April 17, 2026

Martin Bucer: The Failed Protestant Peacemaker of Strasbourg

By Clarke Morledge

From the Christianity along the Rhine travel blog series….

Being a peacemaker is not easy. While the current conflict with Iran absorbs the headlines, it overshadows another long standing conflict: Just ask President Donald Trump, who since the beginning of his presidency has been trying to find a peaceful solution to the Russia/Ukraine conflict for well over a year.

Such was also the case in the 16th century in Europe, when theological giants, like Martin Luther and the Roman Catholic Pope, spread their influence across the land. With the exception the Holy Roman Emperor himself (Charles V), the Pope was the most prominent leader in Western Europe, whereas Luther was a seminary professor, with a sharp wit and stinging rhetoric, who knew how to use the printing press, the rough equivalent to today’s social media platforms on the Internet. The Reformation did not only result in a split within the medieval Catholic church, it also divided Protestants trying to forge a united movement in attempts to reform that medieval Catholic church.

The Protestant Reformation was not simply a theological, religious dispute. It had far reaching ramifications impacting kings, princes, and emperors, and the millions of subjects who served them. Within a century after Luther, the religious conflicts of the 16th century became intertwined with political conflicts, resulting in the Thirty Years War, where roughly one out of four Europeans died due to violence and (mostly) disease spread by the war.

Into the mix was another Protestant Reformer from Germany, Martin Bucer, who was just a few years younger than Luther, a man that most Christians have probably never heard of. Unlike Luther, Bucer was more cautious and reserved. Yet Bucer became a leading voice among the Protestants, trying to forge a “third way” through various theological conflicts, particularly in the city of Strasbourg, along the Rhine River, bordering France and Germany.

Back in October of 2025, my wife and I went on a river cruise on the Rhine River, and we spent a day in Strasbourg. I got to visit some of the sites where Martin Bucer lived much of his life.

In front of Martin Bucer’s home in Strasbourg, France. It was in this home where Bucer officiated the marriage between John Calvin and Idelette de Bure, a former Anabaptist. Calvin had been forced out of Geneva, Switzerland for several years. Bucer helped to arrange for his friend Calvin to move to Strasbourg, to get a job as a pastor for French Protestant refugees living in the city. It was a bit of a cloudy day in Strasbourg, when I took this photo in October, 2025.

 

Martin Bucer Becomes a Protestant

Not much is known about Martin Bucer’s early life. Born in 1491, Bucer joined the Dominican order perhaps in his late teenage years, and ended up studying theology in Heidelberg in 1515. But this was the era when the humanism of Desiderius Erasmus came to the foreground, particularly with Erasmus’ pivotal Greek New Testament, which helped inspire Martin Luther in Wittenberg, Germany to post his famous Ninety-Five Theses, reportedly on the Wittenberg church door.

Bucer’s family had encouraged him to join the Dominicans, which he did, but he was never wholly enthusiastic about it. Bucer heard Martin Luther in a disputation at Heidelberg, and that changed his life. Bucer’s interest in the humanism of Erasmus pretty much sealed his fate with the Dominicans, and he began the painful process of trying to be released from his monastic vows. He then sought to find some gameful employment outside of his world of being a Dominican monk. In 1522, Bucer married a nun, Elizabeth, who was forced out of her monastic order, for breaking off her celibacy vow. The penniless couple eventually made their way to Strasbourg, along the Rhine River.

Strasbourg

Ah, let me tell you about Strasbourg.

Strasbourg is a fascinating city, having gone back and forth between German and French control, over the centuries. They call it the “Alsace” region of France, the land “in-between,” I was told, or the land of a “foreign domain.”  Because of its unique position sandwiched between Roman Catholic France and Lutheran Germany, Strasbourg played a pivotal role in the Reformation controversy of the 16th century.

With a newly pregnant wife, Bucer and his family were forced to move in with his parents until he could find a job. At that point, Bucer was not unlike a typical twenty-something today, still living on mom and dad’s car insurance and cell phone plan. At first, Bucer offered to be a tutor for students interested in the humanism of Erasmus. That helped to feed his family, but it still was not enough. He was finally able to secure a decent job as a chaplain, getting out on his own, spending most of his years in Strasbourg.

Unfortunately for Bucer, he wrote a book defending the Reformation instigated by Luther, and his intellectual hero, Erasmus, heard of this and rejected Bucer’s thesis. Erasmus wanted reform within the medieval church, but he thought Bucer and Luther had gone too far in their criticisms of Rome.

