A Revival in Schleitheim

by Glendon Fox

 I would like to take you with me back in time almost 500 years to a little town in Switzerland called Schleitheim. But to understand the arena in which this revival took place one has to go back even earlier. From the time of Christ until the time of Constantine the church had been savagely persecuted. All pre-Christian societies were bound together by a common religious loyalty. Therefore a faith that divided people into two opposing groups, saved and unsaved, was viewed as divisive and a threat to society. Constantine came up with the clever idea that if he could somehow unite the utter commitment of the Christian to his earthly kingdom, he could become a very powerful ruler. So in a very short time the Preacher of the Gospel was brought from hiding in a cave and placed in the king’s palace. Everyone was now ordered to worship Jesus as their God or face prosecution by the emperor. The persecution-weary church was fooled into uniting with the pagan rulers of this world, and exchanged winning the world by preaching and love for using the sword to procure a profession of faith and a baptism. However, the true followers of Christ who refused to become a part of this “church” were persecuted just as before.

By the 16th century very little remained of the teachings of Christ in this fallen “church”. The sinful religious leaders worked hand in hand with the equally corrupt and dishonest civil rulers. In fact, the religious leaders seemed to have the final authority on all matters. For a thousand years the Roman Catholic church had claimed to have received the keys to heaven from the Apostle Peter and anyone who disagreed with her was forced to recant of their deceptive and erroneous opinions or face torture and death. Therefore any opposition was quickly and effectively silenced.

Many were satisfied to let religion to the priests; they would just go to the church and do whatever other rituals were required of them. It was at times inconvenient, but it did give the people somewhat of a satisfaction that if they did what the priest told them to do, then God would forgive them of their sins and bail them out of hell.

However, there were many others who were restless. They were tired of living in poverty while the priests reveled in luxury. They were tired of their empty sin-filled lives. There had to be more to life than what they were experiencing!

In 1519, a priest in Zurich, Switzerland named Zwingli began preaching through the New Testament chapter by chapter, book by book. This priest had also struggled with a sinful life, and as he studied the scriptures, he discovered the power of Jesus Christ and he began teaching from the scriptures and proclaiming all other authority to be inferior to the Word of God. Large crowds came to hear him, and he met regularly with a small group of his followers to study the Bible.

It did not go long, however, until his criticism of ungodly practices within the church reached the ears of the pope. The pope angrily declared Zwingli a heretic and asked the Zurich city council to ban him from the pulpit. Zwingli appeared before the council and defended himself from the Scriptures. The council upheld Zwingli’s appeal and withdrew from the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church, instituting Zurich as an independent reformed theocracy.

By this time Zwingli was forced to make a very difficult decision. He had understood from the Bible that the church should be made up of a group of born-again believers only. He also understood that being part of the church of Jesus should be voluntary, for the unregenerate soul who is compelled to be a part of the church against his will is as damned as the heathen. Therefore the secular government has no place in the biblical church. He also recognized the mass as a carryover from pagan Rome.

On the other hand, to try to institute reform in the church without the support and protection of the local magistrate was unthinkable, and the magistrates of Zurich were in no way ready for such radical changes. This was the way our forefathers had run the church for ages. What would become of the unregenerate if they were loosed from the restraints of the church? Would it not be disrespectful of the government officials to go ahead with reform against their wishes? It would definitely stir up lots of conflict and contention. Wasn’t keeping peace the Christian’s duty? And what would happen to me? Probably exile or prison or worse would await such radical actions, and then the whole movement would be squashed just like many other times in history.

As Zwingli studied the matter, the only logical thing to do was to be patient and work with the local government. But some of his fiery young followers were very displeased with the direction Zwingli was taking. In their minds Zwingli was compromising truth for position. They pleaded with Zwingli to set up a church of true believers only, asking how he could continue serving the Eucharist when he himself had preached against it. Finally they withdrew from Zwingli and began meeting in their homes, praying, studying the Bible, and dreaming of restoring the church to its original purity as in the days of the apostles.

Zwingli saw them as irrational young radicals who had never learned patience and condemned them from the pulpit as devils posing as angels of light. These Radical Reformers responded that Zwingli was a false shepherd and not true to the word of God. The tension grew between the two groups, the Radical Reformers boycotting all church functions and Zwingli’s group giving ominous threats both public and private. Conrad Grebel, the leader of the Radical Reformers, knew that persecution was inevitable, but would not be moved.

