The present article aims to analyze the origins, as well as the spatial and temporal extension of the 16th century radical reform known as Anabaptism. To this end, a number of European territories, ...in which this religious movement relied most strongly in the early years of its existence, have been selected: Switzerland, South Germany, Tyrol-Moravia, North Germany and the Netherlands. Within each region, the analysis focuses on the main characteristics of each community developed there, along with the relevant references to its main leaders. It has also been considered necessary to address its historical context and general characteristics for a greater and better understanding of this revolutionary phenomenon.
El presente artículo pretende analizar los orígenes, así como la extensión espacial y temporal de la reforma radical del siglo XVI conocida como anabaptismo. Con dicho fin, se han seleccionado una serie de territorios europeos en los que este movimiento religioso recaló con mayor fuerza en los primeros años de su existencia: Suiza, Alemania del Sur, Tirol-Moravia, Alemania del Norte y Países Bajos. Dentro de cada región, el análisis se centra en las características principales de cada comunidad allí desarrollada, junto con las referencias pertinentes a sus líderes principales. De igual modo se ha considerado necesario abordar su contexto histórico y características generales para una mayor y mejor comprensión de este fenómeno revolucionario.
Anabaptist Theology Jamie Pitts; Luis Tapia Rubio
St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology,
10/2023
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Anabaptist theology is the expression and communication of theological convictions that have sustained the ordinary life of faith communities within the Anabaptist tradition of Christianity. ...Alongside this ordinary Anabaptist theology, a more formal, ‘academic’ version has developed since at least the eighteenth century. In this respect, this article will first address some methodological issues and then present a historical overview of Anabaptist theology, from the emergence of Anabaptism in the Reformation era to recent global developments. The article concludes with an examination of some key theological issues within the Anabaptist theological tradition, namely, the status of confessional documents, biblical interpretation, Christology, discipleship, salvation, and ecclesiology.
Abstract
Previous studies on the emergence of Swiss Anabaptism focus on the confluence of religious, political, social, and economic factors as explanatory causes. This article, while not disputing ...such approaches, instead investigates the interpretive constructions that early Anabaptist leader Conrad Grebel applied to his own experiences. Using Stephen Greenblatt's notion of self-fashioning, it analyzes Grebel's extant correspondence to argue that Grebel progressively came to view himself as a persecuted prophet, an identity that fueled his resistance to Zwingli and his reforming zeal. The article closes by suggesting the implications of such an approach for future studies on Anabaptism and on prophecy in the Reformation more broadly.
Thinking inside the Cages Driedger, Michael
Nova religio,
05/2018, Letnik:
21, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This essay uses the method of historiographical criticism to reexamine the frameworks used to research the relationship between apocalypse and violence. Its focus is the presentation of Anabaptist ...rule at Münster in the mid-1530s. New religions scholars and historians alike often cite this case as evidence of how millenarian prophecy can lead believers to violent actions. The essay demonstrates that this view is based largely on anti-Anabaptist and anti-sectarian propaganda that has its origins in the medieval and early modern eras. Partly because of the popularity of Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium (1957), which translated older polemical interpretations of religious outsiders into a modern scholarly form, hostile assumptions about Anabaptist violence have found their way into academic debates today. The essay shows that the distorting effects of these kinds of assumptions are not limited at all to the case of Anabaptist Münster, but in fact shape unhelpfully the way scholars conceptualize more generally the relationship between dissenting “sects” and established “churches.” “Thinking outside the cages” of polemically derived conceptualizations can form the basis for cross-disciplinary research on believers under siege.
Balthasar Hubmaier is often called ‘the theologian of the Anabaptists’ for he was the only early Anabaptist leader with an earned doctorate. The former Catholic priest embraced the reforming thought ...of Erasmus, Zwingli, and eventually Zwingli’s former pupils (the Anabaptists) and led the Moravian city of Nikolsburg to become a bastion of Anabaptist thought and practice. The multi-dimensional religious landscape both afforded Hubmaier the opportunity and compelled him to author the first Anabaptist catechism. Through the work, Hubmaier articulated a clear and succinct portrayal of Anabaptist theology and ecclesiology summed up in the Erasmian tenet of the love of God and neighbor.
Living, and dying, for Jesus Sainsbury, Sue
The journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association,
20/7/3/, Letnik:
37, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The idea of living sacrificially in radical obedience to Christ, whatever the consequences and regardless of the cost, especially in an environment that is powerfully hostile, is alternatively ...appealing in being something so worthy of giving one's life to and terrifying in being the very thing that could well mean giving one's life up for. This paper explores a particular life, that of Menno Simons, in such a context of extreme tribulation in the sixteenth-century Radical Reformation. The resultant theology of suffering is compelling and provides, should we allow ourselves to hear it, a challenge to the very fabric of how we perceive our own lives as part of the precious and fragile Body of Christ.
The Christian anarchist tradition and the work of Giorgio Agamben fit within a subversive trajectory of political theology that critiques the state paradigm, while also operating at a distance from ...it in their creation of a newly imagined political community. This research asks what it could look like to conceive of a political community beyond the state, imagined from the subject position of the marginalized. It also seeks a mutually informed path towards the practical formation of such communities, as elaborated through a case study of the Anabaptist tradition. Agamben's concepts provide a renovation of the political themes of Christian anarchism, including the ideas of moving beyond revolution, voluntary exile through the abdication of rights, and messianic vocation. As the space for political praxis within Agamben's work continues to evolve, the Anabaptist tradition provides helpful practices to imagine a withdrawal from the governmental machine as a community of voluntary exiles.
Historians have long accepted the influence of humanism on Anabaptist origins. The emphasis on text-based support of early reforms and critiques of the Catholic Church characterize the brand of ...humanism in northern Europe and the Protestant Reformation. However, little attention has been given to the precise dynamics, networks, and mechanisms exposing early Anabaptists to humanism years before they even began to consider a more drastic reformation of the Church. As the martyred Balthasar Hubmaier was a central figure and the only university doctor of the early Radical Reformation, this article will study the personal, textual, and curricular components of his academic career at the universities of Freiburg-im-Breisgau and Ingolstadt; it is important for revealing a commitment to humanism that is deeper than was previously thought. It throws light on how the New Learning affected some Anabaptists, which humanists influenced their radical reforms, and which academic disciplines inspired their reforming methodologies.
Anabaptism in Italy Disseau, Maël Leo David Soliman
Perichoresis (Oradea),
12/2017, Letnik:
15, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
While relatively unknown to Anglophone circles, there was a thriving Anabaptist community in Italy during the reformation. It is the scope of this article to help retrace the origins of the ...Anabaptist movement in Italy (a movement which lasted at best for sixty years, from the 1520s-1530s to the 1570s, and did not leave us with the theological writings such as those produced by Hubmaier, Marpeck, or Simons) and to set straight some misconceptions unintentionally (or intentionally) perpetuated by some who have attempted this journey in the past. This is done in the hopes of raising appreciation for the movement and of enticing future research interest in this forgotten branch of the Radical Reformation.
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