"OUR BROTHERS IN CHRIST" 1
Part I: Daughters of the Reformation
Section 12. Dissidents of Dissidents: the Baptists
by Henri Daniel-Rops
Apart from the two great groups - which are usually considered as the main products of the Reformation, there are others which have existed from the beginning, in Germany and elsewhere. Some were the issue of very old tendencies which the Catholic Church had unsuccessfully tried to eliminate. Several of them sprang from the Middle Ages, through Joachim of Flora and Jacopone da Todi; they were of the same spirit as the fifteenth-century groups in Holland, the alumbrados, who in the sixteenth century so exercised the Spanish Inquisition. All these reformers, though outside the main stream of the Reformation, had several basic ideas in common: belief in divine inspiration from within by direct operation of the Holy Ghost, in a Church which was to be purely spiritual and composed solely of saints. These ideas were to be found more or less in Calvin and Luther, but all were carried to an extreme of violence and exaltation. To these were added other facets, temporal in nature, which challenged the established order as had the medieval spiritualism, those vehement partisans of radical changes in the Church. These anarchic reformers -were not clerics like Luther or Calvin, but men of the people, artisans such as Loiet of Antwerp and John of Leyden, or peasants such as Thomas Münzer, leader of the celebrated Peasants' Revolt which so shocked Luther.
These currents, opposed unceasingly by all the Established Churches, have nevertheless managed to survive into our own day under different names and in various guises, inspiring millions of Christians who, for the most part, have forgotten that they descend from virulent spiritual revolutionaries. In the sixteenth century these people were commonly known as Anabaptists, a name derived from their practice of baptizing only adults, and even of 're-baptizing' children, upon the grounds that since faith alone (as Luther said) makes a Christian, it should precede baptism. Such an idea was not unreasonable if all operative virtue were denied to the sacrament and the Church no longer recognized as an institution. In quite recent years such outstanding personalities as Kierkegaard and Karl Barth have advocated adult baptism.
In the sixteenth century Anabaptism suffered a terrible ordeal, hunted down in Alsace, associated with the Peasants' Revolt, swept along with the rebels in their rout, and thence to the dreadful massacre at Münster (1538) following John of Leyden's attempt to establish the City of God. Even in Switzerland, where Zwingli had at first appeared to be reasonably favourable, the Anabaptists were destined to be drowned or hanged. So strong, however, was the current of faith that upheld them that they were not all annihilated, and reappeared a little later.
The saviour of Anabaptism was Menno Simons (1492-1559>, a one-time Catholic priest from Holland. He understood that it was useless and dangerous to mix social demands with the great plans for reorganizing the world upon purely spiritual lines, and also that it was absurd to wield the sword while preaching the Gospel. A cultured and well-read man, he had no truck with the more popular and dangerous leaders of Anabaptism, but joined rather with small 'spiritual' circles which existed in Germany, and likewise with certain theoreticians at Zürich, especially Conrad Grebel. Under his influence Anabaptist-type groups came into being, yet different enough for them to be called Mennonites, a name which has stuck. Mennonism demanded no more from its adherents than that they should live according to the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount. The Schleitheim Confession (1527) and that of Dordrecht (1532) were very simple, retaining only baptism from the old sacraments, this being reduced to a ceremony as of entry to the Church, and Holy Communion. At the same time they insisted on the simple life, moral rectitude, work, the avoidance of oaths and the condemnation of any form of violence. On these bases, organize by 'shepherds' rather than by priests, the Mennonites expanded.
In Holland they numbered 160,000 in 1700, spreading to Germany, Switzerland. Poland and France, where there are still some four thousand. In the eighteenth century they spread to Dniepropetrovsk in Russia, and thence to the Caucasus, Siberia and Central Asia. As conscientious objectors they were exempted from military service, being placed in civilian organizations. Very roughly handled by the Soviet authorities, forced to bear arms, many of them fled to the Altai regions and to Kazakhstan, where they are to be found today. But the heaviest emigration of Mennonites was to the U.S.A. Large groups settled first in Pennsylvania, then spread to the interior, while others reached Canada. Almost everywhere, because of their doctrine, they took to agriculture. Their movement was fortunate in finding strong personalities to lead them and strengthen the Mennonite doctrine (the Mennonite Biblical School at Saint-Christchona has a special reputation), and this gave them a much-needed impetus. Like all forms of Protestantism, Mennonism in the Americas has succumbed to the same law of division: some 2J0,000 adherents in the U.S.A. and Canada are split into seventeen different varieties, classed in two large Conferences, which the Mennonite Central Committee has been trying to harmonize ever since 1940.
