Zollikon Zurich Switzerland

The Anabaptists, also called Rebaptizers, whose movement originates in Zollikon, outside Zürich, when Conrad Grebel performs the first adult baptisms there early in 1525, is rapidly on its way to becoming a mass movement.

Converts submit to a second Baptism, which is a crime punishable by death under the legal codes of the time.

The Anabaptists, who repudiate their own infant Baptism as a blasphemous formality, deny that they are rebaptizers.

They consider the public confession of sin and faith, sealed by adult Baptism, as the only proper Baptism.

further, they hold that the church, as the community of the redeemed, should be separated from the state, which for the Anabaptists exists only for the punishment of sinners.

They break with Zwingli for his apparent subservience to the magistrates and his reluctance to proceed swiftly with a complete reform of the church.

They share, however, Zwingli’s opinion that infants are not punishable for sin until an awareness of good and evil emerges within them, and that then they may exercise their own free will, repent, and accept Baptism.