Anabaptists, fleeing persecution in both Roman Catholic and Reformation controlled areas of Europe, soon made their way to Strasbourg, and so Bucer found himself fighting a multi-sided theological and intellectual war, with Roman Catholics on one side and the Anabaptists on the other. Yet Bucer was optimistic, hopeful that dialogue with such factions would eventually yield some peace, without compromising core convictions. In the midst of this, Bucer sought to find an irenic approach which could bridge the differences between these various theological camps.

Bucer was also hopeful that a rift between the Swiss Zurich reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, and the German Wittenberg reformer, Martin Luther, could be healed at the Colloquy of Marburg in 1529, regarding the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. However, Luther believed that Bucer was just as intransigent and wrong-headed as Zwingli regarding the Eucharist, and reconciliation was not achieved.

However, despite this failure at Marburg, it did not keep Bucer from trying to be a peacemaker. Bucer traveled across the German-speaking land meeting with different followers of Luther and Zwingli, looking for areas where different parties could find some common ground, and even resolving conflict with Rome. Bucer’s list of friends reads like a “Who’s Who” of the Reformation.

Street in the old part of Strasbourg. Martin Bucer lived in a house on the left hand side of this street (just to the left of where the two people on the street are walking). To keep automobile traffic out of the old part of the city, during certain times of the day, a column is raised and lowered to keep vehicles out so that tourists like myself could wander around and take photos…. and not get run over!!

 

Martin Bucer in the Crucible of Life

Sadly, the year 1541 proved to be the most challenging year for Bucer. A meeting at Regensburg, Germany between Protestant leaders like Philip Methlancthon and Roman Catholic theologians like Jonathan Eck, was envisioned as an effort to bridge the gap between the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics. A coalition of moderates on both sides of the controversy had high hopes for this meeting. However, the colloquy at Regensburg turned out to be a last ditch effort at theological unity which failed to satisfy either Luther or the papal authorities.

Also, during that year just after the meeting in Regensburg, Bucer’s wife, Elizabeth, died of the plague, along with three of their children. Bucer’s close friend and colleague, John Calvin, was forced by the plague to move back to Geneva, not too long after the city fathers of Geneva asked Calvin to return to the Swiss city and be their pastor again. With his wife dead and his close friend Calvin gone from Strasbourg, Bucer had suffered great loss.

A few year earlier, Bucer had gained a friendship with another Protestant moderate, Johannes Oecolampadius, who pastored a church in Basel, Switzerland, further up the Rhine River. Oecolampadius had died ten years earlier, leaving a widow, who in turn became married to a colleague in Strasbourg, Wolfgang Capito. However, Capito himself died of the plague himself, leaving his wife to be widowed yet again.

Bucer was in a difficult situation, with no wife and several surviving children to care for. Bucer quickly remarried Oecolampadius’ and Capito’s widow, Wibrandis Rosenblatt.  The now thrice-married Wibrandis Rosenblatt found a faithful husband in Bucer, and partner in raising children. However, Bucer was criticized by other reformers for remarrying too soon.

Nevertheless, other reformers looked to Bucer as a trusted friend, who believed he was able to intercede and tone down the often-violent rhetoric of others. For example, when Martin Luther in 1543 wrote his most unfortunate tract, On the Jews and Their Lies, a letter was written on December 8, 1543, from the Zurich reformed preacher, Heinrich Bullinger, to his friend, Bucer, urging Bucer to try to persuade Luther to come back to his senses:

“Luther has written in a way that is utterly indecorous and entirely without moderation — plainly scurrilous, not serious. He writes against the Jews, and what might have been a fortunate and persuasive argument he renders offensive — indeed, even ridiculous — by his vile insults and crude invective, which befit no one, least of all an aged theologian.

This may someday bring great evil upon the Church. Perhaps you, his close friend and brother, could restrain him as a teacher — so that he may remember himself and his modesty, and write and act with greater humility, purity, and circumspection. Many pious and learned men are offended by his arrogance, which is excessive beyond measure.

A theologian should embody modesty, prudence, piety, and gratis. However, the example of his audacious impudence has spread and has now infected many church ministers” (Referenced by John Dickson, author of Bullies and Saints, reviewed here on Veracity. Original Latin source).

