“If you want to protect the gospel, get rid of infant baptism and be congregational. Make the whole congregation vote. You’ll keep the gospel!” Like red meat before wild animals these words elicited applause and shouts last fall (September 2022) at Southeastern Baptist Seminary in Wake Forrest, NC. Yet, nearly nine months later, Mark Dever’s remarks went viral on social media. Speaking to a largely baptistic crowd at a 9Marks gathering, Dever kicked a hornet’s nest, taking aim at his friendly association with pedobaptists.
His assertion, that during the reformation, pedobaptists created a new category of baptized but unregenerate persons in the church, provoked applause, and consternation from Presbyterian Kevin DeYoung. To Mark Dever’s credit, he responded well to DeYoung’s private admonition regarding his tone and argument, which prompted a public discussion between themselves for the benefit of others.1
Yet the substance of Dever’s thought has a long and storied history that appeared very forcefully in the early days of the Reformation. Derided as anabaptists by the continental reformers, early baptistic adherents developed a stance towards a pure church ideal that is to be admired. As is true in my non-denominational association, the Baptist affiliation has had several streams of thought underneath its distinctive name. This 3-part blog post will briefly distinguish between the anabaptist stream on the European continent and their counterparts in England. Once the players are understood, the implication of their theology becomes clearer. The legacy of the Baptist conflicts in the reformation era flow into non-denominational, free church traditions of which the IFCA is a part.
The Continental Anabaptists
Chronologically, the continental anabaptists preceded the English Baptist tradition by nearly a century. Just eight years after Martin “the Wild Boar” Luther appeared in Pope Leo X’s vineyard, 2 a small group in Zurich led by Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz met to consider their responsibility to the state considering their newly found convictions. The City Council had issued an ultimatum to baptize their children or face banishment. Their small but growing group of believers were called Anabaptists by Catholics and Protestants alike due to their ardent rejection of their infant baptisms and attempt to establish free church communes. Münster, Germany is today a byword for radical enthusiasm due to a failed attempt to establish a “New Jerusalem” in 1535.
A repudiation of their infant baptisms might, on its own merits, have been tolerable had they not also become associated with civil unrest. Luther’s resistance coupled with a rising German nationalism led to a general revolt against Rome but ended in a slaughter of peasants in 1525. The peasants wanted social and economic reform. Weary from the oppressive nature of feudalism which separated people into castes and limited economic prosperity, the peasants revolted against religious and civic authorities. The slaughter of peasants was so shocking that governments moved quickly to stamp out religious dissent to prevent any future uprising amid the ongoing, orderly attempt to reform the church gradually.
Conflict with the state began when Grebel’s wife gave birth and they refused to baptize their son. The first to be baptized was George Blaurock, a former priest, who desired to follow the example of the first century church. After his baptism, Blaurock proceeded to baptize the rest. This first adult baptism, although done by pouring, was precipitated by an ultimatum of the City Council of Zurich decreeing banishment for neglect of child baptism after the eighth day.3 So, this act of baptism was also an act of defiant resistance to the City Council. Zurich was a city-state organized on a church-government compact, but Grebel and Manz desired a church free from state oversight. The City Council would have none of it and decreed all anabaptists be drowned for their non-compliance.
This experience was repeated by many earnest believers like Balthasar Hubmaier. Hubmaier, for example, encouraged people to “investigate the Scriptures” around a meal at his home.4 These experiments in free church practice were a threat to the established systems of ordered civic life. The Anabaptists emphasis upon de-centralization of power made them a threat. Closely associated with their desire for a separation of the church from the state was an appreciation for congregationalism. In the aftermath the Peasant’s Revolt many Swiss and German anabaptists migrated towards Moravia and the Netherlands. These became known as the Hutterites, the Mennonites, and in America, the Old Order Amish.
The English Baptists (continued HERE)…
- On September 19, 2023, Mark Dever publicly apologized for overstating his position and deriding his paedobaptist friends in a conversation with Jonathan Leeman and Kevin DeYoung. The audio is available here: https://www.9marks.org/conversations/on-pastoral-public-tone-with-kevin-deyoung-pastors-talk-ep-245/ ↩︎
- “Arise, O Lord, and judge your own cause … Listen to our prayers, for foxes have arisen seeking to destroy the vineyard whose winepress you alone have trod … The wild boar from the forest seeks to destroy it and every wild beast feeds upon it.” Exsurge Domine, Pope Leo X, June 15, 1520. ↩︎
- Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, 2nd Ed (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995), 247-252; The Reminiscences of George Blaurock, in The Hutterite Chronicles (1542). ↩︎
- Balthasar Hubmaier, “Eighteen Theses Concerning the Christian Life,” in Balthasar Hubmaier: Theologian of Anabaptism (ed. H. Wayne Pipkin and John H. Yoder; Scottdale: Herald Press, 1989), 32. ↩︎