Dissent and Reformation: Remembering the Martyrs

Now that we have passed the recent and much deserved recognition of the Reformation anniversary a few months ago, it is important that we recognize as Christians another important view of our Christian roots that extend back far before Luther and the rest of the Reformers.  Although Luther and other Reformers helped establish some clear doctrinal tenets that remain fixed features of biblical Christianity today, they were certainly not alone in their efforts to stand for Biblical truth in the face of a morally and doctrinally corrupted church.  

In brief terms, Christendom has historically been plagued by two opposing views of the church.  One is that of historical Catholicism and the Reformers, which believed that the Church and the State co-exist to support and extend each other in perpetuity.  This union began with the Roman emperor Constantine who believed that God had given him and Rome victory over his enemy by seeing the sign of the cross of Christ in a vision at the battle of Milvian Bridge.  After the victory, the once persecuted church of the first three centuries was now to be the official and legal religion of the Roman State.  The Roman Church now was no longer a free church but a territorial church in which all inhabitants were to be members at birth (christening infants) instead of by their voluntary repentance and faith in Christ followed by believer's baptism.

The Reformers would have us believe (and many Protestants do believe and teach this either directly or indirectly) that before the reformers appeared there had been nothing but a universal or catholic church for 1200 years (since Constantine's forging of church and state) and that they alone had re-established Christianity under a new and reformed biblical order.   Church historian Franklin H. Littell, in the preface of The Reformers and Their Stepchildren, written by the late Leonard Verduin, said this,

            "Our problem is that we have for so long continued to draw our supplies through a                         tunnel reaching back four hundred years,  without facing the fact that the situation of                     composite loyalties within which Christians here preach and work is utterly different from              the entire Constantinian settlement." (this was written in 1964, italics mine)

What Littell didn't say directly but Verduin emphasizes in his book is that this conflict between the Catholic church and the dissent movement had been ongoing for the previous 1200 years.  It hadn't just magically appeared as a result of Luther nailing his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg church.  Ideas and their subsequent movements never occur in a vacuum.  They are picked up and passed along historically, and pre-reformation history is littered with the bloody persecution of those who rejected Constantine's state church alliance.   

The Reformers in turn had essentially two options when they emerged.  One was to go all the way in reforming the church by declaring their separation from State supported churches or to compromise and remain.  Luther saw this but ultimately refused to make a clean break with Rome.  He remained on the side of the territorial church, infant baptism, and State support of condemning heresy (however defined) under penalty of civil law.  Consequently, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and the rest of the European reformers became greater enemies of the Ana-baptist (Latin for re-baptizers) groups during and after the Reformation than they had formerly been of Catholicism itself.   Luther noted the Anabaptist's historical presence when he said,

"In our times the doctrine of the gospel, reestablished and cleansed, has drawn to it and gained many who in earlier times had been suppressed by the tyranny of Anti-Christ, the Pope, however there have forthwith gone out from us Anabaptists….for they were not of us even though for a while they walked with us.”

It's clear that Martin Luther understood that these Anabaptist leaders had a historical presence long before he and the other reformers had taken action themselves.  It's also clear that once the Anabaptist groups saw that Luther was not willing to give up his state-church alliance whereby the civil power persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and killed what they considered "heresy,"  they knew that co-existence with the reformers would not be possible any longer.   

The point that must not be ignored by students of church history is that a fervent and healthy dissent movement had been in Europe for centuries.  As a church historian I can tell you that they were not called Anabaptists but were known nevertheless within the broader dissent movement.

Many held to orthodox positions about the person and work of Christ, others did not. They were not organized, nor did they keep good records or write and publish theological works.  These persecuted believers had no official title other than perhaps the regions in which they lived or the derogatory titles used to label them.  They lived in obscurity and served Christ faithfully in their generations.  Like the underground church today, they often lived in hiding and could never be certain of their physical safety or security.  What records we have of them are found in such works as Foxe's Book of Martyrs or Martyrs Mirror or similar histories.  Many others are scattered among the pages of church history chronologies, and like the underground churches today, it is easy to forget about them. 

So as we rightly do homage to Luther and those who stood for truth in the early sixteenth century, let us not overlook or ignore the sacrifices of millions through the centuries who like Luther said,  "Here I stand," and they proved their words by willingly laying down their lives to validate their testimonies for Christ.