard and he practiced the same in his subsequent ministry.

Paul would commend people to local fellowships who were coming from other fellowships. In other cases, Paul would warn people against those who had a history of divisiveness. (See 2 Cor. 3:1-3; 1 Cor. 16:15-18; 2 Cor. 8:16-24; Eph. 6:21-22; Col. 4:7-10; Phil. 2:19-30; 1 Cor. 4:17; 16:10-11; 1 Thess. 3:2; Acts 15:22-27; Rom. 16:1-2; Acts 18:27 for both examples.)

Philemon is a positive letter of commendation on behalf of the runaway slave Onesimus.

To repeat, Paul would warn others against people who sought to do him harm by maligning him and thereby hurting the churches within his care.

Paul understood that there was forgiveness and restoration available to those who attacked the Lord’s servants, but only when true repentance was evidenced.

Nobody knew that better than him, since Paul attacked the church and was later forgiven and received after his repentance.

Until there was a time of repentance, however, Paul knew that those who sought to make a name for themselves at the expense of others to promote their own teachings and establish their own name were a deadly threat to young fellowships and new believers.

Repentance means a change of actions. And it’s evidenced by an apology to the offended parties and a change of behavior over a sustained period of time based upon a change of mind or heart. It’s not just a show of regret, emotion or lip-service.

Paul sometimes even named names and made public warnings as evidenced in cases like Alexander the Coppersmith (2 Tim. 4:14-15). Paul also referenced a group known now as the Judaizers who would follow him into places he previously ministered, slandering him with lies and false reports, attempting to draw Gentile converts into their legalistic practices (Gal. 1:6-7).

By their very nature, organic fellowships and simple churches seek to establish deeper fellowship, interaction and trust without hierarchies and formal policies.

Because of that, however, they are particularly susceptible to people who have been excommunicated by other fellowships because of a history of quarrelsomeness, contentiousness, divisiveness — and other serious sins condemned in the New Testament.

Do not discount or neglect the wisdom of the early church as demonstrated by Paul in looking for commendations from others who are known and trusted. By the same token, do not discount the warnings of others about a person if those warnings are current and from multiple credible sources.

When a local fellowship or a group of leaders has excommunicated someone for serious and ongoing unrepentant sin, the body of Christ has spoken.

Therefore, for a church or individual to receive the person who has been excommunicated by a local fellowship or group of leaders on biblical grounds is received into fellowship, it’s a denial of the oneness of the body. More seriously, it’s a denial of the voice of Jesus on earth.

Only when the people who were involved in the excommunication can verify true repentance can fellowship can be restored to the individual.

To ignore this principle is to invite the enemy “into the camp” and he will use it to wreak all sorts of havoc and confusion among Christians.

If we are going to take the New Testament seriously about how we are to gather, we must also take seriously the principle of the oneness of the body of Christ, and this includes the practice of letters of commendation — both of positive recommendations and of warnings.

Of course, warning letters are sometimes bogus and written by people who have a sinful agenda. Here are some of the marks of a false warning:

1. It’s written or headed up by one person.

2. The accusing person has never gone to the individual they are accusing privately to hear the person’s side of the story (per Matt. 18).

3. The accusing person has not brought others to go to the individual privately (per Matt. 18).

4. The accusing person has no relationship with the person they are accusing, but are deriving their accusations from second, third, and fourth hand sources and there is a discernable hidden agenda present.

Such letters of warning should be ignored out of hand. They are virtually always written by someone who is seeking to smear another person and are driven by evil motives.

On the other hand, if a letter of warning is signed by multiple credible witnesses and those witnesses followed the process of Matthew 18 — privately pleading with the person to repent, taking others to do the same, and then finally, taking it to the church — then such letters should be seriously heeded and taken to reflect the voice of the body.

Without evidence of an offending person’s changed heart and changed behavior, reconciliation with those who have harmed others in the past leads to “leavening the whole lump” and defiling others with sin. This is why the practice of excommunication — as gut-wrenching as it is — was practiced in the first century churches. Restoration of the individual was the goal but not at the price of quarrels and division within the body as a whole.

Apart from the work of Christ in our midst and within the members of His body, the past is a good indicator of what might happen in the future. Only when the past has been dealt with by true repentance is it gone forever, never to be mentioned again.

W.T.

Jon Zens Blog

Jon Zens Books on Amazon

Frank Viola Recommends and Lists Jon Zens Book Catalog

Jon Zens Books

Jon Zens is an American author, speaker, scholar and theologian on Christian topics. Zens is best known for pioneering New Covenant Theology. Zens is also an expert on the Anabaptist history and theology.

Early life and education

Zens holds a B.A. in Biblical studies from Covenant College, a M.Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, and a D.Min. from the California Graduate School of Theology.

Career

In 1975, Zens moved to Nashville to work with Norbert Ward on the publication Baptist Reformation Review. Because of declining health, Norbert asked Zens to be the editor in 1978. In 1982, the name of the quarterly was changed to Searching Together. The quarterly magazine features articles by Zens and many other writers on topics of divergent evangelicalism.

Zens and his wife Dotty have ministered to women who have been trafficked into the sex trade, aiding women who have been the victims of sexual abuse and involved in prostitution. Zens served for a time as a local pastor, but left the position, becoming an author and a traveling speaker, ministering in church conferences and speaking at conferences about the rescue of women from the sex industry and prostitution.

OrganicChurch.com

RethinkingChurch.net

“We are to have faith that what God says about himself in Christ is true, what God says about us in Christ is true, and what God says about others in Christ is true. So whatever the appearances may be, we are to have faith that God is working in others to do what only God can do. This means that we must never condition our love and acceptance of people with judgment about how much or how little progress they are making in their relationship with God.

Conditioning our love and acceptance of people on the basis of our judgment reveals that we don’t believe what God says about them or that God is working in their lives. Since “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom 14:23), we should in this case be concerned with the tree trunk of sin in our own life rather than trying to fix the sin we think we perceive in others’ lives.

We should focus on what God commands us to do rather than speculating about the extent to which others are or are not doing what God has commanded them to do. When we try to detach ourselves and critically evaluate the progress of others, we act as though we are their masters, and we thereby disobey God (Matt 7:1-5, Rom 14:4).

This also applies to people who haven’t yet surrendered their lives to Christ. They, too, must be unconditionally embraced and invited into the celebration of the cessation of the banishment from communion with God. Indeed, our unconditional, loving embrace is the central way these people are to come to know we are disciples of Christ. They encounter the reality of Jesus Christ as they experience his love through us (Jn 17:20-26). Though they cannot see God, they experience his love as it is manifested through us (1 Jn 4:12). Our outrageous love becomes a puzzle to them for which Jesus Christ is the only adequate explanation.”

—

Read the rest of the article here.

The devil loves to divide through whispers in the shadows and then keep people from going to the source. If he can’t get us to believe false things about God, he will try to get us to believe false things about each other.

Five ways to actively deal with gossip and slander:

1. Tell them directly: “Unless you’re in danger, or you’re asking me to be a witness against them for church discipline, don’t talk to me about this any further if you haven’t talked to them. Even then, this is between you them.”

2. If you need support or it’s a situation involving multiple people, confront the person/people involved with 1-2 witnesses present — keep the circle small and spiritually mature. Hopefully it’s dealt with there and it’s done.

3. Watch out for gossipers who use political tactics and manipulation, demanding you pick their “side” or else be cut off. This is not Christlike nor how Christians deal with differences. It is unwise to carry someone else’s offense.

4. Avoid people who call gossip or slander “venting.” Avoid conversations with them that veer into gossip. They might say, “I’m just venting.” Or, “You’re my safe space! Thanks for letting me vent.”

5. Warn a factious man twice and then reject him (Titus 3:10). Divisive gossips and slanderous people should be given the opportunity to repent, but if they persist in that pattern reject them. They are a danger.

May the church not only be protected from threats on the outside, but even more so from those who would harm it from the inside.

