Page 5296 – Christianity Today (2025)

Unlisted Spiritual Gifts

I think the apostle Paul missed a few good bets when he was putting together his list of spiritual gifts.

In our congregation, the gift of procrastination ranks way ahead of such things as prophecy and preaching. Our board of trustees, for example, has managed to postpone repairing the church roof for two years by convincing the congregation that rainwater actually helps weather hardwood floors. Now that’s a gift!

Most evident, too, among our membership is the gift of buck passing. Why didn’t Grandma Goodwin get the customary African violet when she was hospitalized? Because the pastor didn’t notify the deaconesses, because the “Violet Request Form” hadn’t been reprinted, because the mimeograph machine wasn’t working, because the church secretary hadn’t ordered a replacement part, because the line was always busy when she tried to call.

Then there’s the gift of hindsight. (How could Paul have overlooked that one?) With 20/20 rear vision, virtually every member of our congregation can tell you we should have added a Sunday school wing to the church 15 years ago when prices were a fourth of what they are today.

“Procrastination, buck passing, and hindsight, and the greatest of these is …”—on second thought, I think I’ll stick with Paul’s list.

EUTYCHUS

Marriage: Agape Love

John Stott’s excellent article on “Homosexual ‘Marriage’” [Nov. 22] may need the contribution agape can bring to it. Not only is heterosexual marriage a true ideal because of the nature of man and our original creation, it is also the only sexual relationship sanctioned by the meaning of love as agape.

The one-flesh love of husband and wife is said to be agape; “God is agape”; and “agape love never fails.” This powerful truth illuminates the darkness in which the homosexual invert finds himself.

ROBERT J. WIELAND

Chula Vista, Calif.

The facts of biology buttress the contention that heterosexuality is prescriptively natural and normal and homosexuality is prescriptively unnatural and abnormal. Those who mistakenly think homosexuality is natural and normal fail to make significant and much-needed distinctions between human beings and animals, between prescriptive and descriptive normality, between (what Emerson termed) “the law for man” and “the law for thing.”

HAVEN BRADFORD GOW

Arlington Heights, Ill.

Stott’s article censuring homosexual “marriage” is disturbing. To me, it is incredibly arrogant to decide on God’s behalf which acts of disobedience he will and will not tolerate in born-again Christians: namely, the supposed disobedience of Stott’s homosexual brothers and sisters in Christ.

REV. HAROLD E. BOWER

Cassadaga, N.Y.

I feel indebted to Mr. Stott for his careful and thorough arguments on both sides of the homosexuality question. He comes refreshingly close to acknowledging homosexual orientation in and of itself as an unchosen fact of life for many Christians and therefore outside the realm of morality. However, I don’t see that Paul’s line of reasoning in Romans 13 supports Stott’s contention that “love needs law to guide it.” I find just the opposite to be true.

Yes, I believe Paul objected to homosexuality, and he also regarded women as inferior and Roman slavery as okay. Why is it so inconceivable for evangelical Christians to see Paul’s vision of the gospel as necessarily limited in scope?

PHILIP R. KELLER

Davis, Calif.

Long-standing Christian abhorrence of homosexuality is heightened by the AIDS problem. Militant demands that Christians accept behavior they hate compounds these strong feelings. Some church leaders who rationalize and condone homosexual behavior add to the confusion. We Christians must struggle with morality while holding the door open to all who will hear Christ’s gospel. Christ died for the sins of all but made a clear call for sinners to repent and leave their sinful baggage behind. When homosexuals deny the sinfulness of their behavior, we are stymied in attempts to reach them.

STEPHEN W. EDMONDSON, M.D.

Atlanta, Ga.

Using The Common Cup

The news item on the abandonment of the common cup by a Lutheran seminary [Nov. 22] included a quote from a layman, which gave the rationale for the seminary’s decision. In the Episcopal Church, competent medical authorities have studied the issue repeatedly. No one has ever traced a case of disease communicated through the common cup.

THE REV. PIERRE WHALON

All Souls’ Episcopal Church

North Versailles, Pa.

Rogerian Good

I read with interest your recent articles responding to Dr. Carl Rogers and his influence in the Christian world [“Carl Rogers’s Quiet Revolution,” Nov. 8]. I fear Dr. Roberts did not read Dr. Rogers’s book to have made such a statement as, to “become … Rogerian is to cut oneself off from a necessary condition for becoming a mature, complete person—that of being responsible to others.” So why is nearly the last third of the book On Becoming a Real Person devoted to relationships, family, educational, even national?

I have become a more mature wife, mother, and friend because of Rogerian therapy. I am grateful for the love or “empathy” I experience because Dr. Rogers shared his abilities. I believe every good gift is from God, and this has been good in my life.

CAROL DAUGHERTY

Fredonia, N.Y.

Thank you for the articles by William Kirk Kilpatrick and Robert C. Roberts. Their clear articulation of the Rogerian psychology and its antithesis of Christianity was timely and very profitable.

DR. H. HILDEBRAND

Caronport, Sask., Canada

I found the articles mean-spirited. I regretted that I had read them—rather like listening to gossip. In contrast, how magnanimous the spirit of Paul Tournier, who speaks warmly and with enthusiasm of the contributions of Freud, Jung, and others to the understanding of human psychology.

MARILYN KANICH

Munster, Ind.

CT has performed a great service in analyzing the seductive and devastating theses of Carl Rogers, the former President of the American Psychological Association.

JOHN A. HOWARD, President

The Rockford Institute

Rockford, Ill.

I was struck by Kilpatrick’s statement that “psychologists have never been able to keep their noses out of religion.” I agree, but I feel that the reverse is also true—that religion has never (at least lately) been able to keep its nose out of psychology.

This is not to say the church should keep her hands off healing broken minds and relationships, but we should recognize and label the difference between Christian faith and psychotherapy. They are not interchangeable. Mixing the two indiscriminately could be a subtle and deadly way to forget the central Christ who calls us not to mental wholeness, but to eternal life.

CARRIE L. CRAWFORD

Leetonia, Ohio

It is incomprehensible to me that Roberts’s article could have been written by a professor of philosophy, and even more so from such a prestigious institution as Wheaton. If I’m going to be forced to choose between “pagan empathy” or “Christian love,” I’ll take empathy every time. I’ve tasted both and there is really no contest.

DONALD U. LONGNECKER

Dunkirk, N.Y.

One spin-off of any self-fulfillment philosophy is the increasing refusal of its adherents to answer honest questions. Apparently “guilt-free” means no obligation to respond to your fellows, only to listen. No need to debate, just wait out your opponent like a smiling, tolerant Buddha.

WILLIAM SCHULER, M.D.

Mendota, Ill.

I don’t understand: on page 23 it is stated that Carl Rogers is 75. So he must have been born in 1910. Then the line under his picture shows him on his honeymoon in 1924. He looks to be more than 12 years old in the picture with his wife.

SHELBY J. LIGHT

Long Beach, Calif.

He was either an early bloomer—or born in 1902, which Who’s Who in America more accurately states.

—Eds.

Thirty Years Overdue?

Thank you for the splendid piece on “The Sexual Hazards of Pastoral Care” [Nov. 8]. As a 64-year-old Baptist General Conference former pastor and denominational youth executive, I am seeing some of my peers—only a few, not many, fortunately—fall by the way-side because of this problem. If only you had written this article 30 years ago, and they had read it, perhaps their troubles would not have happened.

GUNNER HOGLUND

Santa Clara, Calif.

A Precious Relationship Lost

“Three Women out of Four” by LaVonne Neff on widows in the church is accurate and timely [Nov. 8]. For the word “widow” you could substitute “divorcee”—for we, too, have grieved deeply the loss of life’s most precious relationship.

RUTH STERLING HOFFMAN

Durham, N.C.

I am a new widow—of a pastor. When a person of our church dies, the family calls the pastor. When the pastor dies, who does the pastor’s wife call? I could think of no one! I had to wait upon the Lord to see whom he would bring in my time of need. It’s rough being a widow.

MARGERY W. CHARLES

Gardner, Mass.

The idea of a widow’s support group in the church must be discussed and plans for it laid before there is one widow to be served. Yet there is a kindred group that is overlooked when the subject comes up: widowers, particularly those with small children. I know, because for six-and-one-half years I was there.

FRED MARKANT, JR.

Ramsey, N.J.

A Kantzer Home Run

Kantzer has hit a homer. His editorial “In Search of Heroes” [Nov. 8] has properly placed the bulk of the responsibility for the loss of integrity in American athletics, not upon the athletes themselves, but upon society as a permissive audience. After all, it was we who made Mary Lou Retton an expert on batteries.

KEVIN HALL

Blaine, Wash.

We have a problem in the athletic world because the attitudes of many Christian leaders discourage Christian young people from getting the proper education and training and entering the field of physical athletics. We must begin training Christian coaches in our colleges who understand physical education and athletics and who can integrate it with a Christian philosophy of education. If “athletes remain the principal role models of young Americans,” we cannot cut off from the Christian academic community the one field of study that can make an impact in this area.

I am one of only three physical education majors on the 55-man travel squad that played my senior season in the Orange Bowl. I am a Christian who believes there is something wrong in the educational system, and I am determined to do something about it and not leave the athletic field and the gym to the rule of Satan.

J. WALTER MILLET, JR.

West, Tex.

Kantzer has a historically inadequate view of sport in the “good old days” as well as an opposing selective perception of the “bad new days.” Has sport changed? Yes and no, but nowhere to the degree he suggests. Sport is a strange mixture of myth and reality, and the reality has a seamy side we would prefer not to notice. Perhaps the only change Kantzer has noted, but inadequately assessed, is that sport in 1985 is less an arena of idealized projection and fantasy within American society than it once was. Our selective memory has played tricks on us again.

JAMES MATHISEN

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

Redaction Criticism: A Helpful Discussion

Thank you for the CT Institute on redaction criticism [Oct. 18]. I felt the discussion was extremely helpful and balanced. These are issues with which evangelicals must wrestle, and I appreciate your time and energy in helping pastors and other leaders think this one through.

RICHARD J. FOSTER

Friends University

Wichita, Kan.

It concerns me that we have compassed the circle once more. Are the “scholars” again telling the lay Christian he cannot understand the Scriptures without their first digesting it? Are we, then, after two millennia, at terminus ad guem or terminus a quo? God help us have a sense of humor—or must someone redact this too?

JOHN GILLMARTIN

Alta Loma, Calif.

Thanks for including Bob Thomas’s clear, concise, and insightful comments. His view provided at least token balance in an otherwise unanimous approval of evangelical use of redaction criticism.

One is at a loss to understand why this redaction “baby,” conceived and nurtured by liberals, has been mutilated and then adopted by evangelicals. Why did Matthew, Mark, and John need to redact someone else’s material when they were eyewitnesses of the events whose memories were supernaturally activated by the Holy Spirit to recall “all” that Jesus said?

NORMAN L. GEISLER

Dallas Theological Seminary

Dallas, Tex.

Why not a layman’s opinion: How ridiculous can a group of professors get? As the saying goes, “The only reason for the giraffe being what it is, it must have been put together by a committee.” To me, redaction criticism has the same effect as giving a child a knife and telling him to see if he can find what is in his toy drum that makes it go “boom-boom-boom.”

VERNON HOLST

Newell, S.D.

At issue is “biblical inerrancy.” This doctrine necessitates that every line of Scripture have the same level of truth; none can be given any weight greater than any other. Redaction criticism, like form criticism before it, gave greater weight to “the earlier source,” if not directly at least by implication.

Redaction criticism leads to heresy from the fundamentalist, evangelical view. This kind of Christianity, like any authoritarian system, cannot stand heresies.

KENNETH H. BONNELL

Los Angeles, Calif.

Several years ago I “invented” the following definition: The Bible is an imperfect tool in the hands of God to lead us to The Perfect Solution. You see, no matter how perfect the Bible would be, if it did not have in it The Perfect Solution we would still be dead. It seems like a corporate effort, God watching over what really matters versus the writers displaying their own individuality. It makes sense to me.

H. D. SCHMIDT

Pleasant Hill, Calif.

More Babies To Adopt?

In the article “Where Have All the Babies Gone?” [Oct. 18], the premise seemed to be that infertile couples “need” a baby. We may feel that we need many things, including children, but are we willing to accept that infertility may be in God’s will for our lives in much the same way that some are called to be single?

As Christians we must examine our motives in the prolife movement. Do we really believe that abortion must be stopped because we believe in the sanctity of human life created by God, or do we hope that the Roe v. Wade decision will be reversed so there will be more babies to adopt?

JEAN STRATING

Gainesville, Fla.

In the article, Bill Pierce’s comparison of open adoption to open marriage is a blatant misrepresentation of the issue. Closed adoption has not adequately addressed the needs of many people. It has perpetuated unresolved grieving on the birth-parents’ part, and made it difficult for adoptees to be at peace with their adoptive identity when the circumstances surrounding the adoption are shrouded in secrecy and mystery. How much healthier to give the various parties in the adoption the option of openness.

RACHEL BUBLITZ

Christian Adoption and Family Services

Anaheim, Calif.

Evaluating Rock

I found your guilt-by-association article on Amy Grant most disturbing [Oct. 18]. What is this bit of editorializing doing in your “News” section? Who are the “many Christian listeners” who “reacted negatively” to Unguarded? Who defines what “hard-edged” rock is? Such a subjective issue as what constitutes “rock” is difficult to categorize and evaluate.

MICHAEL R. SAIA

Sunland, Calif.

Praise God for young women like Amy Grant. When Amy crossed over the charts, my girls were so excited to be able to tell their friends at public school that this great sound with the beautiful message was one of their favorite Christian artists, and no one could call it boring!

NANCY RODDY

Mt. Pleasant, Pa.

Growing Christian Smugness?

Thank you for the excellent editorial by Cornelius Plantinga [“The Justification of Rock Hudson,” Oct. 18]. His amazing way with words riveted me to my seat as I read, and then reread, the editorial. But most important, in relating this story current in our thinking, he also calls the current furor a nutrient for growing Christian smugness. Keep up the good work—and while you’re at it, have Dr. Plantinga write another editorial soon.

REV. GORDON L. LYLE

United Presbyterian Church

Follansbee, W. Va.

