Europe in the Age of the Reformation

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The Anabaptists

Church and Community

There was more, though. The Anabaptists held to other beliefs and practices that made them the objects of suspicion and fear even among the common people.

The ideal Christian community for the Anabaptists was that of the apostles. In those early days after the death of Jesus, they believed, the Church was in its purest form, and they sought to imitate as best they could.

The true Christian community, according to the Anabaptists, had no priesthood—all believers witnessed and preached. All Christians helped one another with material goods as needed; the most radical of the Anabaptists may have even held to common ownership of property.

They also tended to belittle or ignore the existing social hierarchy. Seeing no evidence of a natural aristocracy in Apostolic times, and looking forward to the Second Coming when all were equal before the eyes of God, the Anabaptist message could sound dangerously subversive. Whereas the Lutherans gave to the nobility a specific and important role in Christian society, the Anabaptists did not. This helps explain why they found comparatively few noble protectors.