May the church become a place where gossip cannot survive, and gossips either repent or are run out the door. “For lack of wood the fire goes out, And where there is no gossiper, quarreling quiets down.” (Proverbs 26:20)

– Costi Hinn, May 2025

Have You Heard? The Plague of Gossip & Slander in the Body of Christ

by Jon Zens

Bob Mumford once said, “The Christian army is the only one that shoots its wounded.”

Regrettably, I have observed his statement to be all too true.

As long as I’ve been a Christian, I have watched friends and their families undergo untold pain and hurt because of the incredible power of gossip and slander. Years ago we were traveling and after speaking in a church a brother came up to me and said, “I heard that you had quit teaching in churches and took up potato farming.” How and why such a rumor got started is anybody’s guess! This rumor was fairly innocuous, but imagine the untold harm done by vicious judgments on the life and character of others.

In this article, I would like to address this issue head-on. My hope is to raise the awareness of my brothers and sisters in Christ on this matter, so that we all will better follow the Lord’s teachings regarding our speech about and actions toward others.

What exactly is gossip?

Gossip is second or third hand information that someone dumps on you without your prior consent and without the consent of the person being gossiped about. Gossip can be true, partially true, or completely false. It can be motivated by good intentions, but it’s always negative personal information about another that puts them in a bad light.

What is slander?

The Bible defines slander as accusatory speech that is injurious to a person’s name and reputation. It’s essentially character assassination . . . the act of smearing someone. Gossip and slander color people’s perceptions of an individual unfairly and unjustly without their knowledge or consent. One major component in both of these sins is that the person being torn down is out of the loop. Talebearers usually avoid speaking directly to the one they are demeaning.

I will admit that I have listened to gossip in the past. At the time, the thought never occurred to me how deeply a person and their family could be hurt when someone attacks their character without their knowledge or consent.

It seems that most people who spread gossip never think about this. Nor do they realize that what they’re doing is engaging in gossip and slander. (Some people, of course, who intend to smear another human being know exactly what they’re doing. Many Christians, however, naively spread gossip without realizing what sort of destruction it brings in the lives of others.)

For this reason, I have raised a standard in my life. To the best of my ability, I always evaluate people based on my first-hand experience with them, not on what someone else tells me about them – for the obvious reason that second-hand information can be very misleading and inaccurate (sad to say, I haven’t always lived up to this standard in the past).

Gossip and slander violate the Lord’s own maxim: “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” If anyone has suffered the agony of being gossiped about, they understand the force of those words. No one wishes to be the subject of gossip and slander. There are few things so hurtful.

One of the problems is that gossip and slander seem innocent, and they often come to us subtly. One doesn’t have to be operating in malice to be guilty of gossip and slander. Again, the motive is irrelevant. Spreading negative or shameful information about another person is contrary to walking in love. Love “thinks no evil” and “believes the best of others” (1 Cor. 13).

What does gossip and slander usually sound like? It usually begins with something like, “Did you hear about such and such . . .” The rest of it goes on to put an individual in a shameful or negative light. A.W. Tozer had these powerful words of advice about the sin of gossip:

Never pass anything on about anybody else that will hurt him. “Love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). The talebearer has no place in God’s favor. If you know something that would hinder or hurt the reputation of one of God’s children, bury it forever. Find a little garden out back — a little spot somewhere — and when somebody comes around with an evil story, take it out and bury it and say, “Here lies in peace the story about my brother.” God will take care of it. “With what judgment you judge, you shall be judged.”

If you want God to be good to you, you are going to have to be good to His children. You say, “But that’s not grace.” Well, grace gets you into the kingdom of God. That is unmerited favor. But after you are seated at the Father’s table, He expects to teach you table manners. And He won’t let you eat unless you obey the etiquette of the table. And what is that? The etiquette of the table is that you don’t tell stories about the brother who is sitting at the table with you — no matter what his denomination, or nationality, or background (from Five Vows for Spiritual Power).

So what should we do if we hear a rumor about someone else?

If we are in conversation with a person and they begin to express words that put another brother or sister in a bad light, we have a responsibility to interrupt such speech and exhort them to speak directly with the person they are criticizing. If an email containing gossip is sent to us, we should disregard the content and ask the sender to go to the one being spoken against.

In all circumstances, as much as lies with us, we should not be a party to gossip and we should confront those spreading evil speech. We must not forget that matters of concern about others must be confirmed with witnesses (Matt.18:16), and others should only be notified if the person refuses to repent – which means they refuse to stop their sinning. We sin by entertaining accusations against others that have not been confirmed by witnesses, or that have already been repented of. It is sinful to spread information about the past sins of others when they are already under the blood of Christ.

In addition to the above, we should go to the person being targeted and make them aware of it. We should then ask for them to confirm or correct it. This is the loving thing to do. Think about it: If someone was spreading something negative about you, would you not want to be made aware of it? Again, love treats others the way we wish to be treated.

It’s not good enough to ask the gossiper if they’ve spoken to the person gossiped about. In my experience, oftentimes a person spreading the gossip will say “yes,” but when I’ve tracked down the person being gossiped about, they will deny having had such a conversation. Or the conversation really wasn’t a conversation at all. Nothing can replace going directly to the person being spoken about.

Whenever we hear gossip, we should consider these questions: “Would I want someone talking about me like this? How would my family feel about this? My spouse, my mother, my father, my children, my best friends?” (These thoughts are typically never considered when a person listens to or spreads gossip about another individual.)

Have you ever noticed that speech that tears others down travels like a brush fire, but news of repentance and restoration seem to move along at a snail’s pace? Why is it that we often immediately believe and embrace negative assessments of people, but reports of repentance, change, or the dispelling of a false rumor are met with skepticism? As believers, the exact opposite should be our practice: we should be hesitant to entertain and skeptical of adverse words about others, and quick to rejoice in and embrace news of the dispelling of a rumor or another’s repentance!

Satan’s nature is to accuse. He is called the “accuser of the brethren” (Rev. 12). In fact, the word “Satan” means adversary, and the word “devil” literally means “slanderer.” That should say volumes to us. One sister noted these warning signs of a spirit of accusation:

**Being suspicious of others
**Having bitterness toward others
**Being easily offended without cause
**Having envy and jealousy toward others
**Believing the worst about others
**Exaggerating the offenses of others
**Refusing fellowship with a person after they have changed
**Holding people to their past failures
**Imposing our perfectionism standards on others
**Basing harsh judgments on misunderstandings without seeking clarification
**Judging others for misbehaviors that we are prone to
**Becoming the Holy Spirit for others
**Using others as a scapegoat
**Tearing down others so we look better
**Bringing skeletons out of the closet
**Being unsatisfied with any amount of confession and sorrow from another
(Marsha Fisher, “Accusation,” Be In Health Conference, April 29, 2008, Thomaston GA)

Further, the union of Christ with his people should certainly give us reason for great caution with our words about fellow believers. Paul said in Romans 14:15, “Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died.” I think we are also warranted in saying, “Do not by your words destroy your brother or sister for whom Christ died.” It is a very serious matter to hurt anyone in Christ’s little flock (Luke 17:1-4).

A careful reading of the Bible shows the destructive nature of gossip and slander. It says, “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to a man’s inmost parts” (Prov. 18:8, 26:22). Gossip is likened unto poison that once someone drinks, they cannot get out of their system. And it always separates people. Even close friends and loved ones.

Put another way, gossip not only damages the person being gossiped about, but it also damages the person hearing the gossip, for it causes them to judge the other unfairly.

Consider these texts prayerfully:

“A perverse person stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close friends” (Prov. 16:28).

“Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down” (Prov. 26:22).

“He who conceals his hatred has lying lips, and whoever spreads slander is a fool” (Prov. 10:18).

“Brethren, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it” (James 4:11).

“The tongue has the power of life and death . . . ” (Prov. 18:21).

“The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3:6).

“Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all people” (Tit 3:1-2).

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice” (Eph. 4:31).

“Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and has no slander on his tongue, who does his neighbor no wrong and casts no slur on his fellowman” (Psalm. 15:1-3).

In conclusion, the next time you hear a rumor, go to the person being rumored about. And never spread something about another person without talking to them first and having an open mind to hear their heart. Unconfirmed notions about others should not be spread abroad.

In the pursuit of mutual edification and peace, our mouths play a very important role. Our words should be carefully chosen, and designed to build up, not to destroy (Eph. 4:29.31; 5:4; Col. 3:8,16; James 3:10; 1 Pet. 4:11). We must “slander no one” (Tit. 3:2), and be ready always to speak a good word about our brothers and sisters in Christ. In the human realm, words are most often the spark that leads to wars and atrocities, and there is a parallel in the realm of the church, for “if you keep on biting and devouring each other” with hurtful and damaging words, “you will be destroyed by each other” (Gal. 5:15).

May our speech to others and about others be “only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Eph.4:29). — jzens@searchingtogether.org

For Further Reading

Thomas Dubay, “Verbal Contention,” Caring: A Biblical Theology of Community, Dimension Books, 1973, p.184: “Sacred Scripture comes down hard on sins of speech, so hard that it is safe to say that few people indeed manage to come close to living its full message.”

Margaret Foth, “Life is too short . . . to let conflicts go unresolved,” “Life is too short . . . to bear grudges or harbor bitterness,” Life Is Too Short . . . to Miss Today, Zondervan, 1985, pp.75-80, 87-92.

Joyce Huggett, Listening to Others: Hearing Their Hearts, Hodder & Stoughton, 2005. Karen Burton Mains, You Are What You Say: Cure for the Troublesome Tongue, Zondervan, 1988.

John Wesley, The Cure for Evil Speaking (1760).

Also read What Disqualifies a Person from Ministry?

Contact: authorfrankviola@gmail.com

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“Frank Viola performs an invaluable service for Christians today by centering this book on the story of the early church, what he calls “the community of the King.” The result is a highly readable (and well-researched) story of the New Testament church, a genuinely accessible biography of the church, that congregations and classrooms will find indispensable.”

—Joel B. Green, Senior Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Fuller Theological Seminary

“In this fascinating volume Frank Viola seeks to write a narrative history of the early church by examining the New Testament documents within their respective historical and chronological contexts. His conclusions are plausible and consistently interesting and insightful. This is an excellent resource for those seeking to understand authentic Christianity by listening to its earliest voices.”

—Mark L. Strauss, Ph.D., University Professor of New Testament, Bethel Seminary 

“In The Untold Story of the New Testament Church, bestselling author Frank Viola offers a lengthy innovative reconstruction correlating the chronological sequence in the narrative of Acts with the apostolic journeys and letters of Paul and the other apostles. A treasure trove of detail for Christian pastors and leaders of Bible study, with magisterial references to books and articles by Christian New Testament scholars.”

—Richard Horsley, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion at the University of Massachusetts, Boston

“In one volume Frank Viola has recast the entire New Testament as a single readable narrative, but as supported by scholarly notation of the highest order. This single book is for the general reader, the pastor, and the academic. The Untold Story of the New Testament Church is an amazing accomplishment. I know of no book like it. Highly recommended.”

—Paul Barnett, Ph.D., New Testament Scholar and Lecturer Emeritus, Moore College, Sydney; teaching fellow at Regent College, Vancouver 

“I know no other book like this. Written for everyday readers, it is accessible, engaging, and compelling—and yet it is meticulously researched with depth and breadth of learning, in conversation with leading scholars in the field. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand how the whole New Testament fits together—as history, theology, and mission.”

—Constantine R. Campbell, Professor and Research Director, Sydney College of Divinity 

“This is an enormously helpful survey of the history of the roughly thirty years from the ministry of Jesus to the end of the apostolic period, replete with comments on the significance of historical events for the faith of Jesus followers and with comments on secondary literature.”

—Eckhard Schnabel, Mary F. Rockefeller Emeritus Distinguished Professor of New Testament Studies at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

“Viola weaves the evidence of the New Testament into a single unfolding and compelling story. Yet he does so not with unbridled imagination, but with a profound reliance on the best scholarship available. The end result is an accurate, engaging and compelling account of this movement that has had a monumental impact on history and continues to do so today.”

—Clinton E. Arnold, Research Professor of New Testament, Talbot School of Theology (Biola)

“Frank Viola has bravely and diligently undertaken the task of collecting the many bits and pieces of this story that can be known from the letters alongside Acts and of presenting one plausible vision of how all these pieces can be synthesized into a coherent, unfolding story.”

—David A. deSilva, Trustees’ Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Greek, Ashland Theological Seminary

“Viola has produced a truly remarkable book—a reconstruction of the gospel story of the New Testament church that skillfully and helpfully presents the events recorded in Matthew through Revelation in a chronological rather than canonical order. “

—Jeffrey A. D. Weima, Professor of New Testament Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan 

“Frank Viola uses the evidence from your Bible to tell the story of Jesus and the New Testament church as a single drama from beginning to end. Using the biblical accounts, he weaves a careful, readable chronology that (as the title asserts) has never been done before!”

—Reta Halteman Finger, professor emerita of New Testament at Eastern Mennonite University

“Often, we take the letters of Paul in isolation from the letters of John or the Acts of the Apostles or the book of Revelation. Instead, Viola knits these together into a satisfying account of what happened in the first century of the Jesus movement. This is no solo project; he analyzes loads of data with the help of top scholars from around the world to guide him, and us. What emerges is an engaging, intricately told, plausible account of the origins of our Christian faith that sheds fresh light on all the New Testament letters. The story continues . . .”

—David B. Capes, Ph.D., New Testament Scholar and Director of Academic Programming, The Lanier Theological Library and Learning Center, Houston

“Frank Viola’s The Untold Story of the New Testament Church offers a compelling narrative of the entire New Testament and early Christianity from the Gospels to Revelation. It’s truly a monumental accomplishment that connects history and Scripture with attention to detail as a cohesive whole.

—Alan Bandy, Robert Hamblin Chair of Biblical Exposition Professor of New Testament and Greek at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary

“This vivid retelling brings to life Paul and his companions—alongside Peter, James, and John—chronicling the conflicts and hardships they endured and their unwavering courage to proclaim Jesus as promised Messiah and Savior. Viola’s ‘plausible reconstruction’ not only fills in the New Testament’s historical narrative but also invites readers to see themselves as part of an ongoing story. (Lovers of footnotes will find themselves in paradise!)”

—Amy J. Chase, Ph.D., Drew University, Madison, New Jersey

“Understanding the early church requires more than just dry facts. Frank Viola’s The Untold Story of the New Testament Church takes on the monumental task of retelling this history in a captivating narrative, offering a fresh perspective on the people, places, and events that shaped Christianity.”

—Christoph Heilig, Ph.D., New Testament Scholar and Research Group Leader at the University of Munich

“A masterpiece! The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: Revised and Expanded is stunning in its sweep – compelling and readable. It’s an enthralling journey into the New Testament story – a work full of depth and insight.”

—Jon Zens, D.Min., theologian, author, editor of Searching Together 

The Untold Story of the New Testament: Revised and Expanded is available at TheUntoldStory.net.

About the Author:

Frank Viola has helped thousands of people around the world to deepen their relationship with Jesus Christ and enter into a more vibrant and authentic experience of church. His blog, frankviola.org, is rated as one of the most popular in Christian circles today.

For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact: authorfrankviola@gmail.com

THE ANABAPTIST VISION¹

These words of Rufus M. Jones² constitute one of the best characterizations of Anabaptism and its contribution to our modern Christian culture to be found in the English language. They were brave words when they were written thirty-five years ago, but they have been abundantly verified by a generation of Anabaptist research since that time.³ There can be no question but that the great principles of freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, and voluntarism in religion, so basic in American Protestantism and so essential to democracy, ultimately are derived from the Anabaptists of the Reformation period, who for the first time clearly enunciated them and challenged the Christian world to follow them in practice. The line of descent through the centuries since that time may not always be clear, and may have passed through other intermediate movements and groups, but the debt to original Anabaptism is unquestioned.

The sixteenth-century reformers understood the Anabaptist position on this point all too well, and deliberately rejected it. The best witness is Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor in Zurich, whose active life-span covers the first fifty years of the history of the Swiss Anabaptists and who knew them so well that he published two extensive treatises against them in 1531 and 1561. According to Bullinger, the Swiss Brethren taught that:

One cannot and should not use force to compel anyone to accept the faith, for faith is a free gift of God. It is wrong to compel anyone by force or coercion to embrace the faith, or to put to death anyone for the sake of his erring faith. It is an error that in the church and sword other than that of the divine Word should be used. The secular kingdom should be separated from the church, and no secular ruler should exercise authority in the church. The Lord has commanded simply to preach the Gospel, not to compel anyone by force to accept it. The true church of Christ has the characteristic that it suffers and endures persecution but does not inflict persecution upon anyone.⁴

Bullinger reports these ideas, not in commendation but in condemnation urging the need of rigid suppression. He attempts a point by point refutation of the Anabaptist teaching, closing with the assertion that to put to death Anabaptists is a necessary and commendable service.But great as is the Anabaptist contribution to the development of religious liberty, this concept not only does not exhaust but actually fails to define the true essence of Anabaptism. In the last analysis freedom of religion is a purely formal concept, barren of content; it says nothing about the faith or the way of life of those who advocate it, nor does it reveal their goals or program of action. And Anabaptism had not only clearly defined goals but also an action program of definiteness and power. In fact the more intimately one becomes acquainted with this group the more one becomes conscious of the great vision that shaped their course in history and for which they gladly gave their lives.

Before describing this vision it is well to note its attractiveness to the masses of Christians of the sixteenth century. Sebastian Franck, himself an opponent, wrote in 1531, scarcely seven years after the rise of the movement in Zurich:

The Anabaptists spread so rapidly that their teaching soon covered the land as it were. They soon gained a large following, and baptized thousands, drawing to themselves many sincere souls who had a zeal for God…. They increased so rapidly that the world feared an uprising by them though I have learned that this fear had no justification whatsoever.⁵

In the same year Bullinger wrote that “the people were running after them as though they were living saints.⁶ Another contemporary writer asserts that ” Anabaptism spread with such speed that there was reason to fear that the majority of the common people would unite with this sect.”⁷ Zwingli was so frightened by the power of the movement that he complained that the struggle with the Catholic party was “tub child’s play” compared to the conflict with the Anabaptists.⁸The dreadful severity of the persecution of the Anabaptist movement in the years 1527-60 not only in Switzerland, South Germany, and Thuringia, but in all the Austrian lands as well as in the Low Countries, testifies to the power of the movement and the desperate haste with which Catholic, Lutheran, and Zwinglian authorities alike strove to throttle it before it should be too late. The notorious decree issued in 1529 by the Diet of Spires (the same diet which protested the restriction of evangelical liberties) summarily passed the sentence of death upon all Anabaptists, ordering that “every Anabaptist and rebaptized person of either sex should be put to death by fire, sword, or some other way.”⁹ Repeatedly in subsequent sessions of the imperial diet this decree was reinvoked and intensified; and as late as 1551 the Diet of Augsburg issued a decree ordering that judges and jurors who had scruples against pronouncing the death sentence on Anabaptists be removed from office and punished by heavy fines and imprisonment.

The authorities had great difficulty in executing their program of suppression, for they soon discovered that the Anabaptists feared neither torture nor death, and gladly sealed their faith with their blood. In fact the joyful testimony of the Anabaptist martyrs was a great stimulus to new recruits, for it stirred the imagination of the populace as nothing else could have done.

Finding, therefore, that the customary method of individual trials and sentences was proving totally inadequate to stem the tide, the authorities resorted to the desperate expedient of sending out through the land companies of armed executioners and mounted soldiers to hunt down the Anabaptists and kill them on the spot singly or en masse without trial or sentence. The most atrocious application of this policy was made in Swabia where the original 400 special police of 1528 sent against the Anabaptists proved too small a force and had to be increased to 1,000. An imperial provost marshal, Berthold Aichele, served as chief administrator of this bloody program in Swabia and other regions until he finally broke down in terror and dismay, and after an execution at Brixen lifted his hands to heaven and swore a solemn oath never again to put to death an Anabaptist, which vow he kept.¹⁰ The Count of Alzey in the Palatinate, after 350 Anabaptists had been executed there, was heard to exclaim, “What shall I do, the more I kill, the greater becomes their number!”

The extensive persecution and martyrdom of the Anabaptists testify not only of the great extent of the movement but also of the power of the vision that burned within them. This is most effectively presented in a moving account written in 1542 and taken from the ancient Hutterian chronicle where it is found at the close of a report of 2,173 brethren and sisters who gave their lives for their faith.¹¹

No human being was able to take away out of their hearts what they had experienced, such zealous lovers of God were they. The fire of God burned within them. They would die the bitterest death, yea, they would die ten deaths rather than forsake the divine truth which they had espoused….They had drunk of the waters which had flowed from God’s sanctuary, yea, the water of life. They realized that God helped them to bear the cross and to overcome the bitterness of death. The fire of God burned within them. Their tent they had pitched not here upon earth, but in eternity, and of their faith they had a foundation and assurance. Their faith blossomed as a lily, their loyalty as a rose, their piety and sincerity as the flower of the garden of God. The angel of the Lord battled for them that they could not be deprived of the helmet of salvation. Therefore they bore all torture and agony without fear. The things of this world they counted in their holy mind only as shadows, having the assurance of greater things. They were so drawn unto God that they knew nothing, sought nothing, desired nothing, loved nothing but God alone. Therefore they had more patience in their suffering than their enemies in tormenting them.

. . . The persecutors thought they could dampen and extinguish the fire of God. But the prisoners sang in their prisons and rejoiced so that the enemies outside became much more fearful than the prisoners and did not know what to do with them….

Many were talked to in wonderful ways, often day and night. They were argued with, with great cunning and cleverness, with many sweet and smooth words, by monks and priests, by doctors of theology, with much false testimony, with threats and scolding and mockery, yea, with lies and grievous slander against the brotherhood, but none of these things moved them or made them falter.

From the shedding of such innocent blood arose Christians everywhere, brothers all, for all this persecution did not take place without fruit.

Perhaps this interpretation of the Anabaptist spirit should be discounted as too glowing, coming as it does from the group itself, but certainly it is nearer to the truth than the typical harsh nineteenth-century interpretation of the movement which is well represented by the opening sentence of Ursula, the notable historical novel on the Anabaptists published in 1878 by the Swiss Gottfried Keller, next to Goethe perhaps the greatest of all writers in the German language:

Times of religious change are like times when the mountains open up; for then not only do all the marvelous creatures of the human spirit come forth the great golden dragons, magic beings and crystal spirits, but there also come to light all the hateful vermin of humanity, the host of rats and mice and pestiferous creation, and so it was at the time of the Reformation in the northeast part of Switzerland.¹²

