European Background of the Ohio Mennonites and Amish / 27

In the numerous testimonies which survive there is evidence of a strong protest against drinking alcoholic beverages. Says Roland H. Bainton,

The movement for total abstinence from alcoholic beverages stems from these groups. Not even Catholic monasticism had called for total abstinence. Luther most assuredly did not, but neither did Calvin or Knox. The Anabaptists started the movement for total abstinence."

Arising from the belief of these people in the nature of the church was the conviction that peace, love, and nonresistance were to be practiced in all human relationships. One of the earliest statements of the Swiss Brethren on this subject came from the founder, Conrad Grebel, and is typical of numerous similar statements that followed in later years. It is presented here along with a statement by a recent writer because among other things it shows the manner in which the Anabaptists linked the peaceful way of life to the suffering which was their lot in the great social and political shiftings of the sixteenth century in Western Europe. In 1524 Grebel said in a letter to Thomas Müntzer,

The Gospel and its adherents are not to be protected with the sword, nor are they thus to protect themselves.... True Christian believers are sheep among wolves.... They must be baptized in anguish and affliction, tribulation, persecution, suffering, and death; they must be tried with fire, and must reach the fatherland of eternal rest, not by killing their bodily, but by mortifying their spiritual enemies. Neither do they use worldly sword or war, since all killing has ceased with them."

All in all, the Anabaptist wing of the Reformation produced a movement which was radically different from the reform movements of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. In the generations that were to follow, the descendants of the Anabaptists clung steadily to their faith and way of life. They did so against pressure and persecution which produced a martyr literature and a somewhat introverted form of group life.

It should be stated that the Anabaptist movement at its inception was charged with a great missionary zeal. Sebastian Franck, an opponent of the Anabaptists, wrote in 1531,

The Anabaptists spread so rapidly that their teaching soon covered as it were, the land. They soon gained a large following, and baptized many thousands, drawing to themselves many sincere souls who had a zeal for God.... They increased so rapidly that the world feared an uprising by them, though I have