It was the summer of ’83, and John Naisbitt’s Megatrends was a best-seller. I happened to be on assignment covering a board meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals and found myself with some 20 denominational executives gathered for morning devotions and prayer. Leading our time together was Thomas McDill, president of the Evangelical Free Church of America. His text was Matthew 16:1–4.

From Christ’s discourse on “the signs of the times,” Tom began to challenge each of the leaders present by deftly drawing a series of critical connections between Naisbitt’s trends and the future effectiveness of the church. I sensed that for many there, the importance of that book’s message left America’s corporate offices and, for the first time, entered denominational headquarters.

The need for accurate reading of today’s “signs of the times” prompted the Christianity Today Institute to identify the ten trends (five inside the church, five outside) that are the focal points of the special supplement beginning on page 63. Taken together, we believe they present a clear and exciting challenge for the church as it moves into the twenty-first century.

HAROLD SMITH, Managing Editor

Some people think that Christian monasticism began in the sixth century with Benedict of Nursia and his Rule of Life. But in fact it goes back far beyond that, to a time before there were monasteries, even before the 'desert fathers' of the third century. Monasticism, as a recognizable and named phenomenon in the church, has no official beginning, no official foundings. It emerged, in several places at once, as a spontaneous development from the various forms of the ascetic life: the tradition of strong self-discipline which had taken shape in the church from the very beginning.

The most striking features of monasticism, the renunciation of marriage and the renunciation of wealth, go back to the New Testament. The apostle Paul recommended celibacy, in his first letter to the Corinthians, on the grounds that 'the unmarried man worries about the things of the Lord and how to please the Lord, but the married man worries about the things of the world and how to please his wife, so he is torn in two'. And this is a theme which is developed in subsequent literature, Fallen mankind is at odds with himself; one of the blessings of redemption is an inner reconciliation, and , for that matter, a reconciliation between body and soul. Redeemed people can become 'single' again. This is almost certainly one of the original meanings of the word 'monk': a monk is a 'single', undivided man, and a 'single', solitary man. A romantic notion developed too, that since we are married to the Lord, there is no room for any other kind of marriage. In particular, if as Paul says the body is the Lord's, it would be wrong to enter into carnal union with anyone else.

Another important strand in early Christian asceticism strand in early Christian asceticism probably goes back to the instructions which Jesus gave to the preachers he sent out to proclaim the kingdom of God, taking no provisions for their journey as they went. By the end of the first century, at least some people seem to have been taking these instructions as covering a whole lifetime of services as apostles. We hear of apostles touring around preaching the gospel, actually forbidden to stay in the same place for more than two days at a time. Their lifestyle would obviously exclude the possibility of any normal home life.

Many of the early Christians expected that Jesus Christ would return to earth in their lifetime, and this provided another reason of opting out of the ordinary practices of human society. Paul had to rebuke some of the Thessalonians for refusing to work on the grounds that they were waiting for the end. But he himself said that, because the end is near, we should either abstain from marriage or, if married, be as if we were not married.

Ready for battle

There was also, from time to time, the threat of martyrdom. Many people, realized that, if it came to the crunch, a radical choice would have to be made between enjoying prosperity in this world and being faithful to Jesus Christ. So being detached from the good things of the world-even renouncing them completely-was seen as a sensible preparation for martyrdom, should the need arise. As the threat of martyrdom receded, ascetic renunciation came to be seen as a kind of substitute for martyrdom. Some people even went so far as to commit suicide as a kind of bid for do-it-yourself martyrdom'.

On a more down-to-earth level, some people were without the comfort of marriage through no choice of their own. From very early on the windows in the church seem to have been recognized as a class of their own, and before long they were joined by virgins who gave up their right to be married, and by celibate men too. In some places, they seem to have become a semi-official body of full-time church workers.

Practices such as these began in a straightforward way, called for by circumstances. But not surprisingly they developed a more ideological interpretation, which in turn led to new practices.

One probably very early idea was that the church is engaged in a Holy War between the forces of God and the forces of Satan, and that therefore the rules for the Holy War apply, which are laid down in Deut. 20 (the newly married are excused military service). The Lord's crack troops must be caught out like that, but must be people who are unafraid and free from the distraction of family and property, so that they can go bravely into battle. The theme of battle against demons is all pervasive in Egyptian monasticism.

Another idea which became prevalent in monasticism for centuries was that of weeping. In the Syriac language, weeping is actually a technical term for monks. This probably grew out of a Jewish practice of undertaking a life of austerity as a token of grief for the fall of the Holy City. Some Christians extended this and saw the ascetic life as a life of sorrow for the sins of the world. This could easily be narrowed down into a life of sorrow for one's own personal sins.

The habit of wandering, presumably begun at first as an apostolic necessity, acquired a new value as a sign of the belief that Christians are pilgrims and sojourners on the earth. And it could be given a sharper edge by the belief that the structures of this world, not least its financial structures, are largely controlled by the devil. So we find some ascetics rejecting civilization entirely. This seems to have combined in some circles with the belief that Jesus restores us to the conditions of the first paradise, and so some ascetics, for example, practiced nudism (like-Adam) and ate only food that was naturally available, rejecting both agriculture and cooking.

Some of the resulting practices were bizarre if not dangerous. And the rejection of the world could easily lead towards a dualistic belief-the material world as such is evil-and away from the orthodox belief, that God created a fundamentally good world. But in principle the ascetics were after something of real value. They sought a way of escaping from the domination of worldly society and the ways in which society defines what it means to be human, so that God's original plan for mankind could be rediscovered.

By the third and fourth centuries, at least some ascetics had become important focal points for a vision of humanity and even of society quite independent of conventional social, political and economic factors. Some monks in fact acquired considerable power precisely because of their position outside society. Not m, political and economic factors. Some monks in fact acquired considerable power precisely because of their position outside society. Not merely were they credited with supernatural powers (which they usually exercised in the interests of the poor, the sick and victims of injustice) but their radical independence enabled them to intervene with great authority even in public affairs of church and state. The holy man became an institution to be reckoned with.

Desert fathers

Publicity, however, carries its own dangers. The pioneers of the monasticism which became the classic model for ever after, the monasticism of the Egyptian desert, seem increasingly to have moved away from the ideal of the public, wonder-working, powerful holy man. Instead they stressed humility. The wonder-working monk surrounded by his devotees came now to be seen as a typical example of vanity. And the plea of usefulness to others came to be regarded with suspicion. When I was young, one monk said, I said to myself that I would do good. But now that I am old, I perceive that I have not on single good deed in me.

The desert fathers' also rejected the ideal of wandering, and adopted the practice of simple manual work, designed to occupy the monk's time and to earn his living. Instead of the entirely uncircumscribed life of (alleged) continual prayer, they recommended a balanced life of prayer and work, with a market emphasis on stability within the cell.

The most famous of the desert fathers is Anthony the Great, often, rather exaggeratedly, called the founding father of monasticism. He retired to the desert in about 285; inspired, according to his biographer, Athanasius, by the texts 'If you would be perfect, go, sell all you have and come follow me', and Take on thought for the morrow. The very schematic account which Athanasisus gave shows how Anthony withdrew progressively further into the desert, and how he disentangled himself from evil. This evil confronted him first of all in the form of the temptation of irrelevant good works, then in the form of lust, then in the form of terrifying demonic emanations which did considerable damage to his body, and finally, helplessly, in the form of grotesque apparitions which could not harm him and which he mocked with hymns and psalms. After a long time on his own he eventually emerged again, and became a teacher. People were amazed to see that he was in perfect health of body and soul. He exhorted his disciples not to be afraid of demons, and not to imagine that virtue is difficult and alien.

In the wake of Anthony, a large number of men and some women too adopted the life of hermits in the desert. Most of them lived in settlements, with churches and priests, and they visited each other for advice and discussion, but in formal and un-programmed ways.

Further south, Pachomius (who died in 346) developed a rather different kind of monasticism, organized in monastic communities, which in time produced fixed monastic rules and government. But in both forms of monasticism the major concern was with the ascetic struggle against the vices, a struggle carried on chiefly on the basis of continual self-awareness. Pay attention to yourself, was a favorite slogan.

By staying in their cells, resisting all distracting thoughts and refusing all religious or spiritual pretentiousness, they hoped to become aware of exactly what was going on (discernment) so that they could escape from the insidious wiles of the demons and from all that is contrary to the true God-given functioning of human life. Their austerities, exaggerated though some of them may seem to the modern reader, were never meant to be an end in themselves; they were meant to provide the conditions within which the monk could discover by experience what a real, redeemed human being is like. In particular their poverty and unprotectedness were meant to make them totally dependent on God. The most disastrous mistake, in their view was to attempt to set up some kind of identity for themselves, some kind of life for themselves apart from God's gift.

Although the desert fathers, at least the more articulate of them, whose words survive, showed a considerable expertise in psychology and were refreshingly down to earth (If you see someone going to heaven by his own self-will grab his leg and pull him down again) they still essentially left the onus of responsibility on the individual monk.

But not everyone is capable of taking this responsibility. We find in later generation of monks much more tendency to regard it as essential for the young monk to have spiritual father, whom he will obey and whose teaching he will follow in everything. And this process led to a blurring of the distinction between cenobites (monks living in community) and the hermits. In the Greek church it became normal for a monk to begin in a monastic community and then move on to being a hermit.

Towards a rule of life

The Egyptian father's insistence on humility and self-knowledge meant that they played down social responsibility;-It is no good ruining your own house in order to build someone else's. In Palestine, Jerome (died 420) distinguished between monks and others on just this basis:- There are two ways of winning a fight. Monastic life is a deliberate running away from the risks of a more involved life. Even missionary activity is shunned: It is a monk's business to weep, not to teach.

Not everyone accepted this. Basil of Caesarea (died 379) reformed monasticism in some parts of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and turned it into something much more like present-day religious communities devoted to good works. And others followed suit. But this was the exception rather than the norm.

In the churches of the Western Mediterranean, there were several independent developments. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) formed his cathedral clergy into a monastic community, an example taken up later in the Canons Regular. And in Gaul there was a monastic movement, associated chiefly with Martin of Tours (died 397), which was closer to the public holy man rejected in Egypt. But fairly quickly the Egyptian model was introduced, especially by John Cassian (died 435), leading to a more secluded form of monasticism. Cassian's influence made for a monasticism more hidebound by its traditions. He was less prepared to trust individuals, whether as learners or as teachers, preferring a more impersonal tradition, expressed in conventional practices and doctrines.

The process of tidying up went much further with the anonymous author of The Rule of the Master in the early sixth century. His aim was to take away all initiative from his monks and to make as many decisions as possible at the outset once and for all. The monks were supervised the whole day long. It was clearly assumed that any independence allowed to them would simply be abused.

This brings us to the time of the greatly influential Benedict of Nursia. He largely followed the Master, though with a rather less suspicious attitude. He did not snoop on his monks the whole time, but was clearly concerned to regulate their life fairly thoroughly, giving them a balanced diet of prayer, manual labour and readings. His Rule is famous for its equilibrium, but, as he himself recognized, it did not make for the higher adventures of the Christian life. It was a rule for beginners, as he said, and he presumably expected people to progress beyond it as hermits, though this never in fact became normal in Benedictine circles.

The organized monasteries of the West played an important role. They were oases of Christian civilization in a world relapsing into barbarism. And they provided an opportunity for people to escape from the temptations and distractions of life in the world to concentrate on serving God. Yet undoubtedly something had been lost. The earlier monastic adventure of self-discovery, renouncing all security for the sake of the gospel had faded into the background. In its place came something more mundane: an accepted monastic definition of life, with considerable material and spiritual security.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

‘All change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should’ still be living in caves/ Professor Taylor’s judgment summarizes the theme of this book, which is an illustrated guide to radical movements in Christian history.

The twenty-one chapters cover a remarkable range of movements. What connects Francis and his friars with William Booth and his Salvation Army? Is there any conceivable link between the exuberance of today’s Pentecostals and the sober austerity of the desert monks seventeen centuries before them? The thread that holds them together is that they have all acted as ‘ginger groups’ within the Christian church. Each movement has had something fresh and important to say, which the established church has not been fully open to hear. But in the end each distinctive message has penetrated the fabric of worldwide Christianity and made a lasting impact on the world.

Why have these movements put their stamp on the church and society, so that we remember them, while others never really broke through? This book suggests several possible answers. And a deeper knowledge of these and other movements (which space excluded) would refine those answers. But the crux is people.

Each movement has thrown up key personalities, who shaped its development. There is plenty in this book about people such as Martin Luther, John Wesley, Dietrich Bonhoeffer – all rugged nonconformists who have permanently changed the way we see things. But thousands of ordinary people threw in their lot with these groups, and this book is about them too. What was it like to be a follower of John Hus in fifteenth-century Bohemia, for example? What gave these people such joy in their beliefs and such courage in face of persecution? Where did they find the freedom to live as their consciences led them?

They would answer that it all came ultimately from believing in Jesus of Nazareth. In the words of the Shaker hymn:

It’s a gift to be simple,
It’s a gift to be free.

Heritage of Freedom is a celebration of that gift, in many of the different ways it has been received and experienced through the centuries.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

England in the 1790s was in the grip of a mixture of fear and excitement: fear, because just across the Channel in France a revolution had not only overthrown the monarchy, but seemed bent on destroying the Christian religion as well; mounting excitement, because Christians felt nonetheless that these upheavals might herald great events. Reports from France and later from Italy suggested that the days of the Roman Catholic Church – the Roman ‘Babylon’ to English Protestants – might be numbered. Further afield. Captain James Cook’s voyages had made Englishmen aware of exotic lands scarcely known before.

In England itself, Christians were praying. Starting in 1784, first Baptists and then other nonconformists throughout the Midlands had been meeting for one hour on the first Monday of every month to pray for a revival which would lead to the spread of the gospel ‘to the most distant parts of the habitable globe’. Confronted by political upheaval, widening geographical horizons and the new currents of spiritual life brought by the Evangelical Awakening, committed Christians began to suspect that God was about to do something radically new. Was the day prophesied in the Bible drawing near, the day ol Christ’s return? A young Northamptonshire shoemaker named William Carey believed that it was, if only God’s people persevered in their new commitment to prayer and began to translate that commitment into action.