Some Mennonites settled in South America, mostly in Brazil. The strangest venture here was that of the Hutterites who, as we saw earlier, were founded in the early seventeenth century by the Lutheran mystic Hutter, and who, because the Churches were disloyal to the teachings of the reformer of Wittenberg, fled from Germany after the defeat in 1945 and settled in Paraguay, where they had immense success. They number some 450 communities and are very close to the Mennonites.
Though small in numbers, the Mennonites still maintain missions, and are very active in the U.S.A. both through the press and through other media. Their refusal of violence and their conscientious objection in time of war have brought them much into the public eye, and their services in devastated Germany after the Second World War were notable. One of their thinkers, Guy F. Herschberger, is among the most original of pacifist thinkers; it has even been suggested that 'social law', as defined by G. Gurvitch, 2 may have its roots in the Mennonite communities, which attempt to live according to the Beatitudes....
Anabaptism, however, gave rise not only to Mennonism. Based on the same fundamental issue, adult baptism, there arose at the end of the sixteenth century certain communities which, despite the weak links which bound them, were categorized as Baptists. In view of their imprecise doctrine, of the absolute liberty upon which these resolute Congregationalists insisted for their local churches, and, it must be said, because of the strength of their missionary endeavours and undoubted moral qualities. Baptists today, after three centuries, form the second largest Protestant movement in the world; in 1588 they numbered some 18 million baptized, a figure which corresponds to some 40 million adherents. This is a very large group, but confused and without structure, difficult to perceive in the round. The Baptist religion appears strangely enough to be both a meeting place of converging faiths (as soon as a certain degree of unity has resulted), then a splitting up into Churches and sects, each anxious to retain its individual liberty. The sole doctrinal link of any substance remains the baptism of adults, conferred only on those who make an open confession of faith. The one source of faith common to all is the Bible, but since each may interpret this as he wills, as the Holy Ghost so dictates, every concept is admissible, some finding in it the most rigid Calvinist predestination, others the free access of all to salvation. Others are convinced upon scriptural grounds that observance of Sunday as the Lord's Day is heresy, and that one must observe the Jewish custom of the Sabbath. One can imagine to what anarchy such a multitude of denominations, Churches, movements and sects will lead. It is even impossible to discover today just how many there are—ten or fifty!
The Baptists can be identified rather by their internal organization, this being of a strictly Congregationalist type. Each community is independent. The admission of new members to baptism is done by election, and in some communities the vote must be unanimous. Each community elects its leader, now called pastor, now elder, now bishop. The service itself is everywhere very simple, a considerable time being devoted to collective singing, with periods of silence for private meditation.
Although their origins are hotly disputed, it was undoubtedly in England that the Baptists first appeared, after the arrival of Anabaptist elements and also of Arminian Calvinists subsequent to the victory of the Gomarists. 3 Among the principal founders were J. Smyth and T. Helwys. Suspected by the Established Church, accepted by Cromwell, persecuted by the monarchy on the Restoration (when John Bunyan spoke out for them) and finally authorized to live in peace by the Act of Toleration (1689), they could scarcely be said to form a Church, but at once adopted the form which we have seen, a loosely linked collection of small communities. The two principal groups were the General Baptists, so called because of their broad, Arminian views on the question of Predestination, and the Regular Baptists, more Calvinist in outlook. The union of the two branches in 1813 to form the Baptist Union did not stop the process of division, for very soon various groups seceded and set up on their own, e.g. the Seventh Day Baptists, the 'Free' Baptists, the 'Free Will' Baptists, etc. But this was nothing compared to the divisions which emerged in the U.S.A.
The appearance of the Baptists in North America was the work of William Rogers (Ir39-1683), a former Anglican minister who was obliged to seek exile for his nonconformist puritan views. Hostile to every ecclesiastical system which he found in the colony, he criticized them all so ruthlessly that he was forced to decamp to Rhode Island, where he founded the town of Providence. With his friend Ezekiel Hollyman he organized the first Baptist communities, along the lines laid down in the 'six principles' of the Epistle to the Hebrews (vi. 1-2): repentance, faith, baptism, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. From this tiny seed there grew the mighty tree which occupies a pre-eminent position in American Protestantism; 80 per cent of the world's Baptists are Americans, and they represent the second largest group in the U.S.A. after the Catholic Church. They show great initiative. For long the bulk of them were recruited, according to Siegfried, from the 'little people from rural communities and towns of third-rate importance'. They have now penetrated both the black proletariat of the South and to the higher managerial classes, for which latter they have built many universities. The crowning achievement of their efforts could be said to be the fact that John Rockerfeller joined their ranks.
