Baby Baptism and Anabaptists
Posted by Terry White on May 22, 2009
Here is an excerpt from an interesting column on baby baptism and the Anabaptists. To read the entire article, click here.
Baby baptism and Anabaptists
Baptism is a common tradition within Catholic and most Protestant churches. The Church of the Brethren, the church I was born into and later grew out of, is and was not part of this tradition. It rather grew out of the Anabaptist movement in Europe.
The first Anabaptist congregation was formed in 1525 in Zurich. Anabaptists were opposed to infant baptism because it was not voluntary. For them, choosing to be a Christian should be an adult matter. Shortly after the first adult baptism took place in that city, its council decreed that anyone who refused to baptize infants eight days old or younger must leave the city.
Other Anabaptist congregations sprung up. In 1534, the first that came to be known as Mennonite was established in Holland. These believers did not differ greatly from general Protestant doctrines, but, because they did not favor state control of the church or church control of the state and differed in their beliefs about baptism, they were unwelcome wherever they settled in Europe. Mennonites also took the scripture literally—to love thy enemies and to do good to those who persecute you. Ironically, such belief made them victims.
Anabaptist Jakob Hutter was tortured, whipped, and immersed in freezing water (to mock baptismal practices), and at the order of King Ferdinand in 1563, Hutter was then doused with brandy and burned. (See Jerry MacGregor & Marie Prys, 1001 Surprising Things You Should Know about Christianity) During the next six decades, over fifteen hundred Mennonites were martyred, many of them burned at the stake.
In 1683, William Penn offered the Mennonites asylum in the colonies, and thousands of German, Swiss, French, and Russian Mennonites came to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, Illinois and some went farther west.
The issue of when to baptize is one of the first decisions of faith vs. doubt that parents face. Doubt arose for those who chose to be re-baptised as adults because they were not sure that baptism as babies was good enough. They reasoned that faith should be a matter of choice, not something that was simply an act that others made for them.
So it was that I was baptized three times forward–in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
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