Carey had few obvious qualifications for the role he was about to fulfil. He was born in 1761 to a poor weaver in the villageof Paulerspury. Largely self-educated, Carey became an apprentice shoemaker and, under the influence of a fellow apprentice, abandoned his Anglican family background to identify himself with the nonconformists. He was baptized in 1783 and two years later became the pastor of a small Baptist church, supplementing his meagre stipend with school-teaching and work as a journeyman shoemaker.

From his boyhood Carey had been a voracious reader. At about the time of his baptism he read Captain Cook’s Voyages-‘the first thing that engaged my mind to think of missions’, he later recalled. Above his work-bench hung a world map which he annotated with all the information he could discover regarding the different countries of the non-Christian world. The spiritual state of those countries became his preoccupation. His friend Andrew Fuller records how Carey’s heart ‘burned incessantly with desire for the salvation of the heathen’.

Few Christians of his day shared Carey’s burning sense of responsibility for the millions who had never heard about Jesus Christ. At the fraternal meeting of the Northamptonshire Association of Baptist ministers in 1785, Carey raised for discussion the question, ‘Was not the command given to the Apostles, to teach all nations, obligatory on all succeeding ministers to the end of the world, seeing that the accompanying promise was of equal extent?’ This was a novel interpretation of Jesus’ command to preach the gospel to the world.

Protestants had always insisted that the office of apostle had been given forth? first century only, and that it was to the apostles that the Great Commission had been given. If God chose to convert the heathen, he would have to do so by conferring the same miraculous gifts which had accompanied the preaching of the gospel in the apostolic age and had died out with its passing. Carey’s impertinent question therefore received a less than enthusiastic response.

Faced with such complacency, Carey began in 1788 to plan a pamphlet setting out his conviction that the commission to ‘preach the gospel to every creature’ was obligatory on all Christians for all time; it was therefore the ‘bounden duty’ of the church in his day to attempt to bring the message of salvation in Christ to the whole world. Even Carey’s closest ministerial associates – Andrew Fuller, John Sutcliff and John Ryland – still raised objections ‘on the ground of so much needing to be done at home, etc.’, yet they urged him to get his pamphlet written. It eventually appeared on 12 May 1792 under the elaborate title An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens: in which the religious state of the different nations of the world, the success of former undertakings, and the practicability of further undertakings, are considered.

The key words in the title were ‘Obligations’and ‘Means’. If the command of Christ to preach the gospel to every creature was still binding, and if the biblical prophecies were true which spoke of God’s purpose being to extend the kingdom of his Son among men, then, argued Carey, all Christians ought ‘heartily to concur with God in promoting his glorious designs’.

In their praying together, Christians had begun to fulfil the first condition for the outpouring of God’s Spirit. What was now required was for them to do something about obtaining what they were praying for. It was no good sitting back expecting some miracle of providence to transport them across the world and equip them with foreign tongues. No, those Christians who had caught the missionary vision should organize themselves into a society to send missionaries and support them in their evangelistic work.

The Enquiry may have convinced the intellect, but Carey needed to move Christian hearts as well as persuade Christian minds. His opportunity came on 30 May 1792 when he was to preach to the Northamptonshire Baptist Association at Nottingham. Carey chose as his text words from Isaiah: ‘Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes . . .’ Carey saw a parallel between the centuries-old plight of the exiled nation of Judah-apparently forgotten by God-and the unproductive and desolate church of his own day; in the biblical promise of a new and wider destiny for Judah lay the promise of countless new members of the Christian family to be drawn from all over the world. Once again, however, Carey insisted that God’s promise was also his command. God was about to do great things by extending the kingdom of Jesus throughout the nations, and therefore Christians must attempt great things in taking the gospel to the world: ‘Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.’

John Ryland found Carey’s exposition so forcible that he would not have been surprised ‘if all the people had lifted up their voice and wept’. Yet when it came to the business meeting the following morning nobody was willing to make a proposition. Carey seized Andrew Fuller by the hand in desperation, inquiring whether ‘they were again going away without doing anything?’ That was all that was required. Before the meeting dispersed the following resolution had been recorded in the minutes: ‘Resolved, that a plan be prepared against the next Ministers’ meeting at Kettering, for forming a Baptist Society for propagating the Gospel among the Heathen.’ The ‘Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Heathen’ – or, the Baptist Missionary Society, as it became known – was duly formed at Kettering on 2 October 1792.

‘So many obstacles’

William Carey landed in India at Calcutta with his wife and four children on 7 November 1793. If he had any illusions about the magnitude of his task, they were quickly dispelled. Though agreeably surprised by the readiness of the Hindus to listen to Christian preaching, Carey soon realized that the caste system – ‘perhaps . . . one of the strongest chains with which the devil ever bound the children of men’-would prove a formidable obstacle to a Hindu being converted.

Discouragements accumulated rapidly. Money was short. By January 1794 Carey’s wife was already exhibiting signs of the mental illness which was to last for the rest other life, and in September of that year they lost their third son with dysentery. Carey’s missionary colleague, John Thomas, took to living in grand style and fell into debt.

In 1795 Carey had his first taste of criticism from domestic supporters. Faced with an almost total absence of financial supplies from England, Carey had accepted a post as manager of an indigo factory. This provided him and his family with a regular means of support, and also money to spare to devote to missionary purposes. Some English Baptists, however, were quick to criticize Carey for ‘engaging in affairs of trade’, and even his associates on the home committee dispatched a letter ‘full of serious and affectionate caution’.

The pages of Carey’s journal reflect his mounting sense of discouragement. ‘When I first left England,’ he wrote in April 1794, ‘my hope of the conversion of the heathen was very strong; but among so many obstacles it would utterly die away, unless upheld by God, having nothing to cherish it.’ Carey came to rely increasingly on the promises of the Bible: ‘Yet this is our encouragement, the power of God is sufficient to accomplish everything which he has promised, and his promises are exceedingly great and precious respecting the conversion of the heathens.’

Carey had to wait seven years to see the promise of God come to fruition in his first converts. On 22 December 1800 at Serampore, the Danish settlement which had been the home of the mission since the previous January, four Hindus came to faith in Christ. One of them, Krishna Pal, was baptized the following Sunday; the others followed later.

William Ward, who, together with Carey and Joshua Marshman, now made up the famous ‘Serampore Trio’, wrote jubilantly in his journal: ‘Brother C. has waited till hope of his own success has almost expired: and after all. God has done it with perfect ease! Thus the door of faith is opened to the gentiles; Who shall shut it?’ At first, few followed the example of Krishna Pal and the others, but by 1821 the missionaries had baptized a total of 1,407 converts, about half of whom were Indian nationals.

Ahead of his time

William Carey never returned to his native land. By the time of his death in 1834, the missionary movement from Britain had acquired a dynamic far greater than the impetus deriving from its original power. Yet it would be wrong to cast Carey in the role of a pioneer overtaken by the movement he initiated. Rather, he was a forerunner whose missionary vision displayed a breadth and boldness which frequently embarrassed his contemporaries and immediate successors. At the heart of that vision was the conviction that the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ was the chief duty of the church and the only hope of salvation for the world.

Carey discovered from his early ventures in missionary preaching that denigrating Hinduism or Islam was counterproductive, and accordingly urged younger missionaries to ‘keep as close as possible to the pure gospel of Jesus’. Victorian missionaries retained Carey’s confidence in the power of a simple, evangelical gospel, but did not always heed his warnings against adopting too negative a stance towards other religions.

Carey was convinced that the work of evangelism in India was dependent on the translation of the Bible into the major Indian languages. The translated Bible would be an evangelistic force in its own right, leading to ‘the extinction of immorality and oppression, and the establishment of liberty, righteousness and peace’. As it happened, such confidence was misplaced, but it did provide the inspiration for a translating achievement which no individual has ever repealed.

In 1806 Carey published proposals for translating the Bible into all the major Oriental languages. Even Andrew Fuller was sceptical, fearful that ‘by aiming at too much we may accomplish the less’. Nonetheless, Carey embarked on his grandiose project, with the assistance of Marshman and Ward. By 1826 Carey could claim primary responsibility for the translation of the entire Bible into six Oriental languages, and of parts of it into a further twenty- four languages. The Serampore translations were far from perfect, but they established the pattern for what has been one of the primary emphases of world evangelism ever since: the task of making the Bible available to everyone in their own language.

Carey’s literary endeavours were not, however, confined to the Bible. ‘The Trio’ also devoted their energies to translating and editing of sacred Hindu literature and to the compilation of grammars and dictionaries. Carey justified this policy by appeal to the example of Paul, who was able to employ his knowledge of Greek philosophy to good evangelistic effect when preaching in Athens. Missionaries, he believed, must be equipped to meet the educated Hindus on their own ground. Marshman also commented how galling it must be for Satan to see the profits from the publication of the ‘vile and destructive fables’ of Hindu literature being devoted to the work of Bible translation.

But Christians in England did not share this enthusiasm: such secular projects were, in Fuller’s view, ‘monstrous undertakings’ which diverted effort from more spiritual priorities. The literary undertakings of the Serampore missionaries were motivated by a confidence that the spread of general knowledge throughout India would loosen the bonds of Hindu ‘superstition’ and thus promote the advance of the Christian gospel. Education was therefore a proper part of the missionary’s work, for Hinduism had imprisoned Indian minds as well as Indian souls.

The vision of capturing the rising generation for Christ inspired the Trio to found schools, from 1800 onwards, for Indian children. Carey and his colleagues were pioneering a tradition of missionary involvement in education which has been of major significance throughout the Third World. In almost every case, such involvement originated in the same evangelistic ambition as motivated Carey.

These hopes have rarely been fulfilled; they were not fulfilled in India, and it was not long before voices both in India and in England were dismissing educational work as futile. In the long term, missionary education in India and Africa has had a consequence which Carey could never have foreseen: the recipients of mission education have been the pioneers of Indian and African independence.

A national church

The most enduring educational achievement of the Serampore Trio was the foundation in 1818 of Serampore College. Marshman was the driving force behind the project, but all three members of the Trio shared the vision which was set out in the college prospectus: ‘If the gospel stands in India, it must be by native being opposed to native in demonstrating its excellence above all other systems.’

The primary goal of the college was to train Indians to be missionaries to their own people. However, the educational opportunities of the college were open to all, whether Christian or not. Carey was impressed by how many of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation had been scholars, whose Christian learning gradually transformed the thinking of Catholic Europe.

Serampore College was intended to unleash ‘the Reformation of India.’But the Trio’s broad conception of a literary and scientific education founded on Christian principles found no echo in the minds of their superiors and supporters in England. English Baptists, who showed little enthusiasm for their own theological colleges, showed even less of an inclination to support a college in India which placed such emphasis on ‘unspiritual’ knowledge.

In terms of the exalted ideals of its founders, Serampore College was a failure. But its failure must not be allowed to overshadow the significance ofCarey’s motivating belief that India could be evangelized effectively only by Indians. This view was apparent in embryo in the Enquiry pamphlet of 1792, and by 1817 was fully explicit: ‘India will never be turned from her idolatry to serve the true and living God’, Carey wrote to John Ryland, ‘unless the grace of God rest abundantly on converted Indians to qualify them for mission work, and unless, by those who care for India, these be trained for and sent into the work. In my judgement it is on native evangelists that the weight of the great work must ultimately rest.’

After the baptism of Krishna Pal in 1800, the missionaries set out to encourage his gifts ‘to the uttermost so that he may preach the Gospel to his countrymen’, and Pal duly became an evangelist first in Calcutta, and then in Assam. By the date ofCarey’s death in 1834, the Serampore Mission had founded nineteen mission stations, manned by fifty ‘missionaries’, of whom only six had been sent out from Europe. Carey was deeply committed to giving responsibility to national Christians, thereby anticipating the principles of Henry Venn, Secretary of the Church Missionary Society from 1841 to 1872, who insisted that the goal of Western missions was to create national churches which were self-supporting, self-governing and self- extending.

Later in the nineteenth century, the ideals of Carey and Venn were eclipsed as missions succumbed to the influence of European colonialism and racialism. Indeed, even in Carey’s own day, other missionaries criticized Serampore for relying so heavily on Indian nationals. History has largely vindicated Carey’s view: countries where the church is strongest today are generally those where national Christians were encouraged from an early date to be evangelists to their own and neighboring peoples.

Lasting legacy

In his Enquiry, Carey had expressed the view that missionaries ought to take ‘every opportunity’ of doing good to the people to whom they were sent. Once in India, Carey was as good as his word, ready to engage in such diverse activities as translations of Hindu literature, educational work, medical care, attempts to improve agricultural methods, and political agitation for the removal of inhumane practices such assati (the custom of burning widows alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres). Carey’s ‘advanced’ conception of missionary work probably contributed to the unhappy estrangement between the Serampore missionaries and the Baptist Missionary Society which marred his later years. Carey himself regarded all aspects of his work as a direct response to the command of Christ ‘to endeavour by all possible methods to bring over a lost world to God’. Nothing less was required if God’s purpose was to be fulfilled – to destroy evil and establish the kingdom of Jesus among men.

William Carey made many Christians of his day feel uncomfortable. His insistence on taking the Great Commission at its face value embarrassed pious men for whom obedience to the missionary call seemed ludicrous and impracticable. His independent spirit in India alarmed more timid souls in England whose understanding of missionary work bore little relation to reality. Yet he did more than any other man to awaken the conscience of Protestant Christians to the spiritual need of millions worldwide who had never heard of Jesus Christ.

That was indeed a ‘great thing’ fora humble Northamptonshire shoemaker to attempt. But Carey made the attempt out of his confidence in a God who can do great things. Many of the countries where the Christian church is at its strongest and most alive today are the areas which witnessed this missionary activity in the nineteenth century – proof indeed that Carey’s confidence was not misplaced.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

During 1918 a semi-literate African called Simon Kimbangu had a vision. He had been converted to Christianity through the work of British Baptist missionaries and baptized by immersion in a local river. In his vision, Kimbangu received a call from God to be a prophet and a healer. Like the Old Testament prophet, Jonah, he ran away from his vision, leaving his small home village of Nkamba in the Congo (now Zaire) and trying to find a job in Leopoldville (modem-day Kinshasa).

