Early Anabaptism in Global Perspective
Session 2
Tuesday, July 22, 2025 • 3:30–5 p.m.
A. Papers: Perspectives on Early Anabaptism: Contextual and Comparative
The Social and Theological Contexts of Balthasar Hubmaier
Breanna J. Nickel
This paper will explore several ways in which Balthasar Hubmaier perceived, influenced, and was influenced by his immediate social and theological contexts. From his university studies in Freiburg and Ingolstadt (1503–1516) to his pastoral positions and habitation in varied cities such as Regensburg, Waldshut, Zürich, and Nikolsburg (1516–1528), Hubmaier frequently found himself embedded within contentious pedagogical, political, and theological debates. What was his experience of the Wegestreit or “dispute of the ways” during his university days? What was his personal perspective of the Peasant’s War in 1525 and of ecclesial and ritual reforms in Regensburg and Waldshut? How did he express his intentions, and how did he understand his role and purpose in these contexts? And further, did Hubmaier understand himself as part of “movements” that would stretch far beyond his immediate context, or not?
Drawing from Hubmaier’s written works, archival research completed in Freiburg and Regensburg, and recent scholarship including social histories, this paper aims to demonstrate how the “emergence” of the Reformation(s) and the origins of Anabaptism may look very different from the viewpoint of one sixteenth-century theologian than from that of the global Anabaptist community of 2025.
Breanna J. Nickel is Associate Professor of Bible and Religion at Goshen College. Her research and teaching focuses on Anabaptist theology and Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations in the medieval and early modern periods. Her forthcoming projects include a book on the “scholastic Anabaptist” Balthasar Hubmaier.
The Japanese Clandestine Christians in the Early Modern Period in Comparison with the Anabaptists in Europe
Tomoji Odori
This presentation examines the characteristics of the faith and practices of the “Kakure Kirishitan” in early modern Japan. Although they were originally Catholic, they created a form of “folk Protestantism” through their lay-centered church governance, simple rituals (including both infant and adult baptism), forgiveness for repentant apostates, renunciation of vengeance, nonresistance, and resolute martyrdom, all of which provide interesting comparisons with Anabaptism in Europe during the same period.
Tomoji Odori is a professor in the Liberal Arts and Sciences Education Center at Musashi University, Tokyo, Japan. He received his MA and PhD degrees from Wadeda University in Tokyo. His research interest is the global history of the Reformations. His latest book deals with the Anabaptists and nonviolence from the sixteenth century to the present.
Italian Anabaptism: The Anabaptist Underground Church in the Dominion of Venice, 1550–1551
Martin Rothkegel
The Anabaptist underground church in the Republic of Venice was an ephemeral network of tiny groups of believers. Its existence lasted less than two years from planting the first congregation in Asolo in the first quarter of 1550 until the great wave of arrests in December 1551. The whole missionary enterprise probably reached only a few hundred men and women. Nevertheless, its significance for the secret evangelical networks in northern Italy should not be underestimated. Manifesting its claim for “ecclesiality” by the ritual practices of baptism, Lord’s Supper, and church discipline, the Anabaptist underground church was the only attempt to establish an evangelical church with an integral ecclesial practice on Italian soil in the sixteenth century.
Martin Rothkegel studied classics, theology, and Jewish studies at the universities of Hamburg, Thessaloniki, Vienna, Prague, and Potsdam and holds a habilitation from Göttingen. He teaches History of Christianity and biblical languages at Theologische Hochschule Elstal (Berlin, Germany). Rothkegel’s research is focused on early modern religious nonconformity.
B. Papers: The Global Reach of Art and Music
You Mean That’s Actually Dutch? The International Dissemination of Early Dutch Mennonite Material and Visual Culture
Nina Schroeder-van’t Schip
Much of the extant imagery pertaining to early Anabaptism originates from artists of the Dutch Republic. As I have explored elsewhere, polemical imagery casting aspersions on Anabaptism or using Anabaptism to warn more broadly against heresy and radicalism abounded in the early modern period. There were, for example, dozens of illustrations of the naked runners and the Anabaptist attack on Amsterdam’s town hall. Furthermore, laudatory portrait prints of Menno Simons (which are all in fact invented, since none were produced in his actual lifetime) and most portraits of selected other early Anabaptist leaders also heralded from Dutch artists. The many familiar Martyrs Mirror illusions produced by Jan Luyken for the 1685 second edition highlight another example used within Mennonite devotional and didactic material. Most of this imagery was made in the seventeenth century and dealt with people or events from the sixteenth—thus, it was already made in a different context than that of the subject matter itself (the people or events represented). In different genres of publication and different milieus of circulation, these illustrations were used to reinforce particular narratives about early Anabaptist history and Mennonite identity. This was done both among Mennonites and for Mennonites, and by artists and historians outside the movement. Many of the relevant Dutch art compositions were copied again and again over the early modern period and beyond.
