LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Anabaptist: Jesus Christ
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Anabaptist responses to persecution varied. In the immediate aftermath of the Peasants' War a small minority chose to fight back, though futilely. Some believers recanted when threatened with punishment, while others stayed steadfast in the face of hardship, hoping for rescue upon Christ's imminent return. When confronted with the choice, some preferred martyrdom over the betrayal of their faith; about two thousand died for their faith, about as many as the martyrs drawn from the far more numerous Protestant churches. Another option was Nicodemism, hiding their forbidden faith from central authorities while pretending to conform. Many chose exile.
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Certainly, the Anabaptist founders owed much to Luther and the other Protestant reformers. In particular, Luther's emphasis on salvation - through personal faith, in Christ alone, by grace, as revealed in Scripture - prepared the way. But on many other crucial issues the Anabaptists differed as much from Luther as Luther did from Roman Catholicism.
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Christians committed to the Anabaptist calling that emerged in the 16th century faced great difficulty as they struggled to live out their gospel vision. John D. Roth recounts these struggles in a straightforward, accessible narrative that serves as memorable introduction to the Mennonite story.
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In the first part Finger tells the story of the development of Anabaptist thought, helping the reader grasp both the unifying and diverse elements in that theological tradition. In the second and third parts Finger considers in more detail the major themes essential to Anabaptist theology, first considering the historic views and then presenting his own constructive effort. Within the Anabaptist perspective Finger offers a theology that highlights the three dimensions of its salvific center: the communal, the personal and the missional. The themes taken up in the final part form what Finger identifies as the convictional framework of that center; namely, Christology, anthropology and eschatology.
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Early modern Mennonites were instrumental in creating a sense of pan-Anabaptist identity. They argued that their Anabaptist forebears were not fanatics, heretics, or rebels, as many Catholic and mainstream Protestant polemicists alleged. Rather, they were believers who had been especially faithful to Christ's teachings. A rich martyrological tradition emerged in which Mennonite writers memorialized executed believers from groups all across Europe. Significant numbers of Mennonites prospered economically in the early modern era, and some were able to establish substantial merchant enterprises. They used part of their wealth to support coreligionists suffering hardships in other regions.
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The socialism of the 16th century was necessarily Christian and Anabaptist. Lutheranism was more attractive to grand-ducal patriots and well-to-do burghers than to the poor and oppressed and disinherited. The Lutherans and Zwinglians never converted the Anabaptists. Those who yielded to stress of persecution fell back into Papalism and went to swell the tide of the Catholic reaction.
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