But in 1921 he returned to the village he had fled from and began preaching and healing the sick. In six months his following grew to over 10,000 and stretchers were piled high wherever he went. One day, he stood on a hill near his village and prophesied that a large church would be built on it and that leaders from all over the world would come and worship there.

With the sudden growth of his following, Simon Kimbangu posed a threat to both the Belgian colonial government and the Roman Catholic Church. He was thought to be dangerously subversive. Kimbangu fled, but later gave himself up – only to be tried before a military tribunal, which was a travesty of justice. He was allowed no defence; after a flogging he was condemned to death. The Belgian king commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.

Kimbangu spent the whole of the rest of his life in prison. Deported to the other side of the country, he never saw his wife or three sons again. He died in 1951. His followers went underground. The movement he started was proscribed by the colonial administration and largely led by the prophet Kimbangu's wife. When it eventually emerged and was recongnized by the government after the overthrow of the colonial administration, it numbered several million members.

In 1969 the church now called Eglise de Jesus Christ sur la terre par le prophete Simon Kimbangu, applied for membership and was admitted to the World Council of Churches. On the hill of N’kamba a huge church has now been erected, and in November 1981 a party of church leaders from all over the world came there to worship with the Kimbanguists, so fulfilling the vision of sixty years before. The Kimbanguist Church now numbers over five million members and has expanded into neighbouring states such as Angola and modem Congo.

This particular church is the largest of the so-called African Independent Churches, which have sprung up throughout the continent. These churches can now claim a total of over twenty million adherents and are probably growing faster than any other churches in Africa. A recent survey has estimated that there are more than 6,000 such groups in Africa, with over 700 in Kenya alone. The African Independent Churches constitute one of the most remarkable phenomena of church growth in the twentieth century.

Home-grown religion

The key factor to understanding the emergence of these churches is undoubtedly the racial paternalism exercised by foreign missions in the period before Africans took over leadership of the mainline denominations. The local people wanted their own taboos and purification rites—not those dictated to them by Westerners.

One key issue was polygamy, a practice condemned by pre-war Western missionaries. Many of the earliest independent churches, particularly in West Africa, believed polygamy to be essentially 'African', and so practised it where it had been forbidden before. The Kimbanguist Church is exceptional in this respect—it has never permitted polygamy.

The African Independent Churches do not follow the pattern of the old European denominations. Doctrine and statements of faith are not their strong point: the Kimbanguist Church had to draw up a doctrinal statement before it could be admitted to the World Council of Churches. It is largely orthodox in its teaching on Christ and the Trinity, but still deviates from orthodox Western ways of thinking about the Holy Spirit. It has set up its own theological seminary which is staffed largely by the Swiss Reformed Church.

Not all the African Independent Churches are pentecostal or charismatic, but the majority reflect this emphasis. Most of them practise healing and exorcism—with speaking in tongues and prophecy having an important place in their church life. The prophet or healer took the place of the old tribal witch-doctors or medicine men. The fact that Western missionaries often did not believe in divine healing and prophesying, or gave a minor role to them, meant that Africans were encouraged to join the new independent churches which catered for these needs.

The African Independent Churches have moved outside the continent of Africa. There are, for example, Kimbanguist congregations in Paris and Brussels. There are also churches in Britain among African immigrants, particularly in Birmingham. In Africa itself, there is an interesting change in attitudes: many of the Independent Churches are now looking to the oldest African churches for inspiration and leadership, particularly the Ethiopian Orthodox and Egyptian Coptic Churches.

Some have joined the World Council of Churches and this has exposed them to influences from other traditions, an experience which has been mutually beneficial. The Independent Churches have sometimes blended Christian and animistic ideas in an unhealthy way. In throwing out Western cultural baggage they may have taken on board equally unhelpful or even harmful African religious baggage.

The Christians in these essentially indigenous churches have been called ‘the natural evangelists of Africa’ and undoubtedly have an important continuing role to play in the future shape of the Christian church in Africa.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

As its name suggests, the Moravian movement originated in Moravia, a province in present-day Czechoslavakia. At first an independent state, Moravia was taken into Bohemia under the flag of the German Empire in 1029. And it was in Bohemia that Jan Hus, one of the ‘pre-Reformation reformers’, led resistance to the Church of Rome and was finally martyred in 1415.

After his heroic death, a group who maintained his beliefs eventually formed a New Testament community at Kunwald. In 1457 they established what they called ‘The Church of the Brotherhood’. They were subsequently joined by others of similar outlook and their title then became Unitas Fratrum (The Unity of the Brethren) or, more usually, the Moravians. Their numbers grew so rapidly that by the early seventeenth century it was claimed that more than half the Protestant population of Europe had been won over to them. When the Bohemians were defeated soon after the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, many of the Moravians had to run for their lives. They were scattered all over Europe and some abandoned their faith. But a few held together, even in Bohemia – the ‘hidden seed’ for whom the first Moravian bishop, Jan Amos Comenius, prayed so fervently while exiled in Poland. His faith was to be vindicated in a most exciting fashion.

In 1715 there were signs of spiritual revival in Bohemia – both at Fulnek (where Comenius had ministered) and at Lititz. Then in 1722 two families named Neisser, led by Christian David (known as ‘the servant of the Lord’), left Bohemia for a settlement inSaxony provided for them by a Lutheran nobleman. Count Nikolaus ofZinzendorf. He placed his estate at Bertheldsdorfat their disposal. In the next seven years some 300 Protestant refugees made their way to (his haven from all parts of Germany, as well as from Bohemia and Moravia.

A community similar to the original one at Kunwald grew up. As Christian David felled a tree on the site with his carpenter’s axe, he repeated the words of the psalmist: ‘Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself- even your altars, 0 Lord of hosts.’The plot of land was situated on the Hutberg or Watch Hill, so the place was renamed Herrnhut – ‘the Lord’s Watch’. Johann Andreas Rothe was installed as pastor in the Lutheran church at Bertheldsdorf.

Renewal

It was in 1727 that the community had a most remarkable experience of God’s Holy Spirit, which prepared the Moravians for the crucial part they were to play in the Methodist revival. At a Sunday afternoon communion service, they were made aware of God’s renewing power to such an extent that, according to one account, they left ‘hardly knowing whether they belonged to earth or had already gone to heaven’.

The effects of this transforming experience were widespread.Zinzendorf himself abandoned his legal career to superintend the movement. The Moravians were to become the pioneer missionaries of the eighteenth century and prove a major influence in the Evangelical Awakening in England. Their worldwide evangelistic enterprise was soon launched and deserves an honoured place in the saga of modern missionary expansion.

In 1732 Leonard Doberand David Nitschmann began a work on the island ofSt Thomas in the Caribbean, and from that date onwards the range of Moravian missionary activity was extended to include other areas in the West Indies, North America, Greenland, Lapland, many parts of the South American and African continents, Persia (now Iran), India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the East Indies (Indonesia) and Australia. Considering the hazards of sea travel at the time, as well as the threats to health involved, the record is nothing short of heroic!

The Moravian impact on the evangelical revival in England was twofold. It was through meeting Moravian leaders such as August Spangenberg and Peter Bohler that John and Charles Wesley came to a full understanding of the gospel and experienced true conversion. But beyond that, from 1738 onwards, Moravians were intensely active in efforts to evangelize the whole of the nation. Starting in London itself, this initiative quickly spread to other areas. Yorkshire was to become a stronghold under Benjamin Ingham, while John Cennick, after fruitful missions in Wiltshire, spearheaded the campaign in Ireland.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

On a January evening in 1525, in the Zurich rooms of Felix Manz, one of the city's most promising Hebrew scholars, a remarkable event took place. An upper-class theology student named Conrad Grebel turned to a rough-hewn priest from the Tyrol, George Cajacob, and baptized him. Then, along with the other men gathered in the room (on this occasion there seem to have been no women present), Grebel received baptism from Cajacob. 'In the high fear of God' and with a deep bond of 'togetherness', the brothers then solemnly committed themselves to the Lord and to each other, and they emerged 'to teach and keep the faith'. With this event, the first believer's baptism since the church's early centuries, the Anabaptist movement began, and with it the nonconformist tradition within Protestantism.

What had compelled these men to take this extraordinary action? II was not simply their growing theological antipathy to infant baptism. More fundamentally, they were motivated by a desire for a more far-reaching reformation of the church in Zurich than the city council would allow. In the early stages of the Zurich reformation, it had not appeared that this would be an insuperable problem. Ulrich Zwingli, the city's reformer from 1519 onwards, had successfully coped with conservative opposition by both disputation and negotiation, and the Anabaptists-to-be were among his most committed supporters. They had been drawn to his message of faith and the centrality of the word and work of Christ. They had been stirred when he announced that 'to be a Christian is not to talk about Christ, but to walk as He walked.' They had been intrigued by his iconoclastic speculations, such as that 'it would be much better that children should have their. . . baptism when they reach an appropriate age'. With him they had studied the Bible in small house-fellowship-like 'schools'; and when he on Ash Wednesday 1522 had eaten 'forbidden fruit' (pork sausages) they had joined with him.

But by 1523 tensions were evident which two years later would lead to a parting of the ways. The City Councillors, sensing that changes had been taking place too fast for comfort, began to balk at new measures of reformation, such as the granting of the cup to the laity in the mass. Zwingli was inclined to hide his exasperation and to wait for the authorities to change their minds, but his radical disciples were less patient. At slake was an issue which they were gradually coming to see was fundamental. Whose decision should govern the life and policy of the church? The City Councillors or the Spirit of God speaking through the Bible? Zwingli's reluctant preference was for the former, so that religious change might take place responsibly and uniformly. For, according to customary medieval assumptions which Zwingli accepted, the religious unity of a territory was the guarantee of its civic welfare.

Those who felt that religious decisions should be taken by groups of earnest believers interpreting the Bible on their own, on the other hand, were entering uncharted territory. A new vision of the church was emerging among the Anabaptists-lo-be, tentatively, amid debate and deep inner searching. It would be a church, not of the multitudes, but of the 'few .. . believing and walking aright' on a path of social nonconformity; a church uncoupled from the state's coercion, and avoiding all participation in violence; a church of those who had chosen to be disciples and who would follow their Master into 'anguish and affliction'. In such a church there would be no place for what appeared to them to be the coerciveness of infant baptism.

Persecution and growth

Conrad Grebel had sensed that 'Christ must still suffer more in his members'. Shortly the movement of which he was a part discovered the reality of his premonition. A few hours before the first baptisms in January 1525, the Zurich City Council had forbidden the radicals to meet. From the very start therefore, their meetings were acts of civil disobedience.

As the Anabaptists began with missionary fervour to reach out into the surrounding areas – preaching, baptizing and forming congregations-they continued to encounter severe opposition from the civil authorities. When it was seen that imprisonment and banishment were ineffective in stemming the spread of Anabaptism, governments resorted to execution. In May 1525 the first Anabaptist was executed – by burning – by Catholic authorities in Schwyz. The first Anabaptist to be executed by Protestants was the Hebraist Felix Manz, in whose rooms that first baptism had happened. In early 1527 he was drowned in Zurich's Limmat River, protesting that those who executed him were 'destroying the very essence of Christianity'. Despite the severity of the repression and the fact that by 1529 most of the early Anabaptist leaders had died, in the early 1530s Zwingli's successor Bullinger was writing that 'people are running after them as if they were the living saints'.

By this time the movement was not confined to Switzerland. This was not solely because the Swiss Brethren had fanned out with their message into South Germany and the Tyrol and were soon to reach Moravia. At the same time, in response to similar circumstances, other groups of Anabaptists were springing into existence. Some of these, such as the South German congregations associated with the ex-Benedictine prior Michael Sattler and the theologian Balthasar Hubmaier, quickly established relationships of varying degrees of closeness with the Swiss Brethren. But others, in central Germany and the Netherlands, were too far afield to have had any connection whatsoever with the Swiss, and had apparently sprung up spontaneously.

This is not surprising, for the conditions which produced Anabaptism were common in many parts of Europe. Religious expectancy and restlessness were superimposed on a sense of economic grievance; in South Germany Anabaptism spread in the wake of the suppression of the Peasants' Revolt. In many places Anabaptism reflected disenchantment with the fruits of the official Reformation. According to one believer from Bern, among the Reformers, despite their doctrinal changes, 'true repentance and Christian love were not in evidence'.

Anabaptism also spread as a result of the tireless activity of preachers. The major Reformers still accepted Jesus' 'Great Commission' to preach the gospel to the whole world. But since they continued to accept without question the medieval idea that church and society were one and the same, they were reluctant to apply the Commission to their own situations. The Anabaptists, on the other hand, had no such reservations. Their deep missionary consciousness is evident in their court hearings; there is no text that they quoted more often than the Great Commission. Like the apostles, they felt themselves called to unauthorized preaching. Some of this was tumultuous, and much of it, especially in the early years, was quite uncoordinated. Indeed, the earliest Anabaptist missionaries were often 'sent' primarily by the civil authorities who had banished them. But soon the preachers began to co-ordinate their activities. In Augsburg in 1527, a 'martyr synod' (most of the preachers present were soon executed) met to divide South Germany among the missioners. And by the early 1530s the Hutterite communities in Moravia were carefully planning the sending of missionary teams into various parts of Europe.

A violent aberration

The expected second coming of Jesus was yet another spur to the spread of Anabaptism. In the early sixteenth century many people sensed that they were living in the last days. Martin Luther, for example, hurriedly translated the book of Daniel 'so that everyone might read and comprehend it before the end of the world'. Anabaptists often shared this vivid expectancy, and – especially since they were experiencing severe persecution – it added an immediacy to their preaching which was attractive to many. Some Anabaptists made calculations about the end of the world, and a few of these were convinced that when Jesus returned his otherwise non-violent disciples would be justified in taking up arms against the unrighteous.

In the Westphalian episcopal city of Münster, one such group of Anabaptists forcibly seized power in 1534. As the nonresident bishop massed troops and besieged the city, the inhabitants-believing that the millennium had come -defended themselves with arms. They began to behave in a way that was extraordinary for the Anabaptist movement at large. The believers received direct revelations; they linked the church with the state; they viewed the Old Testament as normative for ethics, justifying polygamy. When Münster fell in 1535 amid starvation and slaughter, speculation about the last days fell into disrepute among those parts of the Anabaptist movement that had earlier engaged in it.

