The Great Trek of the Russian Mennonites to Central Asia, 1880-1884, Fred Richard Belk, 1976

. Their leader, a believer in austere worship, believers’ baptism, and biblical authority, was not as forceful as Luther and sometimes tempered his reforms in the face of opposition. A number of young men, the future Mennonites, broke with their leader because of their conviction that the Holy Spirit could lead them better than Ulrich Mennonite Backgrounds 25 Zwingli. Impatient for change, they informed him, “You have no authority to place the decision in the hand of my lords [the city council] for the decision is already made; the Spirit of God decides.’”"' On January 21, 1525, Conrad Grebel, one of the young men who withdrew from Zwingli's group, launched the Anabaptist movement by baptizing a priest named Georg Blaurock. Blaurock in turn baptized a number of others. Through their personal study of the Bible they adopted the following credo: Only those who had repented of their sins and were walking in newness of life could be a part of the church, and after repentance one was baptized on the confession of his faith. The church was a free institution, and no force was to be used against dissenters in matters of faith. Love was the prime New Testament teaching in life, and taking a human life through the military or civil authorities was outside the realm of a nonresistant follower of Christ. Finally, Christians should never swear an oath.'® These enthusiastic Anabaptists of the sixteenth century were the religious revolutionaries of that formative era; they planned for and attempted the renovation of contemporary society and church or- ganization, both Catholic and Protestant. Their motives for revolu- tionary activity were not nihilistic but religious. Their purpose was the building of a new society, the kingdom of God on earth, which God would immediately inaugurate after the destruction of the old. It would be a new age. And in many respects it was. There were striking changes in many areas — trade, travel, science, the arts, and religion. The Protestant Reformation is usually regarded as the most important religious revolt of this period, especially because it helped undermine the medieval church and stimulated the creators of modern society. This is a correct interpretation. Yet arising out of the Protestant Reformation was this more radical revolutionary movement, re- ligiously motivated to replace all contemporary churches and society with new churches and a new society. The Swiss authorities regarded the Anabaptist movement as a heresy of the worst sort, one that would destroy the foundations of the established Roman Catholic Church. Severe persecution began as early as 1525, and in a short while had all but annihilated the Swiss Anabaptist movement. In the canton of Bern, however, a small body of Anabaptists, called Taufer, managed to live on. At about the same time in the Low Countries, Melchior Hof- mann, a former Lutheran turned independent, established small se- 26 The Great