Everything about The Radical Reformation totally explained
The
Radical Reformation was a 16th century response to both the corruption in the
Roman Catholic Church and the expanding
Magisterial Protestant movement led by
Martin Luther and many others. Beginning in Switzerland, the Radical Reformation birthed many
Anabaptist groups throughout
Europe.
Characteristics
Unlike the Roman Catholics and unlike the more
Magisterial Evangelical (
Lutheran), Reformed (
Zwinglian and
Calvinist) Protestant movements, the Radical Reformation generally abandoned the idea of the "
Church Visible" as distinct from the "
Church invisible." Thus, the Church only consisted of the tiny community of believers, who accepted Jesus Christ and demonstrated this by adult baptism, called
"believer's baptism". While the reformers wanted to substitute their own learned elite for the learned elite of the Roman Catholic Church, the Anabaptists rejected church authority almost entirely. It was unavoidable that as the search for original and purely scriptural
Christianity was carried further some would claim that the tension between the church and the
Roman Empire in the first centuries of
Christianity was somehow normative, that the church isn't to be allied with government, that a true church is always inviting persecution, and that the conversion of
Constantine was therefore the great apostasy that marked the end of pure
Christianity.
Early forms of Anabaptism
Some early forms of the Radical Reformation were
millenarian, focusing on the imminent end of the world. This was particularly notable in the rule of
John of Leiden over the city of
Münster in 1535, which was ultimately crushed by the forces of the Catholic
Bishop of Münster and the Lutheran
Landgrave of Hesse. After the fall of Münster, several small groups continued to adhere to revolutionary Anabaptist beliefs. The largest and most important of these groups, the
Batenburgers, persisted in various forms into the 1570s. The early
Anabaptists believed that the
Reformation must purify not only theology but also the actual lives of Christians, especially in what had to do with political and social relationships. Therefore, the church shouldn't be supported by the state, neither by tithes and taxes, nor by the use of the sword;
Christianity was a matter of individual conviction, which couldn't be forced on anyone, but rather required a personal decision for it.
Later forms of Anabaptism
Later forms of Anabaptism were much smaller, and focused on the formation of small, separatist communities. Among the many varieties to develop were
Mennonites,
Amish, and
Hutterites. Typical among the new leaders of the later Anabaptist movement, and certainly the most influential of them, was
Menno Simons (1496-1561), a Dutch Catholic priest who early in 1536 decided to join the Anabaptists.
Menno Simons had no use for the violence advocated and practiced by the Münster movement, which seemed to him to pervert the very heart of Christianity. Thus,
Mennonite pacifism isn't merely a peripheral characteristic of the movement, but rather belongs to the very essence of Menno's understanding of the gospel; this is one of the reasons that it has been a constant characteristic of all
Mennonite bodies through the centuries.
Other Radical Reformation movements
In addition to the Anabaptists, other Radical Reformation movements have been identified. Notably,
George Huntston Williams, the great categorizer of the Radical Reformation, considered early forms of
Unitarianism (such as that of the
Socinians, and exemplified by
Michael Servetus), and other trends that disregarded the
Nicene christology still accepted by most
Christians, as part of the Radical Reformation. With
Michael Servetus (1511-1553) and
Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) anti-Trinitarianism came to the foreground. Servetus was a man of profound religious conviction who, however, felt that the doctrine of the
Trinity was unsound; in his native
Spain, that doctrine had been a stumbling block for
Jews and
Muslims for centuries.
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