To many Protestant and Catholic contemporaries, the debacle of Münster came – to the exclusion of everything else -to express the essence of Anabaptism. They therefore felt justified in intensifying (he persecution of Anabaptists wherever they could ferret them out. Anabaptism had, of course, been illegal all along. Local proscriptions had been generalized bythe 1529 Diet of Speyer, at which the Evangelicals (now for the first time called 'Protestants') and Catholics agreed on one thing – that those who baptized believers or were 're-baptized' should be subject to the death penalty. Anabaptist, or 're-baptizer', is thus a term coined by their enemies, to sanction persecution under an ancient imperial law condemning the Donatists; the Anabaptists preferred to be called 'brothers and sisters'.

Throughout the sixteenth century persecution thus continued to be severe. Informers were planted in Anabaptist meetings; a special imperial police force ('Baptist-hunters') was recruited to pursue the heretics; and inquisitors were expressly trained to cow them back to orthodoxy. Inquisitors were assisted by torture-'severe examination', as it was euphemistically called. There were thousands of executions, as many as 2,500 in the Netherlands alone. Martyrdom thus became a theme of the Anabaptist movement, celebrated in hymns and recounted at length in the massive martyrology which for centuries has given the descendants of the Anabaptists their self-identity, Martyrs' Mirror.

Münster was a disaster for the Anabaptist movement, but good came out of it. For it led to the conversion of a Frisian priest, Menno Simons, who identified himself with the harassed Anabaptists and who determined to lead them back on to the path of non-violent discipleship which had predominated in the movement. This was a costly decision. From 1536 until his death in 1561. Menno was on the run, shepherding scattered flocks from Holland into Germany, preaching by night, and writing tracts which he printed on the rudimentary press which he lugged on his travels. With a touch of bitterness he contrasted his lot with that of the preachers of the now-established Protestant churches:

'I with my poor, weak wife and children have for years endured excessive anxiety, oppression, affliction, and persecution . . . Yes, when the preachers repose on easy beds and soft pillows, we generally have to hide ourselves in out-of-the-way corners . . . We have to be on our guard when a dog barks for fear the arresting officer has arrived … In short, while they are gloriously rewarded for their services with large incomes and good times, our recompense and portion be but fire, sword and death.'

Thanks in significant measure to Menno's courageous pastoring and resolute pacifist commitment, an Anabaptist movement survived in Northern Europe. For good reason it, like many of the descendants of the brethren in Switzerland and South Germany, came to be known as 'Mennonite'.

Community of goods.

In Moravia, however, local manifestation of the Anabaptist movement came to be known as 'Hutterite', after an early leader, Jakob Hutter (burned in 1536). The Hutterites were distinguished from the Swiss Brethren and from the North-European Mennonites by their insistence on community of goods. Since Christians held spiritual things in common, one Hutterite reasoned, so they ought also to have communion in material things 'that as Paul says . . . there may be equality'. Only by relinquishing private possessions and entering a community {Bruderhof} could they truly express their love for God and their fellow Christians.

Although Hutterite Anabaptists did indeed give up private properly, in the course of the sixteenth century their communities in Moravia and Hungary became wealthy and large – at one point they apparently had up to 30,000 members. Each Bruderhof was superbly organized. As one brother testified, 'it is like a beehive where all the busy bees work together to a common end, the one doing this, the other that, not for their own need but for the good of all', the brothers developed handcrafts and light industry to a high level; their education was so excellent that local nobles sent their children to the communities for schooling; and the skill of Hutterite physicians made them in demand at the imperial court.

-The Hutterites were resolute . nonconformists (throughout the sixteenth century, for example, the Bruderhofs refused to pay war taxes). This and their manifest prosperity soon excited the envy and hostility of their neighbours. In 1595 the first of many blows fell, bringing their Golden Period to an end amid severe persecution. After waves of confiscation and repression, a few Hutterites, their 'beehives' broken up, survived by migrating to the Ukraine.

The Anabaptist movement was thus diverse. Indeed, a movement that was decentralized and persecuted, that extended from Holland to Hungary, and that contained a high proportion of 'movement-type' personalities, was bound to produce a variety of emphases. But despite these diversities, many of which worked their way out of the movement within its first decade, the number of uniformities that appear is striking. There was a bedrock of vision that set the Radicals off from the other Reformers and that made Anabaptism a distinctive Christian tradition of enduring significance.

On many points, to be sure, the Anabaptists were in agreement with the Reformers. The main contours of their theology were orthodox, and they were deeply influenced by Luther's writings. Some of them were personal friends of Zwingli and Bucer. Yet their emphases were distinctive, so perversely so (it seemed to Reformers and Catholics alike) that the Anabaptists must be banished or executed.

To some extent, the distinctiveness of the Anabaptists' vision resulted from their way of 'doing theology'. When people are being persecuted and oppressed, they tend to have a different perspective on God, the world, and the Bible from those who have positions of power in state-supported universities or churches. The Anabaptists' circumstances of writing also determined the literary forms that their theological writing could take. Lacking safety, leisure and libraries, they naturally did not write systematic theologies or learned commentaries; they (like the early Christians, writing in a similar setting) wrote letters, narratives and controversial pieces.

Most Anabaptists, of course, could not have written academic theology if they had tried. Only one of the early Anabaptists, Bahhasar Hubmaier, had a doctorate in theology, and he was burned in 1528. Thanks to persecution, by the 1530s Anabaptist theology was being written almost entirely by laymen. Some of it, written by the civil engineer Pilgram Marpeck, was perceptive and original. But the striking thing about Anabaptist theology is not the brilliance of the individual writers; it is rather, as letters and court records testify, the deep knowledge many Anabaptists had of the Bible. In court hearings Anabaptist women (as in most renewal movements, women were especially active among the early Anabaptists) could confound their inquisitors with a superb command of the texts. As one exasperated inquisitor blurted out, 'Why do you trouble yourself with Scripture? Attend to your sewing!' Another priest exclaimed in dumbfounded admiration, 'You Anabaptists are certainly fine fellows to understand the holy Scriptures; for before you are rebaptized, you can't tell A from B, but as soon as you are baptized, you can read and write!'

Brothers and sisters

What then were the emphases which gave these lay theologians their distinctiveness, and which Reformers and Romanists alike found it impossible to tolerate? I have already mentioned the first – the Anabaptists' insistence that since faith is God's gift, religious compulsion is an offence against him. The early Luther (1522) had stated that he would 'constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion'. Although Luther soon changed his mind, the Anabaptists persisted with this insight. 'Christ's people,' one of them said, 'are a free, unforced, and uncompelled people, who receive Christ with desire and a willing heart.'

This logic led them, in advance of their contemporaries, to espouse religious toleration. 'A Turk or a heretic,' Hubmaier pleaded, 'cannot be persuaded by us either with the sword or with fire, but only with patience and prayer.' This logic also led them to reject infant baptism, which appeared to them to be an act of adult compulsion committed on an unconsenting infant. And the consequence of compulsion, they came to recognize, was a society which, though superficially Christian, was largely made up of slightly Christianized pagans. That the church was established, and a region's religion was determined by its prince, simply compounded the problem.

The voluntarist Anabaptists were thus attacking the form of the 'Christian' social order which had dominated Europe ever since Constantine had legalized Christianity and Theodosius I had made it compulsory. Unlike the Reformers, the Anabaptists not only wanted to restore biblical norms in doctrine; they wanted as well to restore the sociology, the ethics and the missionary dynamic of the early Christians – even if it meant powerlessness and suffering.

A second Anabaptist emphasis followed logically from the first: the church is a family of believers. Basic to the composition of the Believers' Church is conversion. One enters it by rebirth (about which the Anabaptists talked and wrote at length) rather than by birth. And since it was a product of 'regeneration which is performed by the Spirit of God', this new, non-genetic family was the most important social unit to which anyone could belong. In the Middle Ages, priests had expressed their solidarity by calling one another 'brothers': so likewise spoke the pastors in the state churches of the Reformation. But all members of Anabaptist congregations called each other 'sisters and brothers'. They were conscious that they were all members of a priesthood of believers, not only in status but in function. They did, to be sure, have leaders, whom they called 'shepherds' or 'servants of the Word'. But these leaders must be servants like themselves, whose calling it was to 'take care of the body of Christ, that it may be built up and developed'.

This corporate, family consciousness shaped every area of Anabaptist life. For example, it gave a special character to their worship. In their meetings, every member was important. Unlike the other Reformers, the Anabaptists were convinced that God had never withdrawn the gifts of the Holy Spirit from the church. As a Swiss brother wrote in the 1530s, 'when some one comes to church and constantly hears only one person speaking, and all the listeners are silent, neither speaking nor prophesying, who can regard the same to be a spiritual congregation, or confess according to 1 Corinthians 14 that God is dwelling and operating in them?' So in an Anabaptist meeting, speaker would follow speaker, corroborating an earlier message or adding new insights as the Spirit gave lead. Other members would participate in the prayers, in transacting congregational business, and in sharing with the needy from the common fund. These meetings, which because of persecution were often held at night in forests or homes, could get lengthy. Near Strasbourg a congregation appointed a member to circulate throughout the meeting carrying a lantern, jostling anyone who had dozed off and whispering, 'Wake up, brother!'

For the Anabaptists, this self-giving within the body always had economic consequences. Among the Hutterites it led, as we have seen, to total community of goods. Like the other Anabaptists, the Hutterites were acutely conscious of the division that could be caused in congregations by a disparity of wealth. Their solution was equality. 'In brief,' Ulrich Stadler observed, 'one, common builds the Lord's house and is pure; but mine, thine, his, own divides the Lord's house and is impure.' The other Anabaptist traditions, on the other hand, sought to build up the common life by a vigorous programme of mutual aid. Many congregations had common purses, to which members could voluntarily contribute according to their ability and from which other members could draw in time of need. There was also apparently much informal sharing. Whatever the method, the Anabaptists were convinced that economic sharing was an evidence that a loving God was at work among his people.

A final indication of the importance that the Anabaptists accorded to the integrity of the corporate life is indicated by their practice of church discipline. The heart of this lay in what they called 'the rule of Christ', which committed each member to deal with sin or difficult relationships on a one-to-one basis. If neither that nor a larger deputation led to reconciliation, the matter would be brought, not to the minister, but to the congregation. If the body found that one party had sinned, it would exercise the ban ('the power of fraternal punishment'). The Anabaptists insisted that they did this 'with a sorrowing heart', for redemptive purposes. 'We do not want to amputate,' Menno claimed, 'but rather to heal; not to discard, but to win back.'

Following after

The Anabaptists' third distinctive emphasis was discipleship, which they called Nachfolge ('following after'). A Christian, according to Menno, was a person who 'willingly walks in the footsteps of Christ'. Through repentance he has received God's pardon, which will inevitably be 'in evidence by newness of life in Christ'. The disciple must thus be experiencing both internal and external transformation; and his inward renewal must be leading to a change oflifestyle-to 'amendment of life' according to the model and teaching of Jesus. Indeed, asHans Denck expressed it in the most characteristic sentence ever penned by an Anabaptist, 'No one can truly know Christ unless he follows him in life.'

Following Jesus was in part a matter of imitating him. The Anabaptists, for obvious reasons, placed a strong emphasis on the Gospel narratives. They were convinced that 'the plain and simple will of God is that we hold before our eyes his dear Son, Jesus Christ, and follow his life and teaching' (Hubmaier). Sometimes they called this imitation 'conformity to Christ', which they almost always linked to suffering. From prison one Anabaptist conveyed to his fellow believers what he had discerned the Lord to be saying to the church: 'If I the Lord and Master am poor, it is evident that my servants are poor, and that my disciples do not seek or desire riches … He that would follow me, must follow me in the poverty in which I walk before him.'

To imitation the Anabaptists added obedience. They found it unthinkable that Jesus' commandments, difficult though they seemed to put into practice, should apply only to attitudes and not to actions. 'Why should God make known his will,' Michael Sattler reasoned, 'if he would not wish that a person do it… Christ makes known to us the true obedience by which alone the Father is satisfied.' Indeed, obedience is necessary to make sense of belief in the body of Christ. For it is unthinkable that there should be ethical dis-coordination in the body. 'As Christ our head is minded, so also must be minded the members of the body of Christ through him, so that there be no division in the body.'

Obedience to Jesus as the Anabaptists conceived it, however, was costly. Since he had not preached 'easy and sweet things', he was leading them into behaviour that was unconventional and that contemporaries could construe as being subversive. Conflict with the authorities followed. On the issue of the swearing of oaths, for example, the approach of most Anabaptists was clear. As Menno put it, 'if you fear the Lord and are asked to swear, continue in the Lord's Word which has forbidden you so plainly to swear, and let your yea and nay be your oath as was commanded, whether life or death be your lot.' Jesus had given this teaching, the Anabaptists were convinced, because he wanted his disciples without constraint to tell the truth all of the time; for them there must be no gradation between levels of honesty. The Anabaptists' Catholic and Protestant critics feared, however, that by refusing the oath the Anabaptists were not only rejecting the legal system; they were also undercutting the social order by avoiding the compulsory oaths of loyalty which most territorial princes annually required of their subjects. If the Anabaptists' ideas of obedience were to spread, what prince or legal system would be secure?

Subversives?

It was probably in the area of warfare that Anabaptist ideas of obedience to Jesus seemed most threatening. In the mid-sixteenth century, Protestants and Catholics alike were terrified by the seemingly inexorable military advance of the Turks, who were besieging Vienna and seemed determined to snuff out Christian civilization in Europe. Although a few early Anabaptists held Just War or holy war positions, the majority – even in the face of the Turk – were pacifists. As the martyr Felix Manz put it, 'The true love of Christ shall scatter the enemy; so that he who would be an heir with Christ is taught that he must be merciful, as the Father in heaven is merciful.' The Anabaptists' forlhrightness in this area could occasionally chill their hearers. Shortly before his burning in 1527, the pacifist Michael Saltier responded to the inevitable question, 'What about the Turks?' with the riposte: 'If waging war were proper, I would rather take the field against the so-called Christians who persecute, take captive, and kill true Christians, than against the Turks.'

