By Brad Igou
The Amish seem to lead a quiet and peaceful lifestyle, yet they are sometimes the victims of violence, in the October of 2006 Amish school shooting made it all too clear. This series offers a brief overview of the Anabaptist position of non-resistance in times of war and peace, from their origins over 450 years ago through the end of the 20th century.
PART 1: In the Beginning
Inflation, poverty, problems in the cities, overpopulation, religious disputes, threats to government stability, wars, problems between church and state…
While this may sound like a list of problems from our world today, it was also the world of 16th century Europe. In 1517, a Catholic monk named Martin Luther challenged the authority and doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. It was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. A new invention, the printing press, and the support of many German princes helped to spread Luther’s ideas.
Ulrich Zwingli, a Protestant priest in Zurich, Switzerland, taught “salvation by grace through faith alone.” But some followers were troubled by Zwingli’s alliance with the City Council. Zwingli felt God’s Kingdom on earth should be established by political power. Some of his followers believed that church reform should not come from the government, but that the church and state should be separate. They believed in pacifism and adult baptism. The Council demanded that these dissenters stop their meetings and baptize their children, since infant baptism was the main way authorities knew of the birth of children for their tax and census purposes.
On January 21, 1525, the dissenters secretly met and re-baptized each other to signify their adult commitment to their faith, and a Church not part of the State. Their radical defiance challenged the unity and authority of both, and their refusal to serve in the military was a distinct threat to the city’s safety.
The results? These Swiss Brethren were hunted down, asked to recant, tortured and put to death. Felix Manz was the first to be put to death by drowning in 1527. Soon, almost a thousand of these “re-baptizers” (Anabaptists) had been killed in Switzerland for their faith, all in an effort to bring these radicals back to the state church.
The Anabaptist faith spread from Switzerland to Germany and the Netherlands. In the following years, thousands were threatened or exiled, had their children taken, sold into slavery, branded, burned at the stake, drowned, or dismembered by both Protestants and Catholics, who viewed their “radical” ideas as dangerous thinking.
A book of some 1,200 pages was printed in the year 1660 in Holland to preserve the history of those who chose to suffer rather than to resist. This book, known as the MARTYRS MIRROR, is still found in many Amish homes today.
The Anabaptists were forced to worship in hiding, in each other’s homes, sometimes in caves. One story tells of a ferryman who allowed the Anabaptists to hold secret worship services on his boat. He was caught and condemned to death for allowing these activities.
But of the hundreds of stories, perhaps the most profound is that of Dirck Willems. Pursued by an Anabaptist hunter across frozen water, his captor fell through the ice. Willems, rather than escaping, returned to save his captor’s life. Willems, however, was taken into custody and later burned at the stake.
All of these experiences ingrained in the Anabaptists a suspicion of the world and government, as well as teaching them humility and a belief in separateness from and denial of the violence around them.
To this day, the Amish do not have churches in which to worship, but do so in each other’s homes, much like the early Anabaptists. For them the church is not so much a building, as a community of believers.
Some of the imprisoned Anabaptists set to writing hymns in their cells. These were soon printed and, with the addition of others, became the AUSBUND, the German hymnbook still used by the Amish today. Some 400 years have passed since these words were written. Still sung by the Amish today at worship, they are reminder of the hardships and sacrifices endured by their forefathers…
We wander in the forest dark,
With dogs upon our track;
And like the silent, captive lamb
Men bring us, prisoners, back.
They point to us amid the throng,
And with their taunts offend;
And long to let the sharpened ax
On heretics descend.
In time the death penalty ended, but Anabaptists continued to suffer wherever they went in Europe, largely because they refused to serve in the military. Some were imprisoned, branded with hot irons, or sold as slaves and separated from their families. For many, the guarantee of religious freedom would only be found in a New World, across the Atlantic Ocean, in a British colony known as “Pennsylvania.”
NEXT ISSUE (August): “Colonial America through the Civil War”