Before defining the Anabaptist vision, it is essential to state clearly who is meant by the term “Anabaptist”, since the name has come to be used in modern historiography to cover a wide variety of Reformation groups, sometimes thought of as the whole “left wing of the Reformation” (Roland Bainton). “the Bolsheviks of the Reformation” (Preserved Smith). Although the definitive history of Anabaptism has not yet been written, we know enough today to draw a clear line of demarcation between original evangelical and constructive Anabaptism on the one hand, which was born in the bosom of Zwinglianism in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1525, and established in the Low Countries in 1533, and the various mystical, spiritualistic, revolutionary, or even antinomian related and unrelated groups on the other hand, which came and went like the flowers of the field in those days of the great renovation. The former, Anabaptism proper, maintained an unbroken course in Switzerland, South Germany, Austria, and Holland throughout the sixteenth century, and has continued until the present day in the Mennonite movement, now almost 500,000 baptized members strong in Europe and America.¹³ There is no longer any excuse for permitting our understanding of the distinct character of this genuine Anabaptism to be obscured by Thomas M&uumlntzer and the Peasants War, the Munsterites, or any other aberration of Protestantism in the sixteenth century.There may be some excuse, however, for a failure on the part of the uninformed student to see clearly what the Anabaptist vision was, because of the varying interpretations placed upon the movement even by those who mean to appreciate and approve it. There are, for instance, the socialist writers, led by Kautsky, who would make Anabaptism either “the forerunner of the modern socialism” or the “culminating effort of medieval communism,” and who in reality see it only as the external religious shell of a class movement.¹⁴ There are the sociologists with their partial socioeconomic determinism as reflected in Richard Niebuhr’s approach to the social origin of religious denominations. There is Albert Ritschl, who sees in Anabaptism an ascetic semimonastic continuation of the medieval Franciscan tertiaries, and locates the seventeenth-century Pietists in the same line;¹⁵ and Ludwig Keller, who finds Anabaptists throughout the pre-Reformation period in the guise of Waldenses and other similar groups whom he chooses to call “the old-evangelical brotherhood,”¹⁶ and for whom he posits a continuity from earliest times Related to Keller are the earlier Baptist historians (and certain Mennonites) who rejoice to find in the Anabaptists the missing link which keeps them in the apostolic succession of the true church back through the Waldenses, Bogomils, Cathari, Paulicians, and Donatists, to Pentecost. More recently there is Rufus M. Jones who is inclined to class the Anabaptists with the mystics, and Walter Koehler who finds an Erasmian humanist origin for them.

However, there is another line of interpretation, now almost 100 years old, which is being increasingly accepted and which is probably destined to dominate the field. It is the one which holds that Anabaptism is the culmination of the Reformation, the fulfillment of the original vision of Luther and Zwingli, and thus makes it a consistent evangelical Protestantism seeking to recreate without compromise the original New Testament church, the vision of Christ and the apostles. This line of interpretation begins in 1848 with Max G&oumlbel’s great Geschichte des christlichen Lebens in der Rheinisch-Westf&aumllischen Kirche, continues with the epoch-making work of C. A. Cornelius, particularly in his Geschichte des M&uumlnsterschen Aufruhrs (1855-1860), follows in the work of men like Johann Loserth, Karl Rembert, and John Horsch, and is represented by such contemporaries as Ernst Correll of Washington and Fritz Blanke of Zurich. A quotation from G&oumlbel may serve to illustrate this interpretation:

The essential and distinguishing characteristic of this church is its great emphasis upon the actual personal conversion and regeneration of every Christian through the Holy Spirit…. They aimed with special emphasis at carrying out and realizing the Christian doctrine and faith in the heart and life of every Christian in the whole Christian church. Their aim was the bringing together of all the true believers out of the great degenerated national churches into a true Christian church. That which the Reformation was originally intended to accomplish they aimed to bring into full immediate realization.¹⁷

And Johann Loserth says:

More radically than any other party for church reformation the Anabaptists strove to follow the footsteps of the church of the first century and to renew unadulterated original Christianity.¹⁸

The evidence in support of this interpretation is overwhelming, and can be taken from the statements of the contemporary opponents of the Anabaptists as well as from the Anabaptists themselves. Conrad Grebel, the founder of the Swiss Brethren movement, states clearly this point of view in his letter to Thomas M&uumlntzer of 1524, in words written on behalf of the entire group which constitute in effect the original Anabaptist pronunciamento:

Just as our forebears [the Roman Catholic Papal Church] fell away from the true God and the knowledge of Jesus Christ and of the right faith in him, and from the one true, common divine word, from the divine institutions, from Christian love and life, and lived without God’s law and gospel in human, useless, un-Christian customs and ceremonies, and expected to attain salvation therein, yet fell far short of it, as the evangelical preachers [Luther, Zwingli, etc.] have declared, and to some extent are still declaring; so today, too, every man wants to be saved by superficial faith, without fruits of faith, without the baptism of test and probation without love and hope, without right Christian practices, and wants to persist in all the old fashion of personal vices, and in the common ritualistic and anti-Christian customs of baptism and of the Lord’ s Supper, in disrespect for the divine word and in respect for the word of the pope and of the antipapal preachers, which yet is not equal to the divine word nor in harmony with it. In respecting persons and in manifold seduction there is grosser and more pernicious error now than ever has been since the beginning of the world. In the same error we, too, lingered as long as we heard and read only the evangelical preachers who are to blame for all this, in punishment for our sins. But after we took the Scriptures in hand, too, and consulted it on many points we have been instructed somewhat and have discovered the great and hurtful error of the shepherds, of ours too, namely that we do not daily beseech God earnestly with constant groanings to be brought out of this destruction of all godly life and out of human abominations, and to attain to true faith and divine instruction.¹⁹

A similar statement was made in 1538, after fourteen years of persecution, by an Anabaptist leader who spoke on behalf on his group in the great colloquy at Berne with the leaders of the Reformed Church:

While yet in the national church, we obtained much instruction from the writings of Luther, Zwingli, and others, concerning the mass and other papal ceremonies, that they are vain. Yet we recognized a great lack as regards repentance, conversion, and the true Christian life. Upon these things my mind was bent. I waited and hoped for a year or two, since the minister had much to say of amendment of life, of giving to the poor, loving one another, and abstaining from evil. But I could not close my eyes to the fact that the doctrine which was preached and which was based on the Word of God, was not carried out. No beginning was made toward true Christian living, and there was no unison in the teaching concerning the things that were necessary. And although the mass and the images were finally abolished, true repentance and Christian love were not in evidence. Changes were made only as concerned external things. This gave me occasion to inquire further into these matters. Then God sent His messengers, Conrad Grebel and others, with whom I conferred about the fundamental teachings of the apostles and the Christian life and practice. I found them men who had surrendered themselves to the doctrine of Christ by ” Bussfertigkeit” [repentance evidenced by fruits] . With their assistance we established a congregation in which repentance was in evidence by newness of life in Christ.²⁰

It is evident from these statements that the Anabaptists were concerned most of all about “a true Christian life,” that is, a life patterned after the teaching and example of Christ. The reformers, they believed, whatever their profession may have been, did not secure among the people true repentance, regeneration, and Christian living as a result of their preaching. The Reformation emphasis on faith was good but inadequate, for without newness of life, they held, faith is hypocritical.This Anabaptist critique of the Reformation was a sharp one, but it was not unfair. There is abundant evidence that although the original goal sought by Luther and Zwingli was “an earnest Christianity” for all, the actual outcome was far less, for the level of Christian living among the Protestant population was frequently lower than it had been before under Catholicism. Luther himself was keenly conscious of the deficiency. In April 1522 he expressed the hope that, “We who at the present are well nigh heathen under a Christian name may yet organize a Christian assembly.”^2l In December 1525 he had an important conversation with Caspar Schwenckfeld, concerning the establishment of the New Testament church. Schwenckfeld pointed out that the establishment of the new church had failed to result in spiritual and moral betterment of the people, a fact which Luther admitted, for Schwenckfeld states that “Luther regretted very much that no amendment of life was in evidence.”²² Between 1522 and 1527 Luther repeatedly mentioned his concern to establish a true Christian church, and his desire to provide for earnest Christians (“Die mit Ernst Christen sein wollen”) who would confess the gospel with their lives as well as with their tongues. He thought of entering the names of these “earnest Christians” in a special book and having them meet separately from the mass of nominal Christians, but concluding that he would not have sufficient of such people, he dropped the plan.^22a Zwingli faced the same problem; he was in fact specifically challenged by the Swiss Brethren to set up such a church; but he refused and followed Luther’s course.²³ Both reformers decided that it was better to include the masses within the fold of the church than to form a fellowship of true Christians only. Both certainly expected the preaching of the Word and the ministration of the sacraments to bear fruit in an earnest Christian life, at least among some, but they reckoned with a permanently large and indifferent mass. In taking this course, said the Anabaptists, the reformers surrendered their original purpose, and abandoned the divine intention. Others may say that they were wise and statesmanlike leaders.²⁴

The Anabaptists, however, retained the original vision of Luther and Zwingli, enlarged it, gave it body and form, and set out to achieve it in actual experience. They proceeded to organize a church composed solely of earnest Christians, and actually found the people for it. They did not believe in any case that the size of the response should determine whether or not the truth of God should be applied, and they refused to compromise. They preferred to make a radical break with 1,500 years of history and culture if necessary rather than to break with the New Testament.

