Journal Marxist Hacker 42's Journal: Baptists and anabaptists 19

In my discussion with Smitty-one-each, I came across the, curious to me, claim that the Baptists, Amish, German Apostolic Christians, and Mennonites were all descended from the anabaptists. I found this weird, because in my reading of Church history, the Anabaptists were a French Gnostic cult from the 13th century.

Turns out I had the wrong anabaptists, and I spent a lot of time researching the wrong sect. Many heresies previous to the 16th century took the name Anabaptists, which merely meant a belief in only adult and not infant baptism, combined with a belief in rebaptism (the orthodox version says once is enough for the sacrament of baptism, where the Anabaptists would rebaptize people who had been baptized as infants, in keeping with their belief that only an adult can make that choice).

But in the 16th century, a group of Radical Reformationists took on the name, and took the belief to a new level. In particular, they kept 5 points from the Gnostic sects that came before them:

1. Some followed Menno Simons in teaching that Jesus did not take the flesh from his mother, but either brought his body from heaven or had one made for him by the Word. Some even said that he passed through his mother, as water through a pipe, into the world. In pictures and sculptures of the 15th century and earlier, we often find represented this idea, originated by Marcion in the 2nd century. Marcion, of course, was the creator of the Gnostic Marcionites, the same sect of Gnostics that St. Augustine passed through on his way to becoming Catholic. In keeping with this they deny transubstantiation- the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, for to them, Christ never had a "real human body" to begin with.
2. They condemned oaths, and also the reference of disputes between believers to law-courts, much like the French 13th century anabaptists rejected the rule of the feudal nobility over the lives of the peasantry.
3. The believer must not bear arms or offer forcible resistance to wrongdoers, nor wield the sword. No Christian has the jus gladii. This is a belief that St. Augustine kept from the Marcionites, and defended in City of God against the challenge that this belief caused the fall of the Roman Empire. This isn't a strictly heretical idea- the orthodox Church took it up and developed it into what we now call today the Just War Theory.
4. Civil government (i.e. "Caesar") belongs to the world. The believer, who belongs to God's kingdom, must not fill any office, nor hold any rank under government, which is to be passively obeyed. Would that modern Baptists still believed this, I think non-Christians would have fewer problems with them! But this is a common ideal to all religions that gets abandoned within the first 4 centuries of the life cycle of religious sects. It's a stage all religious sects have to pass through, the gaining of sufficient numbers to influence governmental power. Eventually, it gets slowly abandoned again, after experiencing the same mistakes all religious sects go through with respect to governmental power.
5. Sinners or unfaithful ones are to be excommunicated, and excluded from the sacraments and from intercourse with believers unless they repent, according to 1 Corinthians 6:1-11 and Matt.18:15 seq. But no force is to be used towards them. Is there any human religious sect that doesn't understand this?

To this they added the Didache- an ancient text from the Early Church Fathers, often called by the Roman Catholic Church the first Missal, for it describes a primitive version of the Catholic Mass, the early separation of preachers into a two-tier hierarchy (some say a three tier, as it fails to mention itinerant preachers), and a cycle of prayers for daily life (an early version of the Liturgy of the Hours, but using the Lord's Prayer instead of the Psalter). In some ways, they were winding liturgy back 1500 years to the very earliest form of worship. Early 16th century Anabaptists were also Apostolic Communists- many of the communities they build held all property in common, for the good of the community, with individuals owning nothing, only being stewards of possessions.

I have to wonder how modern baptist beliefs match up to this radical heritage. Especially American Baptists, in the post 1990 Republican takeover of the Moral Majority. Many Republican beliefs- private property, pre-emptive war, trickle-down economics, tax cuts for the rich, etc.- do not seem to fit into classic Anabaptist beliefs, and in fact seem to be directly opposed to many of them.

On the other hand, many Anabaptist beliefs seem to mirror Augustinian Order Roman Catholicism, including how it has developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in South America, with the advent of Liberation Theology, Social Justice, and Nativist Wealth Redistribution such has been seen in Venezuela and Bolivia.

Another interesting link to Catholicism is the Christian Anarchy movement, particularly the Catholic Workers movement, who claim that small communities and local government and local economies are all that is needed. Such groups reject both nationalism and internationalism in favor of relatively small communities with no hierarchy; though the Catholic Worker's movement as a part of the Claretian Order (also known as The Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary), do take vows of obedience and service. Curious that the closest Catholic order to Anabaptism today is a Marianist order, with extra devotion to the Blessed Virgin.