Early Anabaptism in Global Perspective
Session 6
Wednesday, July 23, 2025 • 1:15–2:45 p.m.
A. Papers: Anabaptism in Conversation with Pietists, Quakers, and Baptists
Primitivism, Place, and Publications: Early Pietist Connections to Anabaptism
Denise Kettering-Lane
In the late seventeenth century, Pietism arose in Germany as a result of a variety of religious, social, and cultural factors. A renewal movement within Lutheran and Reformed Christianity, Pietism also resulted in groups of so-called Radical Pietists that critiqued and even separated from the established confessions. This paper argues that there were three areas where Pietists found affinity with Anabaptists, who by then had developed more established communities in Germany. First, both Radical and Ecclesial Pietists called repeatedly for a return to the Primitive Church, a call that echoed concerns of many Anabaptists from the previous century. In these cases, a diverse group of Pietists from Phillip Jakob Spener to Alexander Mack commented positively on certain aspects of Anabaptist ideas and practices. This paper will examine these Pietist writings for their perceptions of Anabaptist Primitivism. Second, Radical Pietist communities often took root in places, particular towns and villages, where there were already well-established Anabaptist communities. These communities were sites where Anabaptists had often found tolerance within the Germanies, but also extended beyond Germany into the Netherlands. By tracing the physical locations and relocations of Pietist communities, it is possible to draw connections between Anabaptism and Radical Pietism that demonstrate overlap in their communities. A case study of the Schwarzenau Brethren will be instructive in examining this phenomenon. Finally, Pietists used and appropriated Anabaptist publications and texts. Güldene Aepffel in Silbern Schalen, oder schöne und nützliche Worte und Wahrheiten zur Gottseligkei was a particularly popular text among Radical Pietists. Gottfried Arnold’s work will demonstrate the connections that Pietists drew to Anabaptist ideas through publication. This paper aims to demonstrate the many ways that Pietists interacted with Anabaptism and actual Anabaptists in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Denise Kettering-Lane is Associate Professor of Brethren Studies at Bethany Theological Seminary. She is also the editor of the journal Brethren Life of Thought. She has published articles on German Pietism, Brethren history and theology, and Brethren practices.
Quakerism and the Renewal of Spiritualist-Prophetic Apocalypticism among Seventeenth-Century Dutch Mennonites
Joseph F. Pfeiffer
Scholars of early Anabaptism since the mid-twentieth century have drawn attention to the early prophetic-apocalyptic essence of emergent spiritualist Anabaptism in the Radical Reformation in the Netherlands and Northern Germany in the early sixteenth century, especially characteristic of Melchior Hoffman, one branch of which culminated in the disastrous events at Münster, after which the tendencies toward either sectarian isolationism or cultural accommodation prevailed.
As 2024 marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of Quakerism’s founder, and 2025 marks the 500th anniversary of the emergence of continental Anabaptism, the time is ripe to review the little studied cross-pollination of these two radical religious impulses, especially as they occurred in the interaction of Quakers and Mennonites in seventeenth-century continental Europe, and their contribution to the prophetic-apocalyptic vision in the founding of Pennsylvania, William Penn’s “Holy Experiment.”
This paper will review the efforts of early seventeenth-century Quaker missionaries on continental Europe among Anabaptist-Mennonite communities, from the Low Countries to the Vistula delta, in a time of social and cultural crisis, arguing that Quaker missions on the European continent made marked success almost exclusively among Mennonite communities because Quakerism offered a revitalization and renewal of the early spiritualist prophetic-apocalyptic foundation upon which Dutch Anabaptism emerged in the early sixteenth century. Thus, we propose that the realignment of numerous spiritualist-oriented seventeenth-century Mennonites with Quakerism, and the emergent “Quaker Mennonites” of the Netherlands and Rhineland, be viewed as an alternative reiteration of the earlier prophetic-apocalyptic Anabaptist impulse, in contrast to the other survival strategies: socio-cultural accommodation or sectarian withdrawal and isolation. Dutch-German Quaker Mennonites renewed and developed an inaugurated eschatology that held in tension both the impulses for engaging in renewed prophetic social critique of the wider world and fidelity to an otherworldly apocalyptic worldview.
Finally, the legacy of the Dutch Quaker Mennonites will be examined in their impacts on the development of American Quakerism as a whole, especially in the social and political fabric of the Pennsylvania Holy Experience, most notably advocacy for the abolition of slavery in the New World.
Joseph Pfeiffer is a PhD candidate in Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. His academic interests include the dynamics of spiritual renewal movements and their contributions to Anabaptist and radical Free Church mission and ecclesial identity in historical and cultural contexts, with a focus on Neo-Anabaptist movements in history. He has served as an Evangelical Quaker minister and missionary in urban Southern California and Southeast Asia. He and his spouse, Cara Pfeiffer, are parents to four adopted children.
Anabaptism Disowned: The Question of English and Irish Nonconformist Antecedents
Tony Walsh
As we observe the 500th anniversary of the emergence of Anabaptism in Europe, we must note the many contradictions and ambiguities that exist in the acknowledgement of that heritage. Such acknowledgements add a texture to our understanding of the movement and its influences.
