The "Anabaptist Story" is hard to tell. For, unlike Lutheranism, it has no gigantic figure whose life, struggles, and triumphs came to personify the church. To know the story of Luther is to know the church that bears his name. The Anabaptists, though producing many excellent and heroic men, have no one who can even remotely correspond to the great German Reformer. Therefore, I must approach this lecture in a way different than my most recent efforts. I will deal chiefly with the ideas of Anabaptism, and not so much with its chronology or personalities. Ideas, of course, are not usually as interesting as people are, but they are more important.

The movement called "Anabaptist" began in Zurich, Switzerland, the city of Ulrich Zwingli. He was, oddly enough, both its inspiration and its most violent foe. In 1517, Zwingli began urging his nation to rid itself of the accumulated traditions of the Church and return to the Bible alone. Such preaching had a wonderful effect on Zurich, leading its Council to purge the city of its idols and adopt a more Scriptural approach to public worship. Zwingli's ideas electrified a generation, especially a young nobleman by the name of Conrad Grebel.