Language of this sort was inflammatory; some Anabaptists would not have approved of it. Nevertheless, virtually all Anabaptists had an altitude to political power which deviated from the sixteenth-century norm. They often quoted the apostle Paul to emphasize obedience to the civil authorities, but they always added a significant – and they felt biblical -proviso, 'when not contrary to the Word of God'. They also tended to be less elaborately deferential to their rulers than were most of their contemporaries. In one hearing, for example, although the City Recorder verbally genuflected to the judges as 'provident, honourable and wise lords', the Anabaptist in the dock repeatedly addressed them simply as 'ye servants of God'.

Many Anabaptists, both because of their conscience against taking life and because of the persecution which they were experiencing, concluded that it was not possible for a faithful Christian to participate in government. There cannot be, these Anabaptists felt, any overlapping between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. 'The world uses the sword; Christians use only spiritual weapons.' Other Anabaptists were more cautious, contending that 'it is difficult fora Christian to be a temporal ruler'. It was difficult because of Jesus' commandments, to which even rulers who would be Christian were subject. So it was possible for Christians to participate in government, one Anabaptist commented, if they 'take upon themselves the cross, and give up force and splendour'.

For most sixteenth-century rulers and churchmen, persecution was the natural expression of their fears of subversion. The Anabaptists did not enjoy this. 'It is not convenient,' one of them slated plaintively, 'to be burnt.' Indeed, many of them devised ingenious means of avoiding arrest; there are some marvellous Anabaptist escape stories! But there are also stories -hundreds of stories, told in loving detail -of suffering, consciously chosen and courageously faced. One of the most famous of these is that of the Dutchman Dirk Willems, who in 1569 by scrambling across thin ice had successfully escaped from the thiefcatcher who was pursuing him. When he got to the other side, however, he saw that his pursuer had broken through the ice and was desperately pleading for help. Dirk turned around and pulled him to safety, whereupon the thiefcatcher's superior, standing safely on the other bank, shouted across to the dripping thiefcatcher and, 'very sternly compelling him to consider his oath', forced him to arrest the man who had just saved his life. This time Dirk did not run. Shortly thereafter, after torture, by means of a 'lingering fire'. Dirk was executed.

The suffering of Dirk and his many brothers and sisters was intense, but within the framework of Anabaptist theology it made sense. It had always been the case, the Anabaptists were convinced, 'that those who would live godly in Christ Jesus have had to suffer persecution'. Repeatedly they reminded themselves that Jesus had assured his disciples, 'The servant is not greater than his Master. They have persecuted me; so will they persecute you.' The Anabaptists were certain that this promise, which the early Christians had found to be precious, had not ceased to be valid. Indeed, suffering seemed to them a sign that the church was being faithful to the One who had called them to take up their crosses and to follow him. From their perspective, there could be no true church that was not a 'church under the Cross'.

Alternative forms of society

Constantly under pressure as they were, the Anabaptists were tempted to become cankered and contrary. There was indeed some bitterness and negativism among them. But among them too – even amid persecution – there was a confidence, expectation and joy rooted in their experience of God at work among them. They had the strange confidence that through their missionary activities God could renew European society. As Menno put it, 'We preach, as much as is possible, both by night and by day, in houses and in fields, before lords and princes, through mouth and pen, with possessions and blood, with life and death. For we feel his living fruit and moving power in our hearts, as may be seen in many places by the loving patience and willing sacrifices of our faithful brethren. We could wish that we might save all mankind from the chains of their sins . . .'

But converted men and women could never exist on their own. Central to the Anabaptist social strategy was therefore the church. They knew that it was useless to renew society by seizing the reins of power, legislating laws that were as righteous as possible, and coercing those who were recalcitrant. This strategy, they felt, had been tried many times throughout the history ofConstantinian Christendom, and had failed because it was superficial. It did not lead to true faithfulness to Christ's teaching. For true righteousness could not be compelled; it could come about only as men and women discovered the meaning of repentance and new birth, in the kingdom of God.

It was not that Jesus' teachings were inapplicable to an entire society. According to Ulrich Stadler, Christ's commandments 'should constitute the polity of the whole world'. But the Anabaptists recognized that only those who had been reborn, and who were being sustained by the life of a family of faith, could obey these teachings. Hence their strategy. Let those who have become new creatures in Christ simply begin living in a new way now, in their relationships with each other. Let those men and women create churches of brothers and sisters, communities of faith, alternative forms of society in which the qualities which one day will characterize the kingdom of God will be prophetically present. In their practical, everyday living, let them realize the sharing of possessions, the love of brother/sister and enemy, and the openness and truthfulness of relationships which God intends for all his children.

The Anabaptists, it is thus clear, had a strong sense that the kingdom of God was among them. 'Christ, the Prince ofPe.ace, has prepared and won for himself a Kingdom that is a Church,' exulted the Hutterite, Peter Riedemann. But the kingdom which had already come in their communal experience was for most people still in the future. Until God's rule was universal and uncontested, therefore, the Anabaptist congregations and communities must serve as signs, dramatizations, displays of what God intends for society.

The Anabaptists thus viewed each of their congregations simultaneously as a society for mission and an agency for social change. As their love for the Lord and each other grew, as their common life was transformed, they believed that the Holy Spirit would use Christ's life among them to invite others voluntarily to enter 'the Kingdom of Peace'.

In the course of time, the Anabaptist groupings lost this vision and vitality. Some lost it through toleration. The last execution in the northern Netherlands was in 1574. Soon thereafter the'Baptism-minded' (as they came to call themselves) were finding a role in Dutch society as a respected, quasi-nonconformist subgroup whose members were especially prominent in medicine and the cloth trade. In other parts of Europe persecution lasted longer, and in time it led to exhaustion, legalism and withdrawal. For some of the Anabaptists' Mennonite descendants, William Penn in the late seventeenth century provided a haven in Pennsylvania. A century later Catherine the Great offered others of them toleration if they would introduce their farming methods into southern Russia. Migration and persecution, which had been the lot of the Anabaptists from the outset, have been experienced – somewhere in the world -by every subsequent generation of Mennonites.

In the 1980s, the spiritual descendants of the Anabaptists continue to exist; scattered across every continent, there are now some 670,000, slightly under half of whom live in Canada and the United States. Many of the surviving Anabaptist groups have recently experienced a renewing of their spirituality and vision, and are increasingly active in mission, service and inter-confessional dialogue. Some contemporaries, echoing the sixteenth-century Reformers, continue to dismiss the modern-day Anabaptists as ascetics who are 'superstitiously caught up in the small points'. Others, however, are more appreciative. Sensing themselves to be in a world that Christians can no longer control, they are finding in the Anabaptist tradition both theological insights and a living past.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

The word ‘radical’ means a return to the roots, to what is fundamental, original, inherent, primitive. In every age there have been Christians who have wanted to return to their roots: to the fundamentals of the Christian faith, to the original Christian community, to the church as it was in the New Testament. Radical movements of this kind have often been attracted by that early Christian community and, in an attempt to recapture it, have formed their own communities.

Our age too has its radical Christian communities – possibly larger in extent and variety than at any other time in the history of the Christian church. Who do we find in them?

Usually these community people are more aware than others that they are searching for an identity, for personal and corporate significance. They sense a need to belong, to build relationships, to become whole. They want to commit themselves to a cause that offers hope – to them personally and to the world in which they live. Most of these communities gain their inspiration from the life and teachings of Jesus and the example of the New Testament Christians.

The early Christians

After the Day of Pentecost, these first believers ‘were together and had everything in common’. They met daily in the temple, ate together in each others’ homes and sold their possessions and goods to provide for the many practical and economic needs some of them had. For the disciples who had been closest to Jesus in his life and ministry, this was a natural continuation of the lifestyle they chose when they responded to Jesus’ call and followed him. They had left their homes and given up jobs to travel with him, and their needs were met from the common purse. The large numbers who joined them at Pentecost found that their decision to follow Jesus’ way resulted in equally immediate and remarkable changes in their lives, not least in the redistribution of their goods and possessions.

Did these early Christians maintain this kind of community lifestyle for any length of time? There are many indications that for several centuries Christians practised a sharing of goods on a wide scale. This is apparent from some of the writings of the early church. These two examples were written at the beginning and end of the second century:

Do not turn away from those in need, but share all things in common with your brother. Do not claim anything as your own, for if you have fellowship in the immortal, how much more in perishable things! Didache
We do not think of goods as private. While in your case your inherited wealth makes all brotherhood impossible, in our case it is by our inherited wealth that we become brothers . . . We who are in communion in heart and spirit do not hold anything back from the communion of goods. Everything among us is in common, except marriage. Tertullian

These early Christians were also open-handed and generous to those who were not believers. They became known for their acts of charity.

The third century saw an almost continual struggle between church and state, with the Christian communities repeatedly buffeted by persecutions. But then, in 313, the Emperor Constantine was converted to the Christian faith, and a change took place in the relationships between the church and the Roman state. The empire gave full toleration to the faith.

From this time on two levels of Christian commitment began to arise. On one level, the church as an institution became increasingly identified with secular society – even to some extent the custodian of its values and traditions. On the other hand, there were those who questioned this alignment of church and state. They wanted to find once again the spontaneity of the early Christian communities and to live only by the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. For the next fourteen centuries of the church’s life, this second level of commitment had one particular focus – the community ideal.

The community ideal through history

The story of which the community movements were a part has already been told in this book (see particularly Into the desert, Return to simplicity, Life-bringers, God’s left wing). Many colourful and charismatic figures played a part in giving shape to the ideal. There is only space here for the highlights.

Third-century Antony of the Desert was followed over the next 300 years by many other ‘cenobites’ (people with a common life). Beginning in the deserts of Egypt, this movement spread to Italy, Gaul, Spain and along the northern coast of Africa. These men and women returned from time to time from their small desert communities to the cities, where they visited the poor and the sick, and taught their fellow Christians. There they wielded great influence among rich and poor alike.

The monastic ideal developed in more formalized ways, but in the thirteenth century Francis of Assisi turned to a different kind of discipline-that of the wandering friar. In an age when extremes of wealth and poverty sat side-by-side, he and his followers renounced all earthly possessions and took to the streets as beggars. They worked among and for the poor, and exhorted their fellow-Christians to live simple lives of service.

There were many others with similar stories: men and women such as Basil, Brigid, Benedict, Columba, Boniface and Dominic, who also founded communities. But as time went on many of these monastic communities became extremely wealthy. Some of the bigger monasteries were at the centre of large networks, and wielded great influence and power. Many of the same excesses were to be found in the religious orders as in the church at large. It was against these excesses that the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century was aimed.

The Protestant reformers, Luther in Germany and Calvin in Switzerland, rejected the wealth and power of monasticism as they rejected other abuses that had arisen in the Roman church. Yet still church membership remained closely linked to citizenship. In Germany, ruling princes and local councils were responsible for church appointments, so church power was in the hands of the civil authorities. In Switzerland, Calvin taught that the church should be responsible for its own appointments, but he urged strong cooperation between church and state. Alongside the Protestant Reformation, therefore, there arose another movement, the Radical Reformation. Often called the ‘Anabaptists’, these groups rejected the idea of a state church. They stood for religious liberty and freedom of conscience.

One emphasis of these reformers was on economic sharing. This often led to a new type of religious community, one that included married people and families in contrast to the celibacy of the religious orders. The Mennonites considered it a mark of the true church that there should be no poor among them. While both held to the ideal of sharing, the Hutterites went further than the Mennonites in establishing communities with full economic sharing and no private property.

Hounded and persecuted by both Protestants and Catholics, many who were part of this movement became refugees. Over the centuries their communities were dispersed throughout different parts of Europe, and the Americas. Initially a strong missionary movement, they also taught literacy, introduced advanced medical methods and had efficiently managed industries. By the late sixteenth century the Hutterites had founded at least a hundred communities with a membership of some 30,000. Intense persecution scattered them in the seventeenth century.

Perhaps because of the intolerance of the age in which they began, these early radical communities tended to become exclusive, anxious to conserve their original ideals and customs and opposed to change. Nevertheless, like many of the earlier monastic communities, numbers of Mennonite and Hutterite communities and congregations still exist today, and exert a considerable influence on a number of modern-day counterparts.

A feature of the next three centuries was the number of renewal movements that sprung up within mainstream Protestantism. Among these were the Pietist movement in the seventeenth century and the voluntary societies, which were part and parcel of the eighteenth-century Evangelical Awakening. As a result of the Evangelical Awakening great numbers of Christians wished to express their Christian commitment by travelling overseas to preach the gospel or by combating social ills in their own country as well as abroad.

Numbers of missionary societies were formed, many of which exist today, and also voluntary societies working for prison and factory reform and the abolition of slavery.

In many ways these voluntary societies were like some of the earlier religious communities, but they tended to emphasize the task rather than lifeslyle. Because of this they were able to draw to themselves many supporters who could show their support by donating or raising funds. There was one particular weakness in this voluntary movement. The emphasis on task led to a gradual loss of a sense of community and to strained relationships in missionary and voluntary societies. It is towards a return of a relationship model that many of the community movements within our own day particularly aim.

Aftermath of war

The community scene in our own day is more widespread and vigorous than for centuries. How did this resurgence begin?

The aftermath of World War 1 was a time when many young people in Germany and elsewhere were asking questions about the ultimate meaning of life. A German couple, active in work among students, began to hold weekly open-house meetings in their home. Numbers soon grew to eighty or a hundred people. The young people who came were largely from Christian groups, but also anarchists, atheists, artists and others.

Some years previously Eberhard and Emmy Arnold had studied some old Anabaptist writings and had been greatly stirred by what they read. Now in these open-house meetings they began to study the Sermon on the Mount and the stories about the days after Pentecost. Here they saw the answer to their seeking and questioning: community of faith, love and goods. This led to the founding of the Hutterian Society of Brothers, with its first ‘Bruderhof (primitive church-community) at Sannerz, a small village in Germany.