Many significant historians of church history trace clear and incontrovertible links between continental Anabaptism and the development of religious nonconformity—particularly the Baptist movement—in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The similarity in church government, in the understanding of the nature of the church, as well as on the character of baptism, worship, and church life seem to constitute clear connections to Swiss, German, and Dutch Anabaptism. One may not claim that Anabaptism was the exclusive source of these insights, but the evidence is overwhelming that it was a major influence on Baptists in England and Ireland. The founders and leaders of the first two English Baptist congregations (Helwys and Smyth) had both spent significant time among and been much influenced by Dutch Anabaptists. Moreover, immigration by continental Anabaptists to England significantly swelled the ranks of early Baptist causes there. Despite the strength of these links, both General and Particular Baptists in the United Kingdom and Ireland have long continued to deny, disown. and often almost violently repudiate any links to an Anabaptist legacy. This continues to be a most striking reaction with origins variously in historiography, in culture, or in deeply held experiences of subjectivity and identity. The repudiation continues to have a potent effect in molding the life, character, and theology of Baptists in these islands.
Based in the conceptual frameworks of post-positivist and narrative research inquiry, this paper explores the perceived rationale as well as the results of this historic and current repudiation with a group of leading Baptists from Britain and Ireland. The focus and aim of the method as well as of the paper is to develop a deeper understanding of both rationale and results. It is anticipated that this exploration of a nuanced and somewhat conflicted positioning will enable an expanded understanding of perceptions of—and reactions to—Anabaptism. It may also highlight its disowned influences upon, and processes of repudiation among, some of its more reluctant children.
Tony Walsh was, until his recent retirement, a member of the academic staff and sometime head of the Department of Adult and Community Education at Maynooth University, Co Kildare, Ireland. He continues as director of the Centre for the Study of Irish Protestantism at the university and was the 2018 Kreider Fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College. Particularly interested in the increased understanding of minority experience, explored through the lens of narrative research, Walsh has a continued involvement in a number of engagement and research projects. These include the experience of the tiny Protestant minority in the Irish Republic; the ongoing uneasy peace process in Northern Ireland; the life and experience of the Old German Baptist Brethren, an American Plain group; and in education in Palestine. A systemic-constructivist psychotherapist and supervisor, Walsh is an elder in a small Dublin church with somewhat vague roots in both Pietism and Anabaptism.
B. Roundtable: Translating Anabaptist Source Materials: Challenges, Opportunities, Priorities
Jamie Pitts, moderator
Hear from panelists involved with various Anabaptist sources translation projects and join the conversation. Topics will include: What is currently being translated? How do we decide which texts to bring to translation? What are the challenges (including financial challenges) and the cooperative necessities involved in translation projects (who are the groups/series/institutional sponsors)? Who is our audience, and how does that impact our work (scholarly, annotated editions vs. language being tweaked to attract younger, less academic readers)? What is the future of this work—what’s next on the translation agenda?
Jamie Pitts is Professor of Anabaptist Studies at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana. He is also the director of Institute of Mennonite Studies, editor of Anabaptist Witness, and author of Organizing Spirit: Pneumatology, Institutions, and Global Imagination (T&T Clark, 2025).
C. Seminar: Incarnational Hospitality: An Anabaptist Approach to Meeting Muslims
Peter M. Sensenig
The aim of this workshop is to address the question: How do we relate faithfully as individuals, churches, and a global Anabaptist body to Muslim neighbors? We will incorporate clips from the video series Allies for Peace, produced collaboratively by Eastern Mennonite Missions’ Christian-Muslim Relations Team and the organization Discover Islam, to consider Anabaptist relationships to Islam and Muslims from sixteenth-century Europe to the present day. With practical examples, this workshop considers three models for Christian discipleship from Scripture that can be named incarnational hospitality:
- As hosts, where Christians are a majority in numbers and power, such as Indonesian Mennonites in Philadelphia hosting Muslims during Ramadan, Anabaptist churches receiving Muslim refugees in Kenya and North America, and Ethiopian Christians protecting early Muslim refugees.
- As guests, we choose to enter majority-Muslim contexts for the sake of peacebuilding and witness, as Mennonites have done in Somalia and Syria.
- As mutual partners, where all are guests and hosts, such as interfaith work in Tanzania, Kenya, and Chad.
The audience for this workshop is any participant (student, church leader, or lay Christian) who is keen to reflect on their own identity and points of contact with Muslims, as well as how these identities connect to Anabaptist origin stories. Additionally, we will examine the current major Anabaptist-Muslim interfaces globally, and the difference that context makes in how we approach the relationship.
Peter M. Sensenig does multi-faith peacebuilding work in Chad, central Africa, with Eastern Mennonite Missions (EMM) and Mennonite Mission Network. He is a member of EMM’s Christian-Muslim Relations Team and previously served in Zanzibar, Tanzania, from 2015–2020. He has a PhD in Theology, Christian ethics concentration, from Fuller Theological Seminary and has also taught ethics and peace studies in Iran, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Denmark, Kenya, Congo-Kinshasa, and the U.S.