Sadly, Bullinger was prophetic, as Luther’s anti-Jewish sentiments were picked up and amplified by the Nazi party movement of 1930’s Germany. I am not aware of any evidence that Bucer was ever successful in intervening with the great Martin Luther, before the latter’s death in 1546.

Alas, Bucer’s position was precariously unstable in Strasbourg, and within a few years the pressure got the best of him. The setback at Regensburg, the continued vitriol leveled by Martin Luther against Huldrych Zwingli’s successor at Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger,  and the returning fire from Bullinger against Luther, along with the personal losses in 1541, began to zap at Bucer’s energy. If strife among his Protestant colleagues was not enough, the defenders of medieval Catholicism were constantly seeking to have him ousted from Strasbourg, including the Emperor Charles V himself.

Bucer was effectively in a theological (and political) “no man’s land,” which ultimately forced him out of Strasbourg in 1549.

Martin Bucer pastored this church, St. Thomas, in Strasbourg, France, until he was forced to leave the city in 1549.

 

Martin Bucer’s Final Years…. In Cambridge, England

Charles V finally found enough leverage to get Bucer kicked out of Strasbourg. Bucer and his family found refuge in England. Bucer was assigned a teaching post at Cambridge, by another English reformer and moderate, Thomas Cranmer, who received him warmly as a colleague. Thomas Cranmer is most well known for crafting together the Book of Common Prayer, for the Church of England, as well as being a martyr for the Reformation, under the persecution of Queen “Bloody” Mary. Cranmer’s temperament mirrored that of Bucer, and most English speakers unwittingly feel Cranmer’s influence today through his translation of the Lord’s Prayer, which many memorize  (“forgive us our debts” versus “forgive us our trespasses“).

But Bucer’s exile in England made him a very unhappy man. The colder northern climate in Cambridge did not help his health, either. Hopes for trying to resolve the differences between Rome and Reformers like Luther ultimately left him alienated from both sides. Conflicts with others wore him down, and within two years of being in England, in 1551, Bucer died.

Despite his death, Bucer’s troubles would haunt beyond the grave. In 1555, the new English monarch, the Roman Catholic Mary (the Queen who had Cranmer burned at the stake), had the bones of Bucer dug up and had him ceremonially burned as a heretic. It was not until Queen Elizabeth, a Protestant, took the throne that in 1560, Bucer was given a second burial with full honors.

 

Life Lessons from Martin Bucer

Martin Bucer embodied what it meant to wear a Union top along with a Confederate bottom. Bucer got shot at from all sides.

In many ways, in our day when so many Christians feel divided from one another, we can learn something from the Dominican monk turned Protestant reformer. From a book entitled Common Places, which features extracts from Bucer’s writings, Bucer believed the church was united in…..

“the unity of the Spirit, of love, the word of God, Christ, the sacraments, and the sharing of gifts, that we may aspire together to the same goal, and hold and express the same beliefs.”

And….

“It is essential that we hold completely in common everything instituted for the building up of the Church.”

That desire to always seek common ground among believers, without compromising essential Christian distinctives, is a virtue which is in short supply today.

Bucer believed that the medieval Roman Catholic Church was in desperate need of reform. Yet he concurred with other reformers that the Bible was indeed the written Word of God, and it was authoritative for all believers. This placed Bucer firmly in the Protestant camp, though his efforts to form a unified coalition among his fellow reformers were frustrated.

Martin Bucer’s most significant theological contribution was in defining a concept called “double justification.” He combined Luther’s theology of “imputed righteousness,” which lined up with Luther’s ideas about justification, with a Roman Catholic theology of “inherent righteousness” (or “imparted righteousness”), emphasizing growth in sanctification over time, as part of a second element of justification, a life well-lived full of good works as one follows Christ. This idea of “double justification” was thought to strike a middle-way between Roman Catholicism and the Reformation tradition of Martin Luther.

But as is so often the case, such “middle-way” theologies tend to be rejected by opposing parties in such discussions. The more extreme voices in a conversation tend to dampen voices of moderation.

Ah, such is the life of a peace maker!!

 

As my wife and I wandered around Strasbourg, we enjoyed (well, at least, I did!) passing by several sites associated with Martin Bucer, such as his home and the church where he served as a pastor. I had just finished reading Martin Bucer: An Introduction to His Life and Theology (Cascade Companions), written by Donald K. McKim and Jim West, a short book that filled in many of the above details about Bucer’s fascinating life. So, if you ever want to read more about Bucer, Martin Bucer: An Introduction to His Life and Theology (Cascade Companions)  is a nice investment, at only 164 pages.

