Rejecting Imperial Religion: On 500 Years of Anabaptism

by Jesse Steven Wheeler

In honor of the 500th anniversary of the Radical Reformation, 1525 – 2025, I wish to take a moment to highlight the remarkable witness of our Anabaptist (or more broadly “baptistic”) siblings, so many of whom are tireless partners for justice and peace in the Holy Land.

The international Friends of Sabeel movement, grounded in the tradition of Palestinian Liberation Theology, is proudly ecumenical. Our amazing members hail from all denominations, religious traditions, and none. Furthermore, my personal background is neither Anabaptist nor Baptist. Yet, I have come to deeply appreciate the best of the radical tradition.

Particularly inspiring is the example of former monk and early Anabaptist leader, Michael Sattler. At his trial in 1527, Sattler boldly declared before the imperial representatives of the Holy Roman Empire his sole allegiance to Christ Jesus, one section of his defense particularly standing out:

Eighthly, if the Turk comes, he should not be resisted, for it stands written: “thou shalt not kill” (Matt 5:21). We should not defend ourselves against the Turks or our other persecutors, but with reverent prayer should implore God that he might be our defense and our resistance. But that I said that, if warring were right [Sattler was a committed pacifist], I would rather take the field against so-called Christians who persecute, capture, and kill pious Christians than against the Turks . . . 

For this, he would be horrifically executed as an “arch-heretic.”

That Sattler spoke so boldly in the context of “Christian-Muslim hostility,” at a time of profound anxiety concerning the future of so-called “Christian Europe,” is all the more remarkable. Not only does he stand in defiance of the Holy Roman Empire, Sattler’s declaration represents a bold denunciation of Martin Luther’s Two-Kingdoms Theology, a doctrine explicitly promulgated within the context of Ottoman advances in Eastern Europe and which grants relatively free reign, even divine sanction, to Luther’s political and military benefactors. In the words of one 16th-Century Lutheran pamphleteer,

Christians should also take comfort in the knowledge that the Turkish Empire is God’s enemy, and that God will not allow it to annihilate the Christians. Although God has caused this empire to arise in these last times as the most severe of punishments, nonetheless He will not allow the Christians to succumb completely . . . Therefore, those who fight against the Turk should be confident . . . that their fighting will not be in vain.

This reflects, of course, the dehumanizing language and destructive theology of the “Holy Crusader,” of chosenness and demonization—an “us versus them” dualism wholly rejected by Jesus. And, historically, it is as Protestant as it is Catholic (alongside many modern-day believers of all traditions who have consumed the Christian nationalist Kool-Aid.)

What, then, led “radicals” like Sattler to such an extreme pacifism while Europe was in the throes of existential distress, and for what reason did such views bring down the wrath of the Christian imperial authorities, be they Catholic or Protestant? It is essential to note that radicals like Sattler failed to distinguish between the Ottoman and Holy Roman Empires or even the various Protestant principalities in their denunciation of “imperial religion.” In this, we find what might be described as the core distinctive of traditional baptistic belief and practice: an absolute commitment to the holistic, cruciform Lordship of Jesus Christ—over and against all rival claims to our loyalty and allegiance.

Such a commitment would have deep implications for Biblical interpretation, community life, and discipleship. First, Christ becomes the interpretive key through which all scripture is read, understood, and applied. Therefore, “Thou shall not kill” is read through Christ’s elaboration of the commandment within the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21), as a divine injunction to pursue reconciliation. In fact, the entire sermon—very clearly framed within the book of Matthew as a retelling and commentary on the Mt. Sinai story—becomes foundational to authentic Christian practice. If Jesus is who we proclaim him to be, if in the words of Christ are found the very words of God, then it seems wise to “hear his words [his literal words] and put them into practice.” Christ's law is our law. His lived example is our example. And, his cross becomes our own.

Concerning congregational life, the radicals saw the local community as existing “under the immediate rule of Christ.” Severing the ties between church and state, this would have profound implications for both politics and ecclesiastical hierarchies. Yet this does not represent, at least initially, an abdication of the political realm, as these groups “took up a prophetic resistance to what seemed to them to be the assumption of Christ’s rule by the state.” After all, Christ, not Caesar, is Lord. As in the early church, accusations of treason and heresy went hand in hand. 

Yet their resistance was distinctive, representing a discipleship modeled on the cruciform example of Christ: a creative resistance defined by the total rejection of violence, in favor of what we might now call “nonviolent direct action,” returning good in place of evil, and universal love (Matthew 5). It was Sattler’s rejection of the sword, in imitation of the messiah, which would lead him willingly to his own cross.

To follow after Christ, to “hear his words and put them into practice” in a spirit of self-sacrificial love becomes therefore a means for actualizing, embodying the messianic Kingdom in the here and now. For this reason, the historic neglect and/or marginalization by many Christians of the clear teachings and lived example of Jesus has been catastrophic for our public witness. As such, when Michael Sattler proclaimed his loyalty to Christ before the emissaries of the Holy Roman Empire, he was confronting not some enemy kingdom or alternate theology, but a religio-political edifice that had circumvented the authority of Christ—captive to an unholy alliance of people, power, land, and religious sanction. 

It is this unholy alliance of coercive power, territorialism, group identity, and ideological belief which defines imperial religion. And imperial religion stands contrary to the reign of the crucified messiah; Jesus continuously disrupted and denounced this lethal alliance as it found expression within his first-century, ethno-religious community and, as a result, would incur the wrath of its leaders. As comparative theologian Ida Glaser informs us, “[The New Testament] challenges all religions: it shatters the ties between religion and territory, and between religion and power even more strongly than did the exile . . . and it inaugurates a people whose identity does not depend on state or land.” 

It makes sense to me that both the Hebrew scriptures (in light of the Exile) and the New Testament (in light of the Cross, anticipating the Temple’s destruction) alike comprise a powerful rejection of imperial (i.e. militant, territorial, exploitative, bigoted) religion. Empire is empire regardless the talisman—cross, crescent, star, or flag—under which its soldiers charge and its politicians pretend to pray. So, when the full wrath of empire came flooding down upon the body of Michael Sattler, it was done under the banner of the cross.

Ultimately, it is also as clear as day to me that both Zionism and Christian Zionism, in so many ways the idolatrous embodiment of imperial religion par excellence, represent not only a willful rejection of the scriptural witness but a twisted celebration of its polar opposite. Naturally, there exist quite valid critiques of the Radical tradition, as there do all traditions. But, as many line up behind demagogues stoking fears of migrants and Muslims and/or feckless genocide enablers, there is much to learn from the example of the martyrs in their allegiance to the Kingship of the crucified messiah and wholesale rejection of imperial idolatry.