The area that gave them the most trouble was their rejection of infant baptism and acceptance of only the (adult) "believer's baptism." Because they did not recognize infant baptism, their adult baptisms were in their own eyes the only valid baptism, but because most of those who underwent such baptism at the time had also been baptized previously as infants, the enemies of the practice called its adherents "anabaptists" (in German "Wiedertaüfer") from the Greek for "rebaptizer" (a term that they themselves did not, of course, use).Īn itinerant lay preacher was Melchior Hoffmann, a furrier/merchant from southern Germany turned evangelist. Foremost among these "radicals" were the Anabaptists, who rejected a number of traditional practices and beliefs that found no basis in the New Testament. With his attack upon the right of the pope and the ecclesiastical system loyal to him to determine and enforce religious orthodoxy, the way was open for those who held much more radical views of how to "reform" the Church than Luther himself was willing to countenance. Mackay: Anabaptistici Furoris Narratio Hermann von Kerssenbrock'sĪnabaptist Kingdom of MünsterBy the 1530s, Germany was in much religious and political turmoil.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |