Like all the Reformers, the early leaders of the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland and south Germany insisted that Christian faith and life should be shaped by Scripture alone. A Christian’s first allegiance, they argued, is to Christ and his teachings, not to the pope or – and here they broke with Luther – to a feudal lord or prince. On the basis of Scripture, the Anabaptists (“rebaptizers”) rejected infant baptism. Following Jesus, they believed, required a voluntary decision – Peter, James, and John were not forced to leave their nets when Jesus invited them to become “fishers of men.” At stake in this decision were fundamental questions of identity and allegiance. In the emerging Anabaptist understanding, baptism marked a believer’s public acceptance of God’s gracious gift of forgiveness, but this same act also signaled a commitment to become part of a voluntary gathering of Christ-followers whose lives were transformed by the Holy Spirit. Baptism was about metanoia – repentance, turning around – that found expression in daily discipleship in the context of a Christian community. Through the Holy Spirit, followers of Jesus were part of a “new creation,” a new form of politics with tangible social, economic, and political consequences.

The church, not the state, gives history its meaning.