Zwingli, determined to stop this “rebellion”, brought things to a head by demanding that they bring their babies who had been born during this time and have them baptized or stand before the council for a public debate. Baptism never was the major issue of dissent, but was essential to the state church to ensure that all the people in the domain were made part of the church. The outcome of the debate was that this little group was ordered to completely stop all activities, including Bible studies, and immediately have all their infants baptized, or be exiled from the canton. Both sides knew that the fight had only begun.

As the little group met that night to determine their course of action, they prayed and meditated on the day’s events. One man, George Blaurock, finalized the group’s rejection of infant baptism by requesting to be baptized as a believer.

The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren preserved a testimony of that night saying:

And it came to pass that they were together until anxiety came upon them, yes, they were so pressed in their hearts. Thereupon they began to bow their knees to the Most High God in heaven and called upon him as the Informer of Hearts, and they prayed that he would give to them his divine will and that he would show his mercy unto them. For flesh and blood and human forwardness did not drive them, since they well knew what they would have to suffer on account of it.

After the prayer, George of the House of Jacob stood up and besought Conrad Grebel for God’s sake to baptize him with the true Christian baptism upon his faith and knowledge. And when he knelt down with such a request and desire, Conrad baptized him, since at that time there was no ordained minister to perform such work.

It seemed that as this clear line was drawn and their earthly possessions were taken from them, it freed them from restraint. I think they must have experienced a bit of Pentecost that night, for the next morning they began going from house to house and village to village preaching and teaching the people to “repent and be baptized for the remission of sins”. As they preached a literal obedience to the word of God, people repented and were baptized by the hundreds.

As the revival spread like wildfire, the council of Zurich called on surrounding cantons to help suppress these Anabaptists, as they were now called. Finally, in desperation, Zurich pronounced the death penalty by drowning on all Anabaptists, as Zwingli approved the murder of his former friends and followers.

Michael Sattler, an ex-monk who abandoned the soft life of an abbot to join the Anabaptists, was among those fleeing Zurich to escape persecution. He zealously preached the gospel in the forests and wherever he could find listeners. His message of salvation, by believing response to the preached word and denouncement of papal abuses, was eagerly received by the common people.

It was this loving pastor’s concern for his flock that motivated him to gather with some of his followers and co-pastors in a home in Schleitheim. There they discussed issues and doctrines of the church and put on paper what we know as the Schleitheim Confession to help protect this fledgling movement from false doctrine and to unite the scattered believers. It was also a proclamation of their beliefs to the rest of the world. After all, he never knew when he might find himself in the burgomaster’s hands.

And that is exactly what happened. A week later Sattler, his wife, and a number of other believers were arrested. After 11 weeks in prison his trial was moved to Rottenburg to try to avoid a revolt by the people and extra soldiers were called in to control the atmosphere. The trial was so unjust that even the court chronicler was horrified at the proceedings. Sattler was sentenced to be burned alive, and on the march to the execution site he should have a piece of his tongue cut out and five times have pieces of his flesh torn out with glowing hot tongs.

As the sentence was read his wife comforted him in the sight of all the people with great joy. They understood that this was not an end, but a beginning! She was drowned in the river eight days later, although she would have preferred to be burned alongside her husband.

The reaction to the death of this beloved martyr was profound. Everyone had known him as a man who loved Jesus and loved his fellow men. Even some who had disagreed with him theologically wrote letters protesting his death. For many, this was also a new beginning in their own lives. Those who had been spectators on the day of the execution had been amazed to see the condemned man, whom they had expected to be trembling and crying out for mercy, pleading with them to repent and be converted, to fear God and to intercede for the judges! Even after he had been tied to a ladder and thrown into the fire, his voice could be heard clearly in prayer and praise.

What was this strange belief that these men and women were willing to die for? Zwingli himself said that he disagreed with them not on the important issues of salvation, but rather on lesser doctrinal issues. If this was so, then why was Zwingli willing to murder these men and women in an effort to stamp out their belief? And what turned Zwingli from a fearless preacher of the Gospel into a desperate ruler willing to do anything to stay in power?

