Book Revew: The Anabaptist Story

William Estep's The Anabaptist Story takes on a big task, summarizing in a little over 300 pages an incredibly diverse movement from four hundred years ago, a movement that has most of its historical documents written in a different language. The Anabaptists are one of the most reviled and least understood Christian groups and Estep has done them and the broader church a great service with this history. Written in an accessible manner while still being thorough and accurate, Estep shows that the common misconception of the Anabaptists (i.e. that they were kooks and heretic and that the best example of the movement was in the apocalyptic kingdom of Muenster) is false. I have engaged with a number of people who speak negatively about the Anabaptists while never bothering to actually read up on the subject. They would benefit from reading Estep's masterpiece and might find that the Anabaptists are far from heretics. In fact I would suggest that many of their doctrines and practices are far more in keeping with the New Testament than many traditional evangelical churches.

While there is not perhaps a direct line from the 16th century Anabaptists to the free churchers/Baptists we know today, certainly many of their ideals are present. Not merely believers baptism but also church government, the view of the sacraments, the separation of church and state. Many evangelical Christians have no idea the suffering and sacrifice endured by the Anabaptists at the hands of other alleged Christians but Estep brings their story to life. I wish more evangelical Christians would read The Anabaptist Story to see what sort of sacrifices produced the comfortable church culture we live in today, a marked contrast to the day when refusing to baptize an infant would get you ostracized, arrested and often murdered. I also wish more of my Reformed friends would read this book. The Anabaptists are often the whipping boy for many Reformed believers which is ironic because few of them seem to have bothered more than a cursory study of the Anabaptists and the very Reformers many of us idolize were the ones persecuting and even murdering Anabaptists. When you read the story from a different perspective, you start to wonder which of the three major groups in the Reformation (i.e. Roman Catholics, Protestants or Anabaptists) really were reflective of Jesus Christ.

I did quarrel with Estep's assertion that the modern descendants of the Anabaptist of the 16th century have minimal impact on the culture. That may be true of the Amish and to a lesser extent some of the Hutterites, but certainly the Mennonites and other traditional Anabaptists I know are very involved in evangelism and mercy ministries. Other than that quibble, I can heartily recommend The Anabaptist Story to anyone who is interested in church history or the Reformation or who simply wants to know more about the men and women who came before us, taking up their cross and suffering for His sake. The lessons to be learned from the Anabaptists are likely to be very pertinent in the days to come for the followers of Christ.