Martin Bucer: An Introduction to His Life and Theology (Cascade Companions), by Donald K. McKim and Jim West. The whole Cascade Companions series is a collection of short biographies of leading Christian figures in church history. This was the first book I read in the series, and it was a good read: short and sweet.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Witnesses

April 3, 2026

Martin Luther in the Hot Seat at Worms and Heidelberg

By Clarke Morledge

From the Christianity along the Rhine blog series….

Martin Luther once delivered a sermon on Good Friday, where he said this:

“Until the present we have been in the Passion week and have celebrated Good Friday in the right way …. Cast your sins from yourself upon Christ, believe with a festive spirit that your sins are His wounds and sufferings, that He carries them and makes satisfaction for them…..Press through all difficulties and behold His friendly heart, how full of love it is toward you, which love constrained Him to bear the heavy load of your conscience and your sin.” 

A lot of ink has been spilled on Martin Luther… and I have read a few pages of it!

One of my closest friends from high school, Thomas Coyner, died a few years ago due to a debilitating life-long illness. Eight years before Thomas died, his father, Boyd Coyner, a retired professor of history at the College of William and Mary (where I work as an IT engineer), died as well.

The Coyner family loved books.

When Dr. Coyner died, my friend Thomas gave to me his dad’s collection of books on Martin Luther. It was a bunch of books! Thomas’ dad was apparently an expert on the life of Martin Luther, the famous German Protestant reformer of the 16th century. This made sense in that Dr. Coyner had grown up in a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, named after Martin Luther himself.

I have heard it said that there are more books written about Martin Luther than any other figure in Western history.  I can believe it! Some of Dr. Coyner’s collection are tomes, including Martin Brecht’s three volume set, with some 1400 pages total…. and that is not counting the endnotes!!

I deeply treasure these books on Luther, though I confess that I hardly have read them all. The standard, recommended biography of Luther, which is nicely short and compact, is Roland Bainton’s Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. Bainton’s book got me hooked on Luther, not just as a pivotal Protestant theologian, but as a shaper of Western culture more broadly.

So, when my wife and I embarked on a cruise on the Rhine River, in October, 2025, I was determined to check out some of the spots where Luther made his mark in Germany, during those crucible years of the Protestant Reformation movement. A day-long bus tour scratched my church history itch.

The Reformation Monument in the city of Worms, Germany, where Martin Luther (statue in the middle) made his famous “Here I Stand, I Can Do No Other” speech before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. I had to navigate around the Japanese tourists who surrounded the monument, to get my friend to snap a photo of me!

 

Walking the Streets of Worms, Germany

First up was a visit to the city of Worms. As a seminary professor still in his thirties, Martin Luther had been summoned to Worms to appear before Charles V, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, in the year 1521.

Historians call this the “Diet of Worms,” which has nothing to do with some sort of creepy health fad to help you lose weight. A “diet” is an antiquated reference to a meeting of a legislative body, and “Worms” is simply the name of the city where this meeting was held.  So, it was at this “Diet of Worms” where Luther uttered (at least, it is commonly told that way) the famous saying, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

Four years earlier, in 1517, Martin Luther had published a criticism of the medieval practice of the sale of indulgences, which crudely put would allow a dead relative to lessen their time in purgatory, if a living relative were to hand over some cash to the medieval church authorities. This got Luther into some hot water with the church establishment, which only emboldened Luther to publish criticisms of other medieval Catholic practices and doctrines.

At the Diet of Worms, Luther had been asked to recant his writings. What prompted Luther to get into so much trouble?

Back in 1453, the great Christian city of Constantinople had finally fallen to the Turks. Intellectuals from that city fled towards the West, bringing ancient copies of the New Testament with them. Luther had been impressed by a newly researched version of the Greek New Testament, published by the Dutch scholar, Desiderius Erasmus, who spent several years researching some of those ancient copies of the New Testament from the East. From that version of the New Testament, Luther had felt compelled to challenge the Western medieval doctrine of purgatory, among other doctrines, putting his ideas into book form.

The printed book, using the newly acquired technology of the printing press in Germany, was like the Internet of the 16th century. Luther was a master in using this 16th century form of “social media” to broadcast his ideas to the world. The likes of Taylor Swift may rule the world of Instagram today, but in the 16th century, it was Martin Luther dropping a stack of papers at the door of the Wittenberg printing shop, to be converted to movable type, which shook up the medieval world.

