Article: The Anabaptist Moment
The October issue of the Mennonite Quarterly Review published my article “The Anabaptist Moment: Improper Beginnings, Ecclesiopolitical Decisions, and a Nonviolent Sovereignty.” It’s been a little while in the making, as these articles sometimes are, but I think it goes to the heart of what it means to be Anabaptist, and to be church more broadly.
On a winter night in 1525, several people gathered in a home in Zurich, prayed, and then baptized each other. The event solidified their breach with the reformer Ulrich Zwingli and, in an important sense, marked the beginning of the Swiss Anabaptist movement. …
Yet despite its prominence, a theoretical reading of this “Anabaptist moment,” as I will call it, is far from straightforward. On the one hand, it reads as a founding event. The participants are not merely reforming or splitting off from an existing church community; they are, in this moment, starting over. In so doing they are not just founding the Anabaptist movement but in a deeper sense “re-beginning” the church after centuries of interruption. Yet on the other hand, how could anyone ever do such a thing—begin the church again?