Remaining was the question as to how fellow-Christians could become so intensely alienated that they would actually resort to murder in an attempt to resolve the issue. This has led me to a study of the life of Huldrych Zwingli. I do not want to make him the scapegoat for the dissension, but rather try to learn from his victories and his failures.

Huldrych Zwingli was born on January 1, 1484 in Wildhaus, Switzerland to a family of farmers. His father was the local magistrate. Zwingli was a scholarly young man, and his father and uncle saw that he was given a good education in the nearby village of Bern. His father sent him to Vienna to finish his studies after several Dominican monks from Bern attempted to persuade him to join their order. He graduated with a Master of Arts degree in 1506.

After graduating, he served ten years as the pastor of the church at Glarus. Zwingli became involved in politics, solidly on the pope’s side, and even served as chaplain in the military for several mercenary campaigns, as Glarus seemed to be a center for recruiting these “hired” troops. However, the exposure to the horrors of war convinced him that the mercenary system was immoral, unless the troops were being hired by the pope. His fiery denunciations of this trade across the pulpit was not received very well from the members of his parish who were involved. As the political atmosphere in Glarus turned against the pope and in favor of the French, Zwingli, the papal politician, moved to Einsieldeln.

Zwingli’s travel as chaplain brought him in contact with churches in other areas. He realized they taught and practiced some things differently than what his church fathers had taught him. He continued with his priestly duties at Einseldeln, devoting himself to much study. As he studied church history, he realized that many traditions and superstitions had crept into the church. The church in his day was quite different than the church he was reading about several hundred years earlier. Through his studies, he became convinced that the Bible was the ultimate and only source of truth.

(This may seem like a very obvious fact to us, but it was revolutionary in his time. The writings of the church fathers had become the source of church doctrine in his day, and the Bible was considered hardly relevant anymore. But let us be careful in our condemnation of these poor souls. It is human nature to preach the portions of Scripture that agree with our beliefs, and ignore, in the pretense of lack of understanding, the many verses of Scripture that are in opposition to our practices.)

Zwingli did the right thing. He took the Word of God and read it through again and again. It is said that he knew the letters of Paul by heart. And as he read, and studied and prayed, God’s Word slowly became alive to him. He realized that he was a sinner before an almighty God, he realized that all the ceremonies and religious observances and all his good works could not save him, and he realized that it is only when we give up our own feeble efforts, and place our trust in the mercy and atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we can find salvation and a true relationship with God our Father.

Yet Zwingli found it quite difficult to completely die to his flesh. While priests were required to take a vow of celibacy, the immorality of the clergy was so rampant that it was considered normal and even unavoidable for priests to behave promiscuously. Sadly, Zwingli was no different. He justified himself by considering it a small thing and something all men struggle with. Then, just as now, impurity in act or thought, was taken lightly. But God does not take it lightly. Jesus clearly said that no adulterer will enter into heaven. And as always, when a man falls into impurity, his sense of spiritual discernment is blurred. However, God is a patient God, and for quite some time Zwingli kept right on preaching and ministering and to all observers everything was just fine.

People soon noticed the power in Zwingli’s preaching and writing, and he was invited to Zurich to become the stipendiary priest. On his 35th birthday he preached his first sermon in Zurich. He announced, to everyone’s surprise, that he would be abandoning the practice of teaching an assigned lesson for each particular Sunday. He began reading and expounding the Bible, chapter by chapter, beginning in the book of Matthew. This was revolutionary! Despite the wide-spread belief that if he or his parishioners studied the Bible too much they would become deceived, Zwingli taught from the words of Jesus, while the other priests were preaching from the writings of the pope and church fathers.

He boldly preached against moral corruption, laziness, and high living, and had no qualms about denouncing corrupt individuals from the pulpit. He rejected the veneration of saints and relics, questioned the divine institution of tithing, and asserted that unbaptized children were not damned. While some opposed him for questioning the teaching of Rome, most of the common people loved his teaching because they were starved for truth, and the rulers loved him because his teaching gave them more power and freedom from Rome.