 

A statue in Worms, Germany, of Martin Luther, the hero of the Reformation…. and a thorn in the flesh to the medieval church establishment. My photo, October, 2025.

 

Luther had set off a firestorm of controversy, engulfing his whole life, thus starting a conversation which set the intellectual course of the West for the next 500 years. Along the way, millions have experienced spiritual joy resulting from his fresh look at the basic essentials of the Christian faith, and what it means to be a Christian. Nevertheless, on the downside, thousands, if not millions of people have tragically lost their lives through wars and persecutions, partly related to the controversy which Luther ignited.

Luther himself dodged the fate of almost certain death, by the hands of authorities, in the wake of his appearance before Charles V. After refusing to recant his writings, Luther was able to leave Worms safely, before being kidnapped by those who sought to protect Luther’s life. Luther would go on and translate the Bible into the common language of the German people.

Ancient city wall of Worms, Germany, built by the Romans, about the time of Christ. A moat surrounded the city, fed from the waters of the Rhine. But now it is just a sidewalk and a city street. My photo, October, 2025.

 

Worms, Germany, is a remarkable city to visit. During the period of the ancient Roman empire, Worms had been an outpost along the Rhine River. What is weird today is that the Rhine River is actually a few miles away from the city now. The Romans had built a wall around the city at the shore of the Rhine, to protect against Germanic invaders. For centuries, the Rhine was marshy and difficult to navigate, particularly for larger boats.  In the 19th century, the Rhine was dredged to make for a deeper, straighter channel, thus eliminating the more marshy areas.

The city had been mostly flattened during World War 2, as Americans chased the German army out of the city. The oldest cathedral in the city was spared the artillery barrage of the Americans. Nearby that cathedral is the spot where Luther appeared before Emperor Charles V, to make his bold defense of the Reformation, just less than 400 years before American tanks entered the city. The layers of history across the centuries in Worms makes anything in America look rather piddly!

The area around the cathedral in Worms, Germany, not long after the American bombing raids towards the end of World War 2. Photo preserved inside the cathedral, where I took a snapshot of it.

 

From Worms, Germany, to Heidelberg

Thankfully, there was a restroom near where the bus stopped to pick our group up. This was one of the few restrooms that did not cost me a Euro coin to use it!

Europe travel tip: Keep a few Euro coins in your pocket as you travel across the continent. They will come in handy.

After visiting Worms, the next stop was in the city of Heidelberg, at the eastern edge of the Rhine River valley. Heidelberg is known for its great castle, looking over the Neckar River. A good part of Heidelberg, including part of the castle, was destroyed by the “Sun King,” Louis XIV of France, in the late 17th century. For decades after World War 2, the American military had a significant military presence there, as the city was largely spared of the destruction from the war.

The old bridge crossing the Neckar River, in Heidelberg, Germany, with the famous castle above.

 

But my main interest with Heidelberg was in finding the spot where Martin Luther participated in the “Heidelberg Disputation,” a defense he made of his theology in 1518 at an Augustinian seminary, where the University of Heidelberg is located today. Luther managed to persuade at least some of his Augustinian monastic colleagues of the validity of the theological principles he championed at Wittenberg, where he served as a professor of the Bible. This was just three years before his fateful meeting before Emperor Charles V in Worms.

It was at this Disputation in Heidelberg where a young Dominican monk, Martin Bucer, heard Luther speak for the first time. Bucer became a follower and friend of Luther, and a pivotal figure in his own right, though his influence today is overshadowed by theological giants like Luther and later, John Calvin. The life of Martin Bucer will be a topic of a future Veracity blog post.

The spot where Martin Luther delivered his Disputation in Heidelberg before fellow Augustinian monks, in defense of the Reformation.

 

An Educational Dinner Conversation at a Wedding Reception…

One more little anecdote….

At a wedding reception a few years ago, I sat next to Philip Cary, a theologian at Eastern University in St. David’s, Pennsylvania. Cary has done several recorded classes for The Teaching Company, as he is an expert on both Saint Augustine and Martin Luther. It was an unexpected surprise to be at a sit-down wedding reception, having dinner with a world-class scholar like Philip Cary.  The Bible-geek in me enjoyed the conversation just as much as the food! I kept Dr. Cary talking so much with all of my questions, I do not think he ate hardly anything!

Cary believes that Augustine and Luther are the two most influential thinkers in the Protestant Christian West ( I have written two blog posts about Augustine earlier this year). Interestingly, Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk, about the time he triggered the revolution of the Protestant Reformation.