That first community numbered just seven. They ran a publishing house and a small farm, and offered hospitality to numerous guests. They aimed at simplicity and poverty for the sake of Jesus, and their common life attracted many others (young people and families) who came to join them. They stood out against Hitler and refused to take part in World War II, so they had to leave Germany. They fled first to England and later to Paraguay, until in 1954 they emigrated to the United States. There are now three communities in the USA and one in England. They support themselves by publishing and making toys and each Bruderhofhas its own school up to secondary-school age or eighth grade.

Understandably, many of the communities that arose in the immediate post-war periods have been strong on unity between people and peace between nations. One of the best known is Taize, an ecumenical community in Burgundy, France. In recent years, it has become a place of pilgrimage for thousands of young people, who camp nearby and share for short periods of time in the life and worship of the community.

In the summer of 1940, several months after the outbreak of World War II and with France already defeated by the German forces, an idea began to grow in the mind of a young Swiss theological student, Roger Schutz. Later he was to write that ‘the defeat of France awoke powerful sympathy. If a house could be found there, of the kind we had dreamed of, it would offer a possible way of assisting some of those most discouraged, those deprived of a livelihood; and it could become a place of silence and work . .

Roger Schutz’s mother was French, his father Swiss. At thirteen he left home to attend a secondary school some distance away, lodging with a Catholic family. These early years shaped his ecumenical vision. While the Germans were still occupying France, Roger Schutz bought a house in Taize and opened it to refugees, many of them Jews. He chose the village because it was poor and isolated, and his father had always taught him that Jesus is closest to the poor. It was not long before his activities became known and the house was taken over by the Gestapo. He had to flee to Switzerland, but he returned to reopen the house in 1944. Others joined him to form the Community of Taize. The members of the community work in parishes or have secular jobs. They aim to permeate society with their vision of peace and unity. The brotherhood is pledged to work for Christian unity, particularly among the Catholic and Reformed churches.

Another community that had its beginnings in the post-war years is the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary in Darmstadt, Germany. Its two founders, Mary Schlink and Erika Maddaus, are the two ‘mothers’ of the community. The sisterhood began as a small Bible study group and later grew into a religious community. Those who gathered together to study the Bible in the early days were deeply convicted of the sins of their nation, which had led to World War II and to the persecution of the Jews. This has given the community its emphasis on daily repentance from sin, alongside prayer, Bible teaching and evangelism. Like Taize, the sisterhood attracts many thousands of visitors, who have been influenced by the example and witness of the community. Daughter houses have been established in Israel, England and the USA and at Darmstadt there is also now a small brotherhood associated with the sisterhood.

Rediscovering a purpose

In Britain, one effect of the war was to expose a spiritually poor nation and an irrelevant church. Army chaplains discovered how few of their men had any real understanding of the Christian message. For the first time a religious opinion poll was taken and its finding caused widespread concern. In 1943, William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury, called together a commission to ‘survey the whole problem of modern evangelism’. The aim was to prepare the Church of England for concerted action once the war was ended. A report Towards the Conversion of England was published in 1944; in particular, it highlighted the need to mobilize and train laypeople for evangelism.

At the same time as this report was being compiled, an Anglican clergyman, Roger de Pemberton (himself a member of the commission) was energetically working on an idea of his own. Before the outbreak of war, he had begun to run holiday houseparties, renting private schools for this purpose during the holiday seasons. These houseparties offered a programme of holiday activities with an epilogue each evening, and they proved an immediate success. In the easy, informal atmosphere, many nominal Christians found a living faith for the first time; others rediscovered a purpose for their Christian lives. A week or a fortnight spent in the company of a large number of other Christian people proved in itself a powerful influence-an experience of Christian community.

With his thinking stimulated further by the work of the commission on evangelism, Roger de Pemberton began to think about setting up a permanent centre, run by a resident Christian community. The place he had in mind was Lee Abbey in Devon, formerly a manor house, at that time a private school. Others caught his enthusiasm for the idea, and despite the daunting task in the post-war years of raising money to buy and restore the house Lee Abbey was opened in 1945 as a ‘centre for evangelism within the Church of England’.

Another similar centre, a sister-community, Scargill, was opened in the north of England. These are centres to which people from all walks of life come for holidays and conferences and where inrelaxed surroundings they are stimulated to think about the renewal of faith and witness in the modern age. Many of the suggestions of the original report Towards the Conversion of England were considered too revolutionary and never taken up, but they have been and continue to be embodied in the life and work of these communities and others like them, which have sprung up in the intervening years.

Community and the youth culture

The 50s were years when disenchanted young people were beginning to voice their impatience with the values and lifestyle of Western, consumer-oriented society. Many gathered in pans of Europe and Asia, took to drugs and made their protest known by dropping out of society. Some found their way to the Swiss chalet home of an American professor, Francis Schaeffer, and his wife, Edith. There they found a welcome, a sympathetic hearing and answers that made sense to them both intellectually and emotionally.

Like the young people who found their way to the Arnolds’ home in Germany in the 1930s, these young people were encouraged to study the Bible and to trust in a God who answers prayer. Such answers to prayer were many, as God provided for the many material and financial needs of a growing fellowship at the Schaeffers’ home in Huemoz, Switzerland. Soon the Schaeffers’ chalet was linked to others nearby and the L’Abri Fellowship was formed (L’Abri means ‘the shelter’.) The fellowship served a continuous stream of guests, many from ordinary walks of life as well as hippies and drop-outs. Ancillary houses were soon established in England, Holland, Italy and France.

The Shalom covenant

The 60s and 70s saw an even more rapid growth in the community movement, with numbers of Christian communities emerging from the charismatic renewal and the evangelical awakenings of these years, from the social concerns of their founders and from recently-established missionary movements. Several of these communities also have roots in the Anabaptist tradition and therefore acknowledge a debt to their Mennonite and Hutterite forebears. Many of these communities have established or are establishing wide networks, as communities with similar concerns and lifestyles link up and associate with one another, nationally and internationally.

One community influenced by Anabaptist concepts is Reba Place Fellowship, in the USA. Some students at Goshen College in Indiana were studying the sixteenth century ‘radical reformation’, which had given birth to such groups as the Hutterite and Mennonite communities. They began to wonder what would happen if they began to take seriously the same concepts of brotherhood and sharing and apply them to life in twentieth-century America.

Three of these students bought a house called Reba Place on a small street in Evanston, Illinois, and from there the group began to grow. In the 60s the community grew to 140 adults and children housed in twelve buildings, all within walking distance of each other. Others lived in rented apartments nearby. Most of the working members of the fellowship held jobs as teachers, blue-collar workers, social workers and psychologists. They put all their income into a common purse, from which all personal and family living allowances were distributed. They felt called to be a church, a radical example of love and sharing at the heart of society. Their influence on their immediate neighbourhood was considerable, transforming a racially divided neighbourhood into one that was stable and integrated.

In more recent years Reba Place has drawn a number of other communities into a covenant relationship with itself to form the ‘Shalom Covenant’, committed to a life based on Jesus’ radical teaching, each community encouraging and helping the others, each seeing itself as the church in its own locality.

Community of communities

The late 60s and 70s were years of charismatic renewal (see A worldwide renewal). This movement, with its emphasis on spontaneity and warmth, soon began to express these in a community lifestyle.

In the episcopal church in the USA, the story of the Church of the Redeemer, Houston, attracted considerable publicity. Its rector, Graham Pulkingham, moved to the church in 1963. It was a dying church in a poor neighbourhood, yet Graham longed to build an effective neighbourhood church that genuinely served the people who lived around it. But he soon realized how powerless he was to offer anything effective to the many poor people, Latins and blacks.

Graham grew disillusioned and discouraged but this led to a deep searching. Finally he came to a new experience of being inwardly filled by the Holy Spirit. His own life and ministry were transformed, and so was the church. The Christians experienced a strong sense of God’s presence and power in worship, and they began to use gifts of the Spirit, including prophecy, speaking in tongues and gifts of healing. There was a new emphasis on prayer and Bible study. In particular, those who were drawn to the church, both from the neighbourhood and further afield, began to feel a deep love for one another and a new desire to serve the many troubled people around them. Some, including Graham Pulkingham and his family, opened their homes to those in need and began to ‘slip into community living, almost without knowing it’.

Within a comparatively short time numbers had grown from a small handful to a church community of 400, with some fifty community households ministering to different needs and contributing to the sharing of gifts and resources. In 1973 Graham Pulkingham was invited by the Bishop of Coventry to travel to England and share with the church in Britain his vision of community ministry.

In Britain, something similar was happening in a small village in Dorset, also as a result of the charismatic renewal. A titled couple. Sir Tom and Lady Faith Lees, had read a book about evangelism in gangland New York (Dave Wilkerson’s The Cross and the Switchblade). This had led them to seek for themselves a baptism in the Holy Spirit. As a result, they found God’s power at work in new ways, and the small Bible study group that met in their home grew from a dozen to some 200 people coming weekly for teaching and prayer. People were converted, filled with the Spirit and healed. Tom and Faith Lees,

together with a small team drawn mainly from local churches, began to run camps and conferences centred on their home, Post Green. They also drew into their family a number of people who needed emotional healing, and as happened in Houston this soon led to others similarly opening their homes. A genuine community had been born.

When the Pulkinghams came to England and established the Community of Celebration (now on the Isle ofCumbrae, Scotland, and in Colorado, USA), they formed links with Post Green. A friendship resulted which led to growing co-operation and sharing of resources. These communities work for the renewal of church and society. In particular, they help local churches to develop ways of living and relating together which are appropriate to their own circumstances.

Friendships thus established have caused a number of communities to come together and form supportive networks, which enable them to share and to learn from one another. The Communities of Celebration in the USA and the UK, Post Green Community in the UK and Sojourners’ Fellowship in Washington D.C. have thus come together with a number of other communities to form ‘a community of communities’. (Sojourners are a church-community which grew out of the activities of a group of young evangelical Christians, concerned to see gospel principles applied to social and political issues.)

Base communities

Another strong community movement is exerting a considerable influence in Latin America, Africa and Asia and is beginning to grow in Europe. This is the ‘base community’ movement within the Roman Catholic Church.

Originally a spontaneous movement among Roman Catholics in underdeveloped countries, the base communities gained a new impetus and direction as a result of the Second Vatican Council’s recognition and encouragement. They are really more of a cell movement within the Roman Catholic Church than a deliberate search for a community lifestyle. The countries in which they have flourished are those where people still live as local or rural communities, but where there is considerable poverty and oppression. They thus have brought people together around a common faith and a common cause. Their own belief is in Jesus’ concern for the poor and oppressed in society. They have therefore become a social and political movement as well as a religious movement.

In search of distinctively Christian lives

Each of these communities and networks constitutes a force for renewal within both church and society. There are tensions in their relationship with the institutional church, as there have been throughout Christian history. Yet they have a vital part to play – they remind the traditional churches that they are called to keep alive in the world the lifestyle and the mission of Jesus.

These communities have been and are mostly fringe movements within the Christian church, and so they are bound to be vulnerable to false teachings, to extreme and even dubious practices, to a dangerous authoritarianism and to Utopian and perfectionist values. But the mainstream denominations stand constantly in an equally severe danger of comfortably conforming to the status quo and being locked in outmoded traditions and practices. Both groups need each other, and they have served each other throughout history in this way, certainly since the era of Constantine.

Yet perhaps something is taking place in our own day. The divisions between church and para-church structures may be breaking down. The process of secularization has reached a point where the Christian church must return to the stance it took before the Emperor Constantine brought it under the state’s wing. The divisions between church and society must become more closely marked once more.

All this means that a distinctive Christian lifestyle is becoming incumbent on all Christians, not just on a few who feel specially called to it. The growing Christian radical community movement is spearheading the way. It will probably continue to take that place at one end of the spectrum. But there are many who long that increasingly we are going to see the whole church finding again what it means to be a radical Christian community.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

In 1559, a number of clergymen returned to England from exile in Europe. They were members of the Church of England, who had taken refuge there to escape the persecution of Protestants in Queen Mary’s reign. Mary had rejected the reformation of the church that had taken place under her father, Henry VI11. She wanted to restore the English church to the folds of Roman Catholicism, and to enforce her wishes she had burned those people who opposed her. With her death and the ascension to the throne of Elizabeth, a Protestant, many of the exiled clergy returned from their European refuges. They brought with them new patterns of belief which they had learned from their Continental friends, especially John Calvin in Geneva and Martin Bucer in Strasbourg. These emphases distinguished them from the rest of the clergy and became the earliest hallmarks of the Puritan movement.

The word Puritan means ‘would-be reformer’; the returning exiles wanted to see the Church of England thoroughly reformed. Theologically, they would accept nothing as binding on the church that was not proved from the pages of Scripture. What was not demanded by the Bible could not be made mandatory on the conscience of an individual Christian without attacking the idea of Christian liberty.

Politically, the Puritans did not want the reformation of the church to be in the hands of the secular authorities. Instead, they demanded that the sole and final authority for the ordering of the church should be in the hands of the church’s own officers.

Queen Elizabeth was sympathetic to the Protestant cause. Yet she was convinced that she herself must govern the church directly, because it was too powerful an institution to be left in hands that might not support her. And so she forced two Acts of Parliament to be passed. The first was the Act of Supremacy, which established the monarch as the head of the Church of England, and vested in her the power to rule and reform the church. The second was the Act of Uniformity, which required that all Englishmen should give religious obedience to the established Church of England. This obedience involved accepting the ‘episcopal’ form of government (bishops, priests and deacons) and also the set liturgical forms of worship.

The history of the Puritan protest movement falls into three periods, each period with specific demands for change, and each producing its own leaders:

-From Queen Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne until the crushing of the Presbyterian movement in 1593;

-From the revival of the movement in 1593 until 1640, when the Long Parliament was called in Charles I’s time;

-From 1640 through the period of Cromwell and Puritan ascendancy until 1660, with Charles II’s return, the Restoration and the ejection of Puritan clergy from their positions.

The Puritans made an early impact on American history, through the Pilgrim Fathers, who were concerned to set up a godly community under the rule of the Bible.