May it not be said that the decision of Luther and Zwingli to surrender their original vision was the tragic turning point of the Reformation? Professor Karl Mueller, one of the keenest and fairest interpreters of the Reformation, evidently thinks so, for he says, “The aggressive, conquering power, which Lutheranism manifested in its first period was lost everywhere at the moment when the governments took matters in hand and established the Lutheran Creed,²⁵ that is to say, when Luther’s mass church concept was put into practice. Luther in his later years expressed disappointment at the final outcome of the Reformation, stating that the people had become more and more indifferent toward religion and the moral outlook was more deplorable than ever. His last years were embittered by the consciousness of partial failure, and his expressions of dejection are well known. Contrast this sense of defeat at the end of Luther’s outwardly successful career with the sense of victory in the hearts of the Anabaptist martyrs who laid down their lives in what the world would call defeat, conscious of having kept faith with their vision to the end.

Having defined genuine Anabaptism in its Reformation setting, we are ready to examine its central teachings. The Anabaptist vision included three major points of emphasis; first, a new conception of the essence of Christianity as discipleship; second, a new conception of the church as a brotherhood; and third, a new ethic of love and nonresistance. We turn now to an exposition of these points.

First and fundamental in the Anabaptist vision was the conception of the essence of Christianity as discipleship. It was a concept which meant the transformation of the entire way of life of the individual believer and of society so that it should be fashioned after the teachings and example of Christ²⁶ The Anabaptists could not understand a Christianity which made regeneration, holiness and love primarily a matter of intellect, of doctrinal belief, or of subjective “experience,” rather than one of the transformation of life. They demanded an outward expression of the inner experience. Repentance must be “evidenced” by newness of behavior. “In evidence” is the keynote which rings through the testimonies and challenges of the early Swiss Brethren when they are called to give an account of themselves. The whole life was to be brought literally under the lordship of Christ in a covenant of discipleship, a covenant which the Anabaptist writers delighted to emphasize.²⁷ The focus of the Christian life was to be not so much the inward experience of the grace of God, as it was for Luther, but the outward application of that grace to all human conduct and the consequent Christianization of all human relationships. The true test of the Christian, they held, is discipleship. The great word of the Anabaptists was not “faith” as it was with the reformers, but “following” (nachfolge Christi). And baptism, the greatest of Christian symbols, was accordingly to be for them the “covenant of a good conscience toward God” (1 Peter 3:21),²⁸ the pledge of a complete commitment to obey Christ, and not primarily the symbol of a past experience. The Anabaptists had faith, indeed, but they used it to produce a life. Theology was for them a means, not an end.

That the Anabaptists not only proclaimed the ideal of full Christian discipleship but achieved, in the eyes of their contemporaries and even of their opponents, a measurably higher level of performance than the average, is fully witnessed by the sources. The early Swiss and South German reformers were keenly aware of this achievement and its attractive power. Zwingli knew it best of all, but Bullinger, Capito, Vadian, and many others confirm his judgment that the Anabaptist Brethren were unusually sincere, devoted, and effective Christians. However, since the Brethren refused to accept the state church system which the reformers were building, and in addition made “radical”” demands which might have changed the entire social order, the leaders of the Reformation were completely baffled in their understanding of the movement, and professed to believe that the Anabaptists were hypocrites of the darkest dye. Bullinger, for instance, calls them ‘ ‘ devilish enemies and destroyers of the Church of God.”²⁹ Nevertheless they had to admit the apparent superiority of their life. In Zwingli’s last book against the Swiss Brethren (1527), for instance, the following is found:

If you investigate their life and conduct, it seems at first contact irreproachable, pious, unassuming, attractive, yea, above this world. Even those who are inclined to be critical will say that their lives are excellent.³⁰

Bullinger, himself, who wrote bitter diatribes against them, was compelled to admit of the early Swiss Brethren that

Those who unite with them will by their ministers be received into their church by rebaptism and repentance and newness of life. They henceforth lead their lives under a semblance of a quite spiritual conduct. They denounce covetousness, pride, profanity, the lewd conversation and immorality of the world, drinking and gluttony. In short, their hypocrisy is great and manifold.³¹

Bullinger’s lament (1531) that “the people are running after them as though they were the living saints” has been reported earlier. Vadian, the reformer of St. Gall, testified, that ” none were more favorably inclined toward Anabaptism and more easily entangled with it than those who were of pious and honorable disposition.”³² Capito, the reformer of Strassburg, wrote in 1527 concerning the Swiss Brethren:

I frankly confess that in most [Anabaptists] there is in evidence piety and consecration and indeed a zeal which is beyond any suspicion of insincerity. For what earthly advantage could they hope to win by enduring exile, torture, and unspeakable punishment of the flesh? I testify before God that I cannot say that on account of a lack of wisdom they are somewhat indifferent toward earthly things, but rather from divine motives.³³

The preachers of the Canton of Berne admitted in a letter to the Council of Berne in 1532 that

The Anabaptists have the semblance of outward piety to a far greater degree than we and all the churches which unitedly with us confess Christ, and they avoid offensive sins which are very common among us.³⁴

Walter Klarer, the Reformed chronicler of Appenzell, Switzerland, wrote:

Most of the Anabaptists are people who at first had been the best with us in promulgating the word of God.³⁵

And the Roman Catholic theologian, Franz Agricola, in his book of 1582, Against the Terrible Errors of the Anabaptists, says:

Among the existing heretical sects there is none which in appearance leads a more modest or pious life than the Anabaptist. As concerns their outward public life they are irreproachable. No lying, deception, swearing, strife, harsh language, no intemperate eating and drinking, no outward personal display, is found among them, but humility, patience, uprightness, neatness, honesty, temperance, straightforwardness in such measure that one would suppose that they had the Holy spirit of God.³⁶

A mandate against the Swiss Brethren published in 1585 by the Council of Berne states that offensive sins and vices were common among the preachers and the membership of the Reformed Church, adding, “And this is the greatest reason that many pious, God-fearing people who seek Christ from their heart are offended and forsake our church [to unite with the Brethren]”.³⁷One of the finest contemporary characterizations of the Anabaptists is that given in 1531 by Sebastian Franck, an objective and sympathetic witness, though an opponent of the Anabaptists, who wrote as follows:

The Anabaptists… soon gained a large following,… drawing many sincere souls who had a zeal for God, for they taught nothing but love, faith, and the cross. They showed themselves humble, patient under much suffering; they brake bread with one another as an evidence of unity and love. They helped each other faithfully, and called each other brothers… They died as martyrs, patiently and humbly enduring all persecution.³⁸

A further confirmation of the above evaluation of the achievement of the Anabaptists is found in the fact that in many places those who lived a consistent Christian life were in danger of falling under the suspicion of being guilty of Anabaptist heresy. Caspar Schwenckfeld, for instance, declared, “I am being maligned, by both preachers and others, with the charge of being Anabaptist, even as all others who lead a true, pious Christian life are now almost everywhere given this name.”³⁹ Bullinger himself complained that

…there are those who in reality are not Anabaptists but have a pronounced averseness to the sensuality and frivolity of the world and therefore reprove sin and vice and are consequently called or misnamed Anabaptists by petulant persons.⁴⁰

The great collection of Anabaptist source materials, commonly called the T&aumlufer-Akten, now in its third volume, contains a number of specific illustrations of this. In 1562 a certain Caspar Zacher of Wailblingen in W&uumlrttemberg was accused of being an Anabaptist, but the court record reports that since he was an envious man who could not get along with others, and who often started quarrels, as well as being guilty of swearing and cursing and carrying a weapon, he was not considered to be an Anabaptist.⁴¹ On the other hand in 1570 a certain Hans Jäger of Vohringen in W&uumlrttemberg was brought before the court on suspicion of being an Anabaptist primarily because he did not curse but lived an irreproachable life.⁴²As a second major element in the Anabaptist vision, a new concept of the church was created by the central principle of newness of life and applied Christianity. Voluntary church membership based upon true conversion and involving a commitment to holy living and discipleship was the absolutely essential heart of this concept. This vision stands in sharp contrast to the church concept of the reformers who retained the medieval idea of a mass church with membership of the entire population from birth to the grave compulsory by law and force.