Martin Luther has been one of my theological heroes (as well as Augustine), but like Augustine, he had his faults, too. Luther’s legacy is enduring, but it has been tarnished by some of his anti-semitic writings of his later years, prompting a deficiency in Protestant thinking which is being corrected by scholars over the last few decades. I will be writing more about this in the future. In the meantime, it is worth celebrating the man’s positive side, as Luther pretty much gave us the Five Solas of the Reformation:

  • Sola Scripture (Scripture alone)
  • Solus Christus (Christ alone)
  • Sola Fide (Faith alone)
  • Sola Gratia (Grace alone)
  • Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God alone)

Luther’s Good Friday sermon focused on the cross, but he also reminded his listeners about the resurrection:

“If we deal with our sins in our conscience and let them continue within us and be cherished in our hearts, they become much too strong for us to manage and they will live forever.  But when we see that they are laid on Christ and He has triumphed over them by His resurrection and we fearlessly believe it, then they are dead and have become as nothing.”

On this Good Friday, as we remember what Jesus accomplished for us and our salvation on the cross, it is good to recall the message of the Gospel that Martin Luther risked his life to guard, to protect, and to proclaim to the whole world.

My favorite podcast (still) is The Rest is History, narrated by historians Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland. Here is the episode where they talk about Martin Luther’s encounter with Charles V at Worms, nearly 500 years ago. Standing in that spot where Luther uttered his memorable defense really brought the story alive to me!!

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Topics

March 21, 2026

Cambridge House at W&M Annual Spring Lecture: Wednesday, March 25, 7pm

By Clarke Morledge

Friends of the Cambridge House at the College of William and Mary!!

Join Cambridge House Christian Study Center for their Spring Public Lecture on Wednesday March 25th at 7PM in Tucker Hall on the William & Mary Campus. They welcome Professor Norman Wirzba, Distinguished Professor of Theology and a Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. His lecture is entitled “Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World”. Learn more at the Cambridge House event page.

This year, the College of William & Mary is all about the “Year of the Environment,” reminding us that we are stewards of the earth. The Cambridge House would like to add a distinctively Christian voice to the conversation, noting that the Book of Genesis reminds us that we are stewards of the earth because God created humanity in God’s image, so that we might steward God’s creation of the world well, particularly in view of “Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World,” the topic of Dr. Wizrba’s presentation.

Spread the word, and invite others to come, as this is Cambridge House’s annual public spring lecture for the campus and greater Williamsburg community. All are welcome!

 

 

 

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Topics

March 13, 2026

The Triple Baptism of Felix Manz: Founder of Anabaptism

By Clarke Morledge

From the Christianity Along the Rhine Blog Series…

The courage and conviction of a Swiss radical reformer, Felix Manz, has inspired Christians who have since come after him for almost 500 years. But who was Felix Manz?

In October, 2025, my wife and I took a trip to Europe, visiting a few sites linked to the history of the Protestant Reformation. One of those sites was the city of Zurich, Switzerland, the home of Huldrych Zwingli, one of the leading lights of the Protestant Reformation, alongside more well-known figures like Germany’s Martin Luther and Geneva’s John Calvin. Check out the two-part blog series about Zwingli recently covered a few months ago on Veracity, which gives some background regarding Felix Manz.

Felix Manz was at one time a follower of Zwingli, the great Protestant reformer of Zurich. Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most widely read authors of the day and a theologian from the Netherlands, had shocked the medieval world with his new, authoritative Greek New Testament. Since the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, scholars from the Christian East had brought their copies of the Greek New Testament to the Christian West. In examining these copies of the New Testament, which was originally written in Greek, it became apparent that some traditional interpretations of the New Testament popularly received in the West were not accurate. In going back to the original sources, “ad fontes,” as humanists like Erasmus called it, a new effort was made to refresh medieval ideas about the New Testament. Feliz Manz had become familiar with Erasmus’ work, and it changed his life.

Zwingli and Manz were part of this effort in Zurich, Switzerland. Like Zwingli, Manz had been educated in the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek. Zwingli was the fiery preacher who advocated for the reforms of Erasmus, but Zwingli went beyond Erasmus in challenging papal authority itself. At first, Felix Manz applauded Zwingli’s efforts for reform. However, later on, Manz did not believe that Zwingli went far enough.