On this occasion of the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism, with this conference’s particular emphasis on the global story of the movement, I would like to consider how and where this Dutch imagery has continued to be used to tell particular stories about Mennonitism to this day. What becomes iconic (if not an icon)? What comes out of its time and place in Dutch visual culture to become a part of what might be considered a more eclectic transhistorical Mennonite visual culture? Examples to be considered will not only include the most often digitally reproduced Dutch artworks (like the various Menno portraits), but also modern artistic adaptations of early Dutch imagery, like an artwork based on Luyken’s Dirk Willems illustration located in a Mennonite church in Colombia, and a life-sized statue of the same in Steinbach, Manitoba. Alongside consideration of the historical Dutch artistic milieu that was important for production of a great deal of relevant imagery, the paper will (1) highlight and offer new analysis of specific artworks located near and far, (2) consider how images can reinforce or challenge accepted historical narratives, and (3) explore the ways that images can take on lives of their own (sometimes, in doing so, leaving the facts behind).
Nina Schroeder van ’t Schip is an art historian based in the Netherlands. She researches and publishes on Mennonite involvement and representation in the Dutch art world, and she is also a contributing author for the digital humanities religious heritage project The Other Map of Amsterdam. Schroeder van ’t Schip worked for several years as a postdoc with the Doopsgezind Seminarium at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, and she is now employed by Doopsgezind Amsterdam, where she is developing spaces for international community engagement and putting together a program of history activities and resources in connection with the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism. She also contributes to heritage sector educational projects, creates bespoke history tours, and organizes arts programming via her business, Amsterdam Arts & Heritage.
Anabaptists Sing: What We Can Learn from Sixteenth-Century Anabaptists and Global Worshipping Communities Today
James R. Krabill
Anabaptist worship patterns have received insufficient attention by scholars of early Anabaptism. This presentation will begin with reflections on what we know of sixteenth-century Anabaptist reactions to the lavish pomp and pageantry of state-sponsored worship and the desire to return to simpler patterns observed by the early church. Though some extreme approaches called for all church music, including singing, to be eliminated from corporate worship, by 1560 there is record of at least 130 Anabaptist hymn composers by name, indicating that hymns were in use in both congregational and private devotional settings. The Ausbund hymnbook further provided continental Anabaptists with ways and means of singing their theology in communal worship contexts and in the marketplace and prison cells as public witness. As we celebrate the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism and the phenomenal growth of the church in Majority-world settings, we will then turn our reflections to a selection of case studies from around the world where today’s Anabaptist worshipping communities gather—in Congo, Portugal, Mexico, France, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, India, and South Korea, as potential examples—to glean what we can from these newer communities of faith. We will highlight briefly the origins of local worship patterns and reference music influences, forms, and other related artistic expressions that are a part of the worship experience. As time permits, we will invite seminar participants to share their experiences with global church worship patterns and what they observe as strengths and challenges to Anabaptist worship going forward.
James R. Krabill served for fourteen years with Mennonite missions as a Bible and church history teacher in West Africa. Upon returning to the United States, he held various administrative roles in communication and as senior executive for the mission's global ministries. With a PhD degree in African Studies/Ethnomusicology from the University of Birmingham, UK, he has written and taught extensively in the areas of world arts and global worship.
C. Workshop: Reading Early Anabaptist Sources in Community: An Interactive Workshop
Gerald J. Mast
Drawing on the experiences of the Anabaptist Reading Group in Bluffton, Ohio, which has met weekly for the past twelve years to discuss Anabaptist sources in translation, this workshop will provide a syllabus of Anabaptist sources, best practices for interdisciplinary and cross-vocational discussion, key historical and contextual information for engaging sixteenth-century religious texts well, and an opportunity to apply these principles during a group discussion of several challenging passages from the sources.
Gerald J. Mast is Professor of Communication at Bluffton University and the author of numerous books and essays on Anabaptist persuasion. Most recently, he has published a series of seven essays in Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage on the life and theological rhetoric of Menno Simons.