It is from the standpoint of this new conception of the church that the Anabaptist opposition to infant baptism must be interpreted. Infant baptism was not the cause of their disavowal of the state church; it was only a symbol of the cause. How could infants give a commitment based upon a knowledge of what true Christianity means? They might conceivably passively experience the grace of God (though Anabaptists would question this), but they could not respond in pledging their lives to Christ. Such infant baptism would not only be meaningless, but would in fact become a serious obstacle to a true understanding of the nature of Christianity and membership in the church. Only adult baptism could signify an intelligent life commitment.

An inevitable corollary of the concept of the church as a body of committed and practicing Christians pledged to the highest standard of New Testament living was the insistence on the separation of the church from the world, that is nonconformity of the Christian to the worldly way of life. The world would not tolerate the practice of true Christian principles in society, and the church could not tolerate the practice of worldly ways among its membership. Hence, the only way out was separation (“Absonderung”), the gathering of true Christians into their own Christian society where Christ’s way could and would be practiced. On this principle of separation Menno Simons says:

All the evangelical scriptures teach us that the church of Christ was and is, in doctrine, life, and worship, a people separated from the world.⁴³

In the great debate of 1532 at Zofingen, spokesmen of the Swiss Brethren said:

The true church is separated from the world and is conformed to the nature of Christ. If a church is yet at one with the world we cannot recognize it is a true church.⁴⁴

In a sense, this principle of nonconformity to the world is merely a negative expression of the positive requirement of discipleship, but it goes further in the sense that it represents a judgment on the contemporary social order, which the Anabaptists called “the world,” as non-Christian, and sets up a line of demarcation between the Christian community and worldly society.A logical outcome of the concept of nonconformity to the world was the concept of the suffering church. Conflict with the world was inevitable for those who endeavored to live an earnest Christian life. The Anabaptists expected opposition; they took literally the words of Jesus when He said, ” In the world ye shall have tribulation,” but they also took literally His words of encouragement, “But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Conrad Grebel said in 1524:

True Christian believers are sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter; they must be baptized in anguish and affliction, tribulation, persecution, suffering, and death; they must be tried with fire and must reach the fatherland of eternal rest not by killing them bodily, but by mortifying their spiritual, enemies.⁴⁵

Professor Ernest Staehelin of Basel, Switzerland, says:

Anabaptism by its earnest determination to follow in life and practice the primitive Christian Church has kept alive the conviction that he who is in Christ is a new creature and that those who are identified with his cause will necessarily encounter the opposition of the world.⁴⁶

Perhaps it was persecution that made the Anabaptists so acutely aware of the conflict between the church and the world, but this persecution was due to the fact that they refused to accept what they considered the sub Christian way of life practiced in European Christendom. They could have avoided the persecution had they but conformed, or they could have suspended the practice of their faith to a more convenient time and sailed under false colors as did David Joris, but they chose with dauntless courage and simple honesty to live their faith, to defy the existing world order, and to suffer the consequences.Basic to the Anabaptist vision of the church was the insistence on the practice of true brotherhood and love among the members of the church.⁴⁷ This principle was understood to mean not merely the expression of pious sentiments, but the actual practice of sharing possessions to meet the needs of others in the spirit of true mutual aid. Hans Leopold, a Swiss Brethren martyr of 1528, said of the Brethren:

If they know of any one who is in need, whether or not he is a member of their church, they believe it their duty, out of love to God, to render help and aid.⁴⁸

Heinrich Seiler, a Swiss Brethren martyr of 1535 said:

I do not believe it wrong that a Christian has property of his own, but yet he is nothing more than a steward.⁴⁹

An early Hutterian book states that one of the questions addressed by the Swiss Brethren to applicants for baptism was: “Whether they would consecrate themselves with all their temporal possessions to the service of God and His people.”⁵⁰ A Protestant of Strassburg, visitor at a Swiss Brethren baptismal service in that city in 1557, reports that a question addressed to all applicants for baptism was: “Whether they, if necessity require it, would devote all their possessions to the service of the brotherhood, and would not fail any member that is in need, if they were able to render aid.”⁵¹ Heinrich Bullinger, the bitter enemy of the Brethren, states:

They teach that every Christian is under duty before God from motives of love, to use, if need be, all his possessions to supply the necessities of life to any of the brethren who are in need.⁵²

This principle of full brotherhood and stewardship was actually practiced, and not merely speculatively considered. In its absolute form of Christian communism, with the complete repudiation of private property, it became the way of life of the Hutterian Brotherhood in 1528 and has remained so to this day, for the Hutterites held that private property is the greatest enemy of Christian love. One of the inspiring stories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is the successful practice of the full communal way of life by this group.⁵³The third great element in the Anabaptist vision was the ethic of love and nonresistance as applied to all human relationships. The Brethren understood this to mean complete abandonment of all warfare, strife, and violence, and of the taking of human life.⁵⁴ Conrad Grebel, the Swiss. said in 1524:

True Christians use neither worldly sword nor engage in war, since among them taking human life has ceased entirely, for we are no longer under the Old Covenant…. The Gospel and those who accept it are not to be protected with the sword, neither should they thus protect themselves.⁵⁵

Pilgram Marpeck, the South German leader, in 1544, speaking of Matthew 5, said:

All bodily, worldly, carnal, earthly fightings, conflicts, and wars are annulled and abolished among them through such law… which law of love Christ… Himself observed and thereby gave His followers a pattern to follow after.⁵⁶

Peter Riedemann, the Hutterian leader, wrote in 1545:

Christ, the Prince of Peace, has established His Kingdom, that is, His Church, and has purchased it by His blood. In this kingdom all worldly warfare has ended. Therefore a Christian has no part in war nor does he wield the sword to execute vengeance. ⁵⁷

Menno Simons, of Holland, wrote in 1550:

[The regenerated do not go to war, nor engage in strife.]… They are the children of peace who have beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and know of no war…. Spears and swords of iron we leave to those who, alas, consider human blood and swine’s blood of well-nigh equal value.⁵⁸

In this principle of nonresistance, or biblical pacifism, which was thoroughly believed and resolutely practiced by all the original Anabaptist Brethren and their descendants throughout Europe from the beginning until the last century,⁵⁹ the Anabaptists were again creative leaders, far ahead of their times, in this antedating the Quakers by over a century and a quarter. It should also be remembered that they held this principle in a day when both Catholic and Protestant churches not only endorsed war as an instrument of state policy, but employed it in religious conflicts. It is true, of course, that occasional earlier prophets, like Peter Chelcicky, had advocated similar views, but they left no continuing practice of the principle behind them.As we review the vision of the Anabaptists, it becomes clear that there are two foci in this vision. The first focus relates to the essential nature of Christianity. Is Christianity primarily a matter of the reception of divine grace through a sacramental-sacerdotal institution (Roman Catholicism), is it chiefly enjoyment of the inner experience of the grace of God through faith in Christ (Lutheranism), or is it most of all the transformation of life through discipleship (Anabaptism )? The Anabaptists were neither institutionalists, mystics, nor pietists, for they laid the weight of their emphasis upon following Christ in life. To them it was unthinkable for one truly to be a Christian without creating a new life on divine principles both for himself and for all men who commit themselves to the Christian way.