Zwingli was convinced that the traditional Christian view affirming the practice of infant baptism was thoroughly biblical. But Manz was not convinced. Manz and his friends were persuaded that only the practice of “believer’s baptism,” whereby adults (or perhaps older children) who made a profession of Christian faith should be baptized.

Felix Manz, who had been baptized as an infant, was baptized as an adult near this spot in Zurich, Switzerland, an act defiance and conviction, which cost him his life. Manz’ “believer’s baptism” happened just over 500 years ago, in January, 1525. Manz was executed two years later, 1527. My photo, October, 2025.

 

The Anabaptist Movement:  Felix Manz, the First Anabaptist

A debate was held in the mid 1520’s, some five hundred years ago, presided by the  Zurich city council, to determine who was right, Zwingli or Manz. In the end, the Zurich government authorities sided with Zwingli.  Manz and his friends took the radical step of having themselves baptized by one another.

Imagine the shock to the medieval mind this type of thinking created. Felix Manz had already been baptized once as a baby. But now, as a believing adult, he became re-baptized, or baptized for a second time, having become convinced that his baptism as a baby was not grounded in Scriptural teaching. Ephesians 4:5 called for “one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” so Manz’ second baptism threw a wrench into the older, traditional theology. It was for this reason that Manz and his friends became founders of the Anabaptist movement, whereby the term meant to be “baptized again.”

Yet the authority of the church and the state were tightly intertwined at this time. The Zurich government decided that Manz should be punished, to set an example for others who dared to challenge the state’s authority to weigh in on religious matters.

What was Manz’ punishment? To be baptized yet a third time, but this time, it would be death by drowning in the Limmat River, which passes through the city of Zurich.

His former friend, Zwingli, did nothing to intervene. As the citizens of Zurich  looked on, Felix Manz was tied up and bound, and then tossed into the freezing Limmat River in early January, 1527.

Felix Manz became the first martyr for the Anabaptist cause, inspiring groups today like the Mennonites and the Amish, who follow in that same theological tradition established in the early 16th century.  The Anabaptists tended to pick up other radical teachings, associated with their readings of the New Testament, such as the rejection of military service and communal living with no private property, ideas which led to further persecution from both Roman Catholics and more mainline Protestant movements.

A little over a century later, Felix Manz’ specific teaching regarding believer’s baptism was embraced by another reform movement within the larger Protestant movement, which we now know as the Baptist faith.  Those early Baptists were very much like their “Reformed” cousins in their theology, except for where they stood on infant baptism. In other words, while Felix Manz did not survive his “third” baptism, his teachings did survive and flourishes in both Anabaptist and Baptist circles all over the world today.

Thankfully, Christians today generally try not to use the force of the state to regulate theological opinions. Local churches will have their differences on whether or not infant baptism is permitted for their congregations. But it is quite common for infant baptism affirming churches to maintain some form of fellowship with infant baptism non-affirming churches, and vice-versa, despite differences in such practices. This is not wholly unlike how local churches may differ regarding whether or not women may serve as elders; part of the so-called complementarian-egalitarian controversy, or with differences regarding whether or not certain supernatural gifts of the Spirit; such as speaking in tongues and prophecy, are thought to be normative today.

For centuries, most Christians in the West from the era of the early church developed the habit of having their children baptized within a few weeks, if not days, after birth. Felix Manz broke the mold which had anchored Western Christianity, and he paid for that with his life.

Many evangelical churches today, of the so-called “interdenominational” or “non-denominational” variety, have replaced infant baptism with something called “baby dedications.” This practice is kind of a half-way approach to resolving the baptism controversy.  A “baby dedication” looks like infant baptism (sort of), but it is not baptism. But at least it conveys to parents a means by which their infant children can have some type of meaningful connection to their local church.

The only problem with a “baby dedication” is that it only has vague support for it in the Bible, if any. But so-called “interdenominational” or “non-denominational” churches often go that route as it is an imperfect yet practical means of maintaining some type of peace in such churches.

Before Felix Manz, Christians never practiced “baby dedications,” for the first 1500 years of the Christian movement’s history, and scholars debate as to when the practice finally caught on. Some say that the Anabaptists themselves adopted the practice in the 16th century, looking to examples in the Bible like Hannah dedicating her child to the Lord (1 Samuel 1:11) and Mary and Joseph presenting their baby to the Lord in the Temple (Luke 2:22). But it has only really been in the modern era, with “interdenominational” or “non-denominational” churches, that “baby dedications” have become normative in at least certain parts of the Protestant evangelical world.