But here again this wave of success was accompanied by an increasing fragmentation, in accordance with the twofold process which we have already seen. Many new groups joined the Baptist fold, in the same way as those who founded the Disciples of Christ. Simultaneously divisions appeared, produced by three great questions. The first was dogmatic: that of the interpretation of the Bible, which some wanted in literal fashion, setting aside all criticism, while others were broader in their approach. Between 'fundamentalists' and liberals' no agreement was possible. A second question of a more practical nature, namely slavery, brought about other splits at the time of the Civil War; the Northern Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention arose, with a certain number of Negro communities joining the National Baptist Convention of the U.S.A. Then there was the question of missions, some adherents wishing to heed Christ's apostolic appeal by founding the General Mission Convention and the Home Mission Society; others were content to let God choose whom He should elect. In addition to this, outside the ranks of the Regular Baptists, who represent some four-fifths of the total, we find not less than twenty American Baptist organizations with different names, all rather hard to distinguish from one another.
Two of the most interesting are the Primitive Baptists of the Southern States and the Disciples of Christ. The first number some 7 million Negroes, all desirous of preserving the true faith and all having a certain mistrust of all other forms of Protestantism. They contend that it is not essential to train their ministers, to pay them salaries or to bother with any missionary activity. Their teaching is exclusively biblical, but their understanding of the Bible is simplistic and resolutely 'fundamentalist'. One must preach the Word of God as it is written, verse by verse (from translations that vary in quality), emphasizing the more striking features such as the blood shed by Jesus, the agonies of Hell, the joys of Paradise. And the gatherings are provided with hymns which have equally striking imagery and an insistent rhythm. This is the religion of the Negro spirituals, and that which, since the end of the Second World War, renewed and shorn of such imagery, has led the fight against segregation with Martin Luther King at its head.
The Disciples of Christ, numbering some 11 million adherents, represent diametrically opposite views. Their founder was Thomas Campbell (1763—1853), a puritan pastor from Northern Ireland who desired to live wholly according to the concepts of early Christianity, and who emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1810 with his son Alexander. They set up the 'Primitive Church of Christian Society', based on the Baptist faith. At the same time a Presbyterian minister, Barton W. Stone, after breaking with the Established Church, founded another whose members modestly referred to themselves merely as 'Christians'. The two movements joined forces in 1838 and were subsequently known as the 'Disciples of Christ', also called the Reform Baptists. The Disciples immediately set out to spread the Gospel along the New Frontier of the American West.
Despite a split in 1906, which separated the more orthodox elements who founded the Church of Christ, the movement prospered. But then a singular evolution took place, leading these 'Early Christians' towards rationalist criticism. Their progress was made easy in intellectual circles where religion, which was regarded as essential, was reduced to a liberal Protestantism, without dogma but with a strong moral structure and a high social sense of responsibility. Twenty-five universities are run by the Disciples, and the Seminaries of Colgate and Rochester and the Divinity School at Chicago are allied to their liberal views, as are also several American Christian social leaders, such as Walter Rauschenbusch.
Turning now to the rest of the world, outside the missionary territories properly speaking, there are not many Baptists. There are some in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Brazil, China and Japan. In France there are only a few thousand, in four groups and with one independent Church whose tabernacle was for long at Montmartre. One group is to be found in Russia, where the Baptists, few in number before the Second World War, have expanded rapidly since 1944 when they merged with the former 'Christian Evangelists' or Pachkovski (founded in 1859) by Colonel Pachkov, a Guards officer), and with the small evangelical communities which flourished among the Ukrainian peasantry. In 1960 they were estimated at some 560,000 baptized, which means some 3 million adherents in all. The anti-religious Communist press often reiterates the danger that they represent for militant atheism.
The Baptists are perfectly well aware that their fragmentation impedes them from playing the full role to which their large numbers entitle them. But they have made efforts to unite. In 1812 they set up the Baptist Educational Society to train the right type of pastor for each of the different denominations; but at least one-third of the total of the communities have never been near the seminaries run by this society. Certain alliances were made, resulting in the Baptist Federation, the Evangelical Association of Baptist Churches and (in 1905) the Universal Baptist Alliance; but even this last has so far failed to assemble all the Baptists of the world. It need hardly be said that Baptists are very mistrustful of all forms of ecumenalism. The majority of their communities are members of either of the World Council of Churches or of the International Council. But in their eyes, according to William Carey Taylor, a Baptist missionary, 'the two Councils are both unionist; both defend erroneous doctrines; both would destroy Baptist life if once they penetrate deeply into it'. Are the Baptists then a fortlori hostile to any form of unity with non-Protestants? In some of their circles, often marked by narrow nationalism or systematic anti-Communism, the most virulent anti-Catholicism has been maintained until quite recently in the U.S.A.
Footnotes
Our Brothers in Christ, by Henri Daniel-Rops; London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc.. First published 1967. L'Idée du droit social, Paris, 1931. See "Our Brothers in Christ," p. 29.
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