Anabaptists Born: Swiss Rebels Challenge Church
Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and a dozen followers baptized each other in Zurich, founding the Anabaptist movement and breaking a millennium of church-state union in European Christianity. By rejecting infant baptism and insisting on voluntary adult conversion, they challenged both Catholic and Protestant authority simultaneously. Their radical separation of church and state, though brutally persecuted for centuries, eventually influenced the constitutional religious freedom enshrined in the American Bill of Rights.
January 21, 1525
501 years ago
Key Figures & Places
Felix Manz
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Anabaptist
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Zürich
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Switzerland
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Conrad Grebel
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George Blaurock
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Switzerland
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Anabaptism
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Conrad Grebel
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Felix Manz
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George Blaurock
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Zurich
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Reformation
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Huldrych Zwingli
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Gläubigentaufe
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Bibelschule
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