Reformation Sunday – Jacob and Caspar 2 November 2025

Acts 2.43-47; 1 Corinthians 13.11-13

When we think of the Reformation of sixteenth century Europe, we associate it with the main group of reformers like Martin Luther and Jean Calvin. These we label “magisterial Reformers” because they worked in co-operation with the political powers. They also sparked a “counter-reformation” in the Roman Catholic Church. While some use the term for Catholics going to war against the Protestants, there was also a positive side. People like Teresa of Ávila and Francis de Sales revitalised the spirituality and piety of the Catholic Church. Another group of reformers we label as the “radical reformers”. These people vigorously opposed the coercion practised by political and church powers to attain religious conformity. Best known among these are people like Menno Simons, who lends his name to the Mennonites, and Jacob Hutter, who lends his name to the Hutterites.

My interest in this group is because they had to ask the question, “So if the church isn’t this institution defined by the state, what is it?” You can see the relevance to our own day when people are looking for spirituality… but don’t trust the institutional church. They were “radical” in the sense that they wanted to get back to the ‘roots’ of Christianity – to restore the church to a state from which they believed it had fallen. Those drawn to the radicals were primarily peasants and artisans who wanted a purer form of Christianity that included social justice.

Most of these radicals were labelled “Anabaptists” which was originally a derogatory label given to those who were re-baptised as believers because they considered that their infant baptism was invalid. Menno Simons and Jacob Hutter were Anabaptists.

Some, however were “Evangelical spiritualists”. Evangelical in the sense that they believed in the gospel of God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ and spiritualist (nothing to do with the present day meaning of communicating with spirits of the dead) in that they placed an emphasis on what they regarded as the true invisible realities that lay behind all that is material.

So let me introduce you to my two heroes of the radical Reformation, because they illustrate ideas relevant to our own age

Jacob Hutter

Jacob was a South German hatter (thus his surname) with just a basic education. During the travels required by his trade as a hat maker he became acquainted with the Anabaptists. He was baptised as a believer by them and went on to become an Anabaptist preacher. In the late 1520s he established a Christian group that he called a “colony” (because they believed themselves to be a colony of heaven) of simple believers.

His followers decided to live in the way of the first believers as reported in Acts where, “They shared everything they had. They would sell their property and possessