"Yieldedness," Offering One's Life for Peace
… I say unto you, do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also…
Matthew 5: 39-40.
Of all the Christian groups of the so-called Radical Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Anabaptists were perhaps the most radical. Anabaptists asserted that proper Christian discipleship demanded an absolute obedience to God, a total "yieldedness" to the message and will of Christ. The Anabaptists believed that living in the perfection of Christ necessarily implied a rejection of all forms of violence. It also meant that one’s life should imitate Jesus’ in every possible particular - including his terrible suffering and death. Beginning in 1525, Anabaptists across Europe began to be martyred for their religious views. The irony is morbid: the sixteenth-century groups who believed most ardently in peace were often the most brutally persecuted.
Canadian Heritage Information Network, The Provincial Museum of Alberta,
© 2000, CHIN. All Rights Reserved.
Matthew 5: 39-40.
Of all the Christian groups of the so-called Radical Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Anabaptists were perhaps the most radical. Anabaptists asserted that proper Christian discipleship demanded an absolute obedience to God, a total "yieldedness" to the message and will of Christ. The Anabaptists believed that living in the perfection of Christ necessarily implied a rejection of all forms of violence. It also meant that one’s life should imitate Jesus’ in every possible particular - including his terrible suffering and death. Beginning in 1525, Anabaptists across Europe began to be martyred for their religious views. The irony is morbid: the sixteenth-century groups who believed most ardently in peace were often the most brutally persecuted.
Canadian Heritage Information Network, The Provincial Museum of Alberta,
© 2000, CHIN. All Rights Reserved.