In August 1519, the bubonic plague struck Zurich. The plague was so severe that one in four people died. Everyone that could afford to evacuate did so, but Zwingli remained in the city and continued his pastoral duties, visiting and ministering to the sick and dying. In September he also caught the disease and nearly died. While he was ill, he penned the poem “Pestlied”. The last verses read,

Thy purpose fulfill:
Nothing can be too severe for me.
I am thy vessel,
for you to make whole or break to pieces
Since if you take hence
My spirit from this earth,
You do it so that it will not grow evil,
And will not mar
The pious lives of others.

In those early days in Zurich, Zwingli would often meet together with a group of his zealous young followers. He challenged them not to believe or teach anything that they could not back up with Scripture. They talked about what the church must have been like in the book of Acts. A church made up of only born-again believers who were sincere in living a holy life, following the teachings of Jesus literally.

The bold teachings of Zwingli soon found their way to the church rulers, and Zwingli was called before the city council. In this debate, and in the next several to follow, Zwingli was allowed to continue to preach from the Bible as he saw fit, but they were not willing to act on many of his proposals so quickly. Because he viewed the city council as the proper authority of the church, and being a logical and intelligent man, he reasoned that the best way to bring about change was to be patient and work with the church.

The radical, left-wing group of the Reformers, later known as the Anabaptists, was increasingly alarmed by how much Zwingli was willing to compromise with the city council for the sake of keeping peace. How could he continue serving communion to those who did not even know what it meant to be born again? How could he allow idolatrous practices to continue in the church just because the council did not want to stir things up too much? And most of all, how could the Bride of Christ be wed to the ungodly civil rulers? These young radicals believed that to tolerate or participate in anything that contradicted the Word of God was to deny Jesus. They did not reason things out or ask all the what-ifs; they just stepped out and did what they believed to be right regardless of the cost.

It was painful to Zwingli to see these young men blatantly turning their backs on his leadership. It seemed they did not appreciate all the time and effort of the past several years he had put into teaching them. They were stubborn and rebellious, he decided, that they would have to be taught a lesson.

Zwingli also recognized the danger this outspoken, motley group posed to his movement. Their bold, reckless actions could cause the whole movement to be annihilated just as the Donatists years earlier. If they were allowed to spread their doctrine of a separate church and state government, the authority of the city council could be threatened. He was sure the government of Zurich, much less the Catholic states around them, would never tolerate reform of this sort. He realized that if he were to keep his position as leader of the church in Zurich, he would have to distance himself from these radicals.

He began his censure of this little group by severely reprimanding them from the pulpit. He portrayed them as proud, pernicious troublemakers, sons of Satan. The Radicals retorted back with accusations equally severe. The lines had been drawn and the battle had begun. Even though Zwingli admitted he agreed with them on all major doctrines such as salvation through faith in Christ (although the Radicals would have put more emphasis on a clear new birth experience), it was their divisive ideas of distinguishing between the true believer and the unsaved that could not be tolerated.

Zwingli then requested a public debate with the Radicals. The city council sided with Zwingli, but these young men could not be swayed. Zwingli decided that these men must be forced to submit. But to his dismay, imprisonment, fines and banishment from the city only seemed to incite these men to spread their ideas more. In desperation, he decided that it were better for a few men to die rather than for many to be led astray by their doctrines. But as the streets of Europe ran with the blood of the Anabaptists, as they were now called, this despised and mistreated church continued to grow.

But the Anabaptists were not the only ones to cause Zwingli trouble during this time. When Zwingli’s reformation caused the canton of Zurich to withdraw from the Roman Catholic diocese and abandon many church traditions, five cantons surrounding Zurich created a league to defend themselves from Zwingli and his followers. A few cantons also formed a league with Zurich. In 1529, a reformed pastor was captured in one of the Catholic states and was executed. An infuriated Zwingli declared war on the five states. A battle was narrowly averted due to the intervention of Hans Aebli, who pled for an armistice. However, the armistice did little to bring peace to either side.

On October 9, 1531, the five Catholic states declared war on Zurich.

Zwingli and his men rushed out to battle, and in a battle that lasted less than an hour suffered an awful defeat. Zwingli and many of his co-pastors were among the 500 men slain that day. And so the words of Jesus were fulfilled, ”They that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”