Basically, either you have infant baptism in a local church, or you do not. It is a binary choice. But  “baby dedications” offer such local churches a means of adhering to the common ground held by all Christians affirming the validity of “believer’s baptism” for adults or older children, and not introducing a potentially divisive issue like infant baptism.

It has become standard practice in such churches to have their children, whether dedicated or not, wait until they have made a profession of faith, as they get older, before stepping forward to be baptized.

You can pretty much thank Felix Manz for setting that precedent.

In English, this marker on the Limmat River reads: “Here, Felix Manz and five other Anabaptists were drowned off a fishing platform in the middle of the River Limmat during the 1527-1532 Reformation. Hans Landis was the final Anabaptist executed (1614).” Memorial Plaque, Schipfe Quater, Zürich, CH. My photo, October 2025.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Topics, Witnesses

February 27, 2026

From Genesis to Junia: An Honest Search for What the Bible Says about Women in Leadership, by Preston Sprinkle. An Extended Review

By Clarke Morledge

Does the Bible teach that women should serve as elders in a local church?

This is a question which has become one of the most divisive issues in evangelical churches today. It is also a question filled with assumptions which begs for other questions. What is an “elder” in a local church? What is the “local church?” Then there is the question which has plagued American society culturally for at least the last ten years: What is a “woman”?

Preston Sprinkle on the Complementarian/Egalitarian Debate

My journey in exploring this question parallels much of the same journey that New Testament scholar Preston Sprinkle took, which led to him to write From Genesis to Junia: An Honest Search for What the Bible Really Says about Women in Leadership. But you may ask, “Who is Preston Sprinkle?”

Preston Sprinkle taught New Testament at Eternity Bible College, at an extension campus in Boise, Idaho, before it downsized in 2016. As a New Testament scholar, with a PhD from the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), Preston Sprinkle has written about and spoken on a number of issues relevant to the study of the New Testament. Eternity Bible College was founded by popular Christian author and speaker, Francis Chan. Francis and Preston even wrote a book together, Erasing Hell, a response to the universalism-leanings of Rob Bell, a controversial former evangelical pastor, back in 2011. After leaving Eternity Bible, Preston founded the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender, providing resources for churches, parents, and other individuals, in order to more effectively care for people who struggle with questions about sexuality and gender, while upholding a traditional view of human sexuality and marriage; that is, a one-man to one-woman covenantal relationship intended for life.

As one might expect, entering any conversation regarding sexuality and gender will probably generate controversy, and Preston is no stranger to it. Preston’s previous books on these topics, such as People To Be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just an Issue (reviewed here on Veracity), and Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say (reviewed here on Veracity), have sparked very lively discussion and criticism from all sides. I have not always agreed with every element Preston puts forward in his writings, but I appreciate his willingness to tackle tough questions, doing so with a commitment to follow the Scriptural text, wherever it leads, to find answers.

Preston has been criticized by those who argue that the Christian church needs to change its stance on marriage, in order to welcome same-sex marriage, and by those who believe that one can self-identify with a certain view of gender, which is contrary to one’s biological sex.  On the other side, are those Christians who believe that Preston Sprinkle coddles or even excuses sin associated with homosexuality and transgender ideology. Or Preston’s critics simply do not like the definitions of words he uses regarding certain controversial topics within the LGBTQ conversation. It would appear that some Christian leaders think it is permissible to poison the well and misrepresent what someone like Preston Sprinkle has written, and not want to sit down and talk about perceived theological differences. Preston finds his way to step on minefields, not of his own making.

What other controversy could Preston address?? Well, Preston had put off doing a deep dive into the question of “women in Christian leadership” for years, knowing that he had other scholar friends whom he highly respected, who landed on different conclusions to the question. But Preston finally took the time to read a stack of books for several years in order to write his book, as a way of bridging the gap between ordinary Christians, without seminary training, and those in the academy.

Preston’s newest book was one of my best reads of 2025 (and early 2026), having received an advanced copy of the book. Though I do feel compelled to write this rather long, critical review, as I will explain below.

 

Preston Sprinkle offers a rigorous exegetical examination of the complementarian versus egalitarian debate, concerning the interpretation of Scripture in From Genesis to Junia: An Honest Search for What the Bible Really Says about Women in Leadership. Preston aims well to call out balls and strikes, but he misses a few calls.

Continue reading

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Topics