The second focus relates to the church. For the Anabaptist, the church was neither an institution (Catholicism), nor the instrument of God for the proclamation of the divine Word (Lutheranism), nor a resource group for individual piety (Pietism). It was a brotherhood of love in which the fullness of the Christian life ideal is to be expressed.

The Anabaptist vision may be further clarified by comparison of the social ethics of the four main Christian groups of the Reformation period, Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, and Anabaptist. Catholic and Calvinist alike were optimistic about the world, agreeing that the world can be redeemed; they held that the entire social order can be brought under the sovereignty of God and Christianized, although they used different means to attain this goal. Lutheran and Anabaptist were pessimistic about the world, denying the possibility of Christianizing the entire social order; but the consequent attitudes of these two groups toward the social order were diametrically opposed. Lutheranism said that since the Christian must live in a world order that remains sinful, he must make a compromise with it. As a citizen he cannot avoid participation in the evil of the world, for instance in making war, and for this his only recourse is to seek forgiveness by the grace of God; only within his personal private experience can the Christian truly Christianize his life. The Anabaptist rejected this view completely. Since for him no compromise dare be made with evil, the Christian may in no circumstance participate in any conduct in the existing social order which is contrary to the spirit and teaching of Christ and the apostolic practice. He must consequently withdraw from the worldly system and create a Christian social order within the fellowship of the church brotherhood. Extension of this Christian order by the conversion of individuals and their transfer out of the world into the church is the only way by which progress can be made in Christianizing the social order.

However, the Anabaptist was realistic. Down the long perspective of the future he saw little chance that the mass of humankind would enter such a brotherhood with its high ideals. Hence he anticipated a long and grievous conflict between the church and the world. Neither did he anticipate the time when the church would rule the world; the church would always be a suffering church. He agreed with the words of Jesus when He said that those who would be His disciples must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Him, and that there would be few who would enter the strait gate and travel the narrow way of life. If this prospect should seem too discouraging, the Anabaptist would reply that the life within the Christian brotherhood is satisfyingly full of love and joy.

The Anabaptist vision was not a detailed blueprint for the reconstruction of human society, but the Brethren did believe that Jesus intended that the kingdom of God should be set up in the midst of earth, here and now, and this they proposed to do forthwith. We shall not believe, they said, that the Sermon on the Mount or any other vision that He had is only a heavenly vision meant but to keep His followers in tension until the last great day, but we shall practice what He taught, believing that where He walked we can by His grace follow in His steps.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Harold S. Bender was born July 19, 1897, at Elkhart, Indiana. He held degrees from the following institutions BS, Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana; BD, Garrett Biblical Institute; ThM, Princeton Theological Seminary; MA, Princeton University; and ThD, Heidelberg University.He became dean of Goshen College in 1933 and from 1944 he served as dean of Goshen College Biblical Seminary until his death, September 21, 1962.

In the Mennonite Church he was active in many organizations and committees most notable as chairman of the Historical and Research Committee and the Peace Problems Committee. He was ordained to the ministry June 18, 1944. He became president of the Mennonite World Conference in 1952 and served until his death on September 21, 1962.

In 1927 he founded the scholarly quarterly, The Mennonite Quarterly Review, and served as its editor until his death. He served as editor of The Mennonite Encyclopedia, a four-volume monumental contribution to Christendom. In addition to numerous articles in various scholarly magazines he was also author of Two Centuries of American Mennonite Literature: Conrad Grebel, First Leader of the Swiss Brethren; These Are My People; Mennonite Origins in Europe; and Biblical Revelation and Inspiration.

The Anabaptist Vision, given as a presidential address before the American Society of Church History in 1943, has become a classic essay. Since its delivery it has appeared in scholarly journals and been translated into several languages.

by Jeffrey S. Yoder

During the tumultuous period of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, the Anabaptists emerged as a radical movement that challenged not only the Catholic Church but also the emerging Protestant state churches. Their critique of the institutional church was comprehensive, deeply theological, and fundamentally transformative, representing one of the most profound religious reform movements of the era.

At the heart of the Anabaptists’ theological perspective was a fundamental belief in the church as a voluntary community of committed believers, in stark contrast to the prevailing model of state-sponsored religious institutions. Unlike the Catholic Church and the emerging Lutheran and Reformed state churches, the Anabaptists advocated for a church that was entirely separate from political power and governmental control.

The Anabaptists rejected the concept of infant baptism, which was standard practice in both Catholic and Protestant churches of the time. Instead, they insisted on believer’s baptism—a practice where only adults who could make a conscious, voluntary commitment to faith would be baptized. This stance was more than a mere theological distinction; it represented a radical reimagining of church membership. For the Anabaptists, the church was not a universal institution into which one was born, but a voluntary community of dedicated followers who had personally chosen to commit themselves to Christ.

This voluntary approach to church membership was revolutionary. The early Anabaptists believed that true Christian faith could not be coerced or inherited, but must be a personal, transformative experience. They saw the institutional churches of their time as corrupt systems that conflated political power with spiritual authority, often using religious institutions as tools of social control rather than genuine spiritual communities.

The movement’s leaders, such as Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and Menno Simons, argued that the institutional church had strayed far from the model of the early Christian community described in the New Testament. They critiqued what they saw as a profound disconnect between the lifestyle of institutional clergy and the teachings of Jesus. While state churches and Catholic institutions were often wealthy, politically connected, and seemingly more interested in maintaining social hierarchies, the Anabaptists advocated for a return to the simplicity and radical discipleship of the earliest Christians.

Discipleship was central to the Anabaptist understanding of church. They believed that following Christ meant a complete transformation of one’s life, not merely intellectual assent to doctrinal statements. This meant practicing radical love, rejecting violence, caring for the marginalized, and living in genuine community. The institutional churches of their time, they argued, had become ritualistic and formalistic, more concerned with external observances than genuine spiritual transformation.

The Anabaptists’ critique extended to the very structure of ecclesiastical power. They rejected hierarchical church leadership models, instead advocating for a more egalitarian approach where leadership emerged from within the community. Local congregations were seen as autonomous bodies, with members participating actively in decision-making and spiritual discernment. This stood in sharp contrast to the top-down governance of both Catholic and emerging Protestant state churches.

Their radical views came at a significant cost. The Anabaptists faced severe persecution from both Catholic and Protestant authorities. Many were executed, imprisoned, or exiled for their beliefs. Their insistence on separating church and state, and their refusal to participate in military service or take oaths, made them particularly threatening to the established social and religious order.

Geographically, the Anabaptist movement was strongest in Swiss, German, and Dutch territories, with different regional expressions developing unique characteristics. While they shared core theological convictions, groups like the Swiss Brethren, German Mennonites, and Hutterites developed distinct communal practices and interpretations of their core principles.

The legacy of the early Anabaptists is profound. Their insistence on voluntary church membership, believer’s baptism, separation of church and state, and radical discipleship influenced numerous later Christian movements. Modern denominations like the Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites trace their roots directly to these early Anabaptist communities, and their theological perspectives have influenced broader Protestant thinking about church, community, and social engagement.

Today, the Anabaptists’ critique of institutional religion remains remarkably relevant. Their emphasis on genuine spiritual community, rejection of coercive religious practices, and commitment to living out faith through practical love continue to challenge contemporary religious institutions to examine their own structures and practices.

The early Anabaptists were not merely religious dissenters, but visionary reformers who fundamentally reimagined what it meant to be the church. Their courage, theological depth, and commitment to radical discipleship offer a powerful reminder that religious institutions should serve spiritual transformation, not political or social control.