Back to Statements Index
The Reformation and the Anabaptists
Steps to Reconciliation
26 June, 2004,
Zurich, Switzerland
___________________________________
Inauguration of the Memorial Plaque
to the Anabaptist Martyrs of Zurich
by Ruedi Reich, President, Reformed Church of Zurich
Dear sisters and brothers,
We commemorate here our brothers in Christ who were cruelly tortured and executed for their faith during the Reformation. The Reformation in Zurich regarded itself as a rediscovery of the liberating Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this, the members of the newly forming protestant Church were also ready to give up their lives.
We are therefore all the more ashamed and pained that the Reformed Church should have become a persecutor. In the Zurich of the Reformation, our brothers in the faith of Anabaptist convictions were persecuted, tortured and cruelly executed in a combined action by Church and State. We acknowledge this historic sin and, from today’s point of view, consider it a betrayal of the Gospel. Before God and before men, we point to this dark side of the Reformation, and we ask God and you, dear brothers and sisters of the Mennonite faith, to forgive us. We are grateful for the fellowship with the Mennonites in the past and today. In the midst of a violent world, we wish to work together for peace, reconciliation and justice. May this reconciliation with each other give us the strength to work together commissioned by Jesus Christ as agents of reconciliation, in small things and in great ones. For this, we ask God’s blessing with all our heart.
Ruedi Reich,
President, Reformed Church of Zurich