Church leaders from around the world gathered in Amsterdam for the past week to commemorate the 500-year Free Church tradition, beginning as persecuted minorities, but have grown into the greatest trend within today’s Protestant Christianity.
The movement started not in Amsterdam, but in 1525 a small town called Zolikon, just outside Zurich, Switzerland.
After baptizing their first followers in their homemade homes, a band of followers who were exiled from Zurich began to read the Bible and break the bread together in each other’s houses there. Mountain sermons and the co-lifestyle of early churches encouraged them to become binding communities of brothers and sisters of Christ. The village experienced a revival, with over 100 people being (re)baptized as followers.
This was the first attempt in Protestant history to form a voluntary Christian community independent of the state, less than eight years after Luther published 95 papers on the doors of the Wittenberg Church on October 31, 1517.
They argued that illicit gatherings would fragment society.
For Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli and the Zurich Council, this separation was unacceptable. They argued that injustice would fragment society, undermining all order and leading to anarchy. For social cohesion it had to be restrained.
Felix Manx was first given the so-called “Third Baptism” in the house where the first baptism took place behind Grossmunster in Zurich. It was interpreted by the death owned on the Limumato River at the hands of the elders of the Protestant church and city.
But like the early churches, persecution and martialism only caused movement to go underground and spread rapidly. Many Central and Northern European countries, particularly in German and Dutch-speaking regions, fellowship of interdependent voluntary followers has skyrocketed. Some expressions have become extreme, but a former Friesland Catholic priest named Menno Simons (1496–1561) gave him a more balanced leadership.
Find a shelter
Mennonites will play an important role in urban economies and societies.
Even before Amsterdam accepted the Reformation, religious refugees were evacuated to the climate of tolerance there, particularly Menno Simmons’ followers. These mennonites will play an important role in the city’s economy and society for the following century.
Many were involved in the production of textiles such as shipbuilding, sail making, rope making, leather tanning, silk, weaving, dying, bleaching, and more. It has developed technological advances in wind turbine technology and water engineering. Others became wealthy international merchants involved in trade routes ranging from the Baltic Sea to the Atlantic and even Africa and South America.
When Amsterdam chose to take part in the Dutch rebellion against the Catholic Spanish rulers in 1578, Calvinists ruled the church scene. All other streams of Catholic, Lutheran, Lemonstrand (the Dutch movement that embraced the free will) and Anabaptist were permitted to worship in buildings disguised as houses of knights and imposing merchants. These secret churches later became known as the Shuilken (hidden church).
Singelkerk, which started last week’s 500th anniversary rally, is a classic example. From outside, no one would speculate that the facade of the three-person house has a large sanctuary with two levels of balconies and seating for 350 worshipers. The 200 international Baptists and Mennonites attended the Congregation of the Confederates were easy to accommodate. In Amsterdam’s heyday, Singerkerk was an important hub for spreading the idea of Anabaptist through exchange routes to many other regions.
Thomas Herwys returned to England and started the First Baptist Church.
Two British dissidents, John Smith and Thomas Herwyth, who fled to Amsterdam with pilgrims in 1609, began their first Baptist gathering, influenced by Mennonite teachings on the baptism of followers. While Smith was in Amsterdam, Helwees returned to England, where he began his first Baptist church. He soon died in prison for his efforts.
Become the biggest
Herwys and fellow Baptists Richard Overton and Roger Williams pioneered religious freedom and human rights on both sides of the Atlantic. Voluntary church membership, baptism of followers, separation of church and state, religious freedom and congregational governance were principles that were considered radical and even heretical in the 16th century, but now explain the features of the greatest current within Protestant Christianity today.
The Baptists and Mennonites were later joined by Moravians and Methodists, the Salvation Army, the Brethren of Plymouth, various other evangelical streams, and ultimately Pentecostals, followed in the tradition of a voluntary and free church.
It is the most globally dynamic Christian stream.
The World’s Christian Encyclopedia describes the growth of the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement from 58 million in 1970 to 635 million in 2020. And evangelicals ranging from 112 million in 1970 to 386 million in 2020. This free church tradition, now bulging to 1 billion people, is now the second largest ever growing into a global Catholic community of 1.4 billion. It is the most globally dynamic Christian vein, growing most vividly in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
This trend is now adding together the Orthodox world (including the Orthodox of the East, Orthodox of the East and Assyrian Churches in the East) and the Ecumenical Protestants (up to 300 million).
From Zolikon’s persecuted opposition group, it has become a new mainstream!
Originally published by Word every week. It was reissued with permission.
Jeff Fountain and his wife Romkie are initiators of the Schumann European Studies Center. They moved to Amsterdam in December 2017, where they lived in the Dutch countryside for over 40 years before working at the Ywam Heidebeek Training Centre. Romkje was the founder of Ywam in the Netherlands and chaired the national committee until 2013. Jeff was director of YWAM Europe for 20 years until 2009. Jeff chaired the annual hopes for Europe’s roundtables until 2015, while Romkie was recently chairman of the leadership network women. Jeff is the author of Living of Hope, deeply rooted titles and other titles, and writes Weekly Word, a weekly column on issues relating to Europe.
The weekly word is the initiative of the Schumann Center for European Studies. Jeff Fountain is a New Zealander with a Dutch passport and is currently the director of the European Studies Centre (www.schumancentre.eu) and lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Jeff earned a history degree from Auckland University (1972), worked as a journalist at the New Zealand Herald (1972-3), and worked as a travel director for the Third Student Christian Fellowship (TSCF) (1973). He has lived in the Netherlands since 1975 and traveled and spoke to almost every European country. For 20 years after the collapse of communism, he was a missionary youth who was the European Director of International and Denominational Mission Organizations. He chaired the international international sectarian movement, the European hope that organized two Pan-European Parliaments in Budapest in 2002 and 2011.