Not reformed enough

The initial principles of Puritanism were brought from Geneva and Zurich where the majority of the exiles had been given shelter. One of the first things they learned was to disdain the outward show of religion. On their return, the exiles found themselves in bitter opposition to the clergy wearing vestments, especially the surplice. But their objections were much more fundamental than simply refusing to dress up for church services. They were concerned that the reformation within the Church of England had not gone nearly far enough. As they saw it, Elizabeth was not prepared for a really thorough-going reform; she wanted only to preserve her own control of the church.

The University of Cambridge was the focal point of hostility to the Queen’s policy, and it was from there, in 1570, that the first real Puritan leader emerged, with a distinct demand for change within the church. Thomas Cartwright was a young and very brilliant Professor of Divinity at the University. He delivered a series of lectures on the Book of Acts, in which he claimed that the Bible provided the outline for church government, and that this outline was belter expressed in Presbyterian church government than by the system of bishops.

Cartwright called (or bishops to be abolished and fora form of church order to be set up based more on laypeople. He wanted to establish the kingdom of God on earth, and in England. The church was to be independent of the control of rulers: it would be related to the government, but not controlled by it. The first task of the church was to call people to obey God; only then should they be taught their duty to the slate. He firmly maintained that we are all sinners, and that secular power, whoever holds it, is purely a gift from God. Within the church, anybody with the spiritual c]uality, regardless of social position, can be chosen to teach and serve. Along with this, he advocated the Presbyterian idea of church democracy: every congregation should have the right to elect its own elders and ministers, and the national church should be maintained by a series of representative assemblies, at different levels, composed both of clergymen and laypeople.

Cartwright was dismissed from his position of Professor of Divinity at Cambridge by Archbishop Whitgift, who was a firm supporter of the royal control of the church. The archbishop saw in the scheme not only that bishops would have a less important role, but also that the monarch would be less able to control the church’s policy and life.

Cartwright continued to write and lecture. He gained a great following within the established church, but yet none of the reforms he so badly wanted actually came to fruition. This was partly due to a division within the Puritan party itself.

One group rejected the idea that the Presbyterian system was taught in the New Testament. They found in the Bible that each local church was vested with the absolute power to determine its own course of action and its own destiny. They also thought unbiblical the idea of a mixed church, combining devoted Christian people with purely nominal attenders. They wanted to restrict membership of the church to the clearly committed. This approach, often called ‘Independency’, is close to the Anabaptist policy, described in God’s left wing. It went against the whole idea of a national or established church to which all members of the nation belonged, and at the same time it imposed a threat to the power that the monarch could influence within the church. It certainly would have reduced the political importance of the church, and the crown would no longer have been able to use the church to affect the life of the people.

Because of this division within his own supporters, Cartwright could not put together a unified opposition to the episcopal structure of the Church of England. He was frustrated not only by those who held independent views, but also by those who, while holding the general spiritual principles of Puritanism, remained loyal to the Church of England and would have no part in the specific demands for reform. With Cartwright dismissed and his attempts to effect a Presbyterian order of church government aborted, the first phase of the Puritan movement was completed.

Making the Bible understood

The group who remained loyal to the Church of England while accepting Cartwrighl’s spiritual leadership included one outstanding figure- William Perkins. He was destined to be one of the most popular and influential of the Puritan leaders. His intellectual achievements in theology gave the movement widespread credibility, and his emphasis on the Christian’s personal devotion became one of the hallmarks of Puritanism.

Perkins had been educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge and had come under the influence of the developing Puritan movement. He was in favour of much of Cartwright’s spiritual teaching, but he rejected his scheme of church government. Like him, he was concerned for an educated ministry. All too often, churches found themselves under the ministry of the youngest sons of nobles, who saw the system of patronage within the church as a lucrative and easy path to advancement. Sometimes these men knew so little that they hired others to say services for them, and the worship became unintelligible.

Again, Perkins recognized the prime place of preaching within worship, and this was another Puritan emphasis. Over many years, preaching had ceased to play a significant part in the church’s worship. All sorts of rituals and ceremonies had been introduced, so that many of the services contained little or no teaching. Perkins, in common with most Puritans, realized the importance of educating the congregations in the truths of the Bible. The Puritans believed that the Bible contained the perfect rule for living, believing and worshipping, and so they strove to make its teaching as widely known and understood as possible. Preaching was seen to be God’s way of educating the people and changing the church.

Perkins had the same beliefs as all Puritans. They were basically those set out by John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, (see Life-bringers). God is sovereign in everything, and people can only find the forgiveness they need through the death of Jesus Christ reconciling them to God.

Together with this intellectual framework, Perkins had the Puritan longing for simplicity in worship, uncluttered by ceremony or ritual. Because of this, there were two attempts to have him removed from his position and ejected from the Church of England. Vet his clear loyalty to the established church, together with the support of some of his influential friends, protected him from being seriously threatened.

His early death in 1602, at the age of forty-four, robbed Puritanism of one of its most influential advocates. He was respected as a prominent churchman, was a popular apologist for Protestantism against Roman Catholicism, and had wide influence through his writings. In these writings he stressed something which was to become one of the key points of Puritan spirituality. Until Perkins, dogmatic or systematic theology had been seen as the major task of a theologian. But he brought a vision of applying the Calvinist system of belief to practical questions. His aim was no less than to make Christian truth relate to people’s lives as well as their minds.

No bishop, no king

When Elizabeth died in 1603, she was succeeded by James VI of Scotland, who had been brought up in a Presbyterian church with a strict discipline, aware of Calvinist theology. The Puritans gained a new hope. Would this new king make their dream of reform a reality?

While on his way to claim the throne, James was met by a delegation of Puritans and asked to reform the church. He agreed to meet with Puritan representatives at a later date, and a meeting was eventually held at Hampton Court Palace. At the conference, the Puritans presented to the King a list of obvious reforms that they felt should be implemented to bring the church in line with the Bible. Their list included the abolition of the bishops, and the restructuring of the church along Presbyterian lines. This reminded James of experiences he wanted to forget. He had grown up with the democratic Presbyterianism of Scotland’s John Knox, where the preacher could rebuke the King in public. This made him determined that, as Ruler of England, he would control the church and never again be subject to the discipline of ministers. He had also come to believe that government by bishops was a means of maintaining the position of the monarch as the supreme earthly governor of the church -a position to which James believed himself divinely appointed. This is why James said to the assembled Puritans his famous ‘no bishops, no king’, and tied himself to the traditional episcopal government of the church. Instead of the debate and reform they hoped for, the Puritan party received a crushing blow. They were to be ordered to conform to the King’s wish. In fact, the only one of their proposals that the King accepted, was fora new translation of the Bible in the English language. This gained approval and the Authorized, ‘King James’ Version of the Bible came into being in 1611.

James had become afraid of the growing influence of the Puritans and was determined to drive them out of the church. He deprived them of their livings and, unlike Elizabeth, refused to tolerate their existence within the established church. Although he agreed with them theologically, and even wrote some theological books with a Calvinist position, he was determined to prevent the creation of a church which could in any way challenge the power of the crown.

The agent of persecution was Archbishop Laud, a man whose strong ‘high church’ position had caused many to accuse him of secret sympathy with the Roman Catholic Church. Laud is supposed to have had a list drawn up of all the clergymen in England. Against each of the names heallegedly placed either a P or an 0 – Puritan or Orthodox. He then began to try and drive the Puritans from (heir churches.

At the same time as attacking the Puritan clergy, James and Laud determined to reduce some of the power of the nobility and to frustrate the growing call for democratic rule. Many of the emerging middle class and some nobles joined the Puritan movement as a vehicle for their political opposition to James and the policies of Laud.

The Puritans were driven underground. They began to preach a strong gospel, directing their calls for reform no longer I towards the ruler, but to any or all of the people of God. The preachers fired the people’s political will. People who were searching for salvation should not only trust in Jesus Christ, but also put on the whole armour of God. They preached a gospel which called for strength and action as well as faith. God’s kingdom would only be established in the face of hostility and opposition, and this required strength and discipline and courage. The goal was a land where the authority of the Bible would be paramount, and where the Bible’s teaching would be the legal and moral basis for national life.

Civil war

By 1610, much of the opposition to the policies of James’ house of Stuart found a rallying point in political Puritanism. Within one generation this hostility was to break out in civil war – a war in which the supporters of royal privilege were found opposed to the growing democratic party, whose leadership was solidly Puritan.

The period between James coming to the throne and the eventual triumph of the Puritan party saw the rise of two famous leaders whose names have become synonymous with Puritanism: John Owen and Richard Baxter.

Owen was born and educated in the climate of political and theological controversy created by Stuart policies. He was a staunch supporter of the rights of a democratic Parliament over and against the royal supremacy. He was also an Independent in church government, demanding the right of the local congregation to elect its own leaders and to be accountable to God alone under the Bible. Owen was also a rigid Calvinist in his theological position, and this at a time when the leaders of the Church of England under Laud were quite the opposite-liturgical and idealistic in practice, anti-Calvinist in theology.

Eventually, the rift between Charles and his Parliament became an open civil war, with the vast majority of the Puritan party ranged against the King. Owen became one of the chaplains to the Parliamentary Army and in this capacity exercised great influence and travelled extensively. With the defeat of the King and his eventual execution, the ‘Long Parliament’, with its Puritan bias, ruled the country. Among its first acts was one to abolish the Church of England as an episcopal church – no more bishops. This meant that a Parliamentary Committee had to be set up to validate the ordination of those who presented themselves for ministry within churches, and to oversee the transfer of clergy from one church to another.

Owen was not included in this structure, nor was he invited to be a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines which was convened to produce an alternative basis of faith to the 39 Articles of the old

Church of England. The reason for his exclusion was that he held very firm Independent views, while Parliament was inclined to Presbyterian thought, confirmed by the help the Scots and their Presbyterian army had given in the Civil War.

However, with the growth of Oliver Cromwell’s power, there came an increase in the influence of the Independents, and not least John Owen. Eventually the Long

Parliament was dismissed and Cromwell assumed the rule of the nation as the Lord Protector. Owen was made Chancellor of the University of Oxford, where his outstanding theological intellect earned him an international reputation. At the same time, his influence in matters of government increased, and he is in no small part responsible for the failure to introduce a Presbyterian order to the national church. His belief in Congregationalism, allied to Cromwell’s power, thwarted the Scots’ desire to impose the Presbyterian order.

Owen fell from favour with Cromwell when he opposed the Protector’s wish to become King. Yet he remained one of the most influential of the Puritans until the time of his death. Even under Charles II, his reputation and personal qualities saved him from the persecution which fell on so many others. His stature as thinker and political preacher, his integrity as an honourable man, helped make him one of the most outstanding of Puritans.

Richard Baxter, the other great figure of this period, was a gentle man and a scholar, chiefly famous for his pastoral theology encapsulated in The Reformed Pastor-a study in the personal piety and calling of the Christian minister. As one of the leaders of religious thought and devotion, Baxter was concerned about the whole pastoral state of the church. While ministering at Kidderminster, he worked to produce the theory and practice which made for Christian godliness. At the same time, he emphasized the importance of Christian unity in an age which saw more virtue in separation. His works all display a warmth that is not always one of the marks of the Puritan movement.

A spiritual battle

The history of the Puritans is a history of their spirituality. It is this that linked the generations. The source of their faith, and the guide of their worship and conduct, was the Bible. They lived under the conviction that Jesus Christ spoke through the Bible, and so its authority was paramount. They were also very careful to encourage personal reading of the Scriptures. The high water mark of English Puritanism under Oliver Cromwell saw the publication of large numbers of manuals to aid in the correct interpretation of the Bible and to provoke spiritual self-examination. Puritan literature abounds with spiritual biographies, full of detailed accounts of struggles with Satan. The concept of spiritual warfare became a central theme of the movement. The goal of the Christian life was to persevere to the last in the face of demonic attack. Large numbers of books of advice for living the Christian life were produced. This literature had a threefold emphasis: strictness of discipline, desire for personal holiness, and strong personal devotion to Christ.

These spiritual principles were the great strength of Puritanism. There were also weaknesses, and these have been woven into the caricature that remains with us. The rigidity of thought and lifestyle made the Puritans appear legalistic. History has remembered that under their rule, following the execution of Charles I, England was forced to adopt laws that legislated for public and private morality. They restricted people’s private liberty and forced them grimly to accept a joyless morality.

The moralism which resulted from much of the Puritan legislation was a direct result of trying to usher in the kingdom.ofGod by Act of Parliament. They banned public dancing, they apparently destroyed everything of aesthetic quality. And this has left a distorted picture of what Puritanism really was.

While it is true that many Puritans were excessive in their search for innocent pleasures to attack. Butler’s picture of them as ‘low born, sour-faced hypocrites jealously disapproving the pleasures of their superiors’ is a misrepresentation. They were lovers of art as distinct from what they saw as idolatry. They encouraged music and produced and acclaimed John Milton. Economic life within the nation was restored, because they accepted the Bible’s work ethic and put it into practice. They showed courage in adversity and held to principle in the face of personal loss and danger, and these were among the characteristics of the dedicated. God-fearing, disciplined and moral society that Puritanism produced.

The Puritan legacy

Through the Pilgrim Fathers, the Puritan way of Christian liberty has had an impact on the American approach to life and faith. The Pilgrims dreamt of founding a colony that would be an example to England of God’s kingdom on earth. Their dream embodied all that was best of Puritanism and yet also the seeds of the worst excesses. Under John Winthrop, the highest ideals of personal piety and communal support were given life. The Pilgrims were intellectual, biblical, tolerant at first, democratic and peace-loving – qualities severely tested in dealing with native Americans, with debt, sickness and starvation. They were among the first groups to practise intercommunion with other Christian groups. Yet the seeds of division and bigotry were also present. These seeds were to lead to a history of separation and heresy-hunting that turned the Puritan dream into a nightmare.

The impact of Puritanism remains. In England, with the restoration of Charles II, the Puritans were ejected from their churches, and forbidden to meet. This gave the impetus to the different elements to form their own denominations. We may trace the rise of the modern free churches from this time. The denominations enshrined many of the Puritan emphases of discipline and practical spirituality. And yet the heart of the Puritan longing never came to fruition. The idea of a fully Reformed National Church, which had been the binding agent and the driving force of the movement, was lost on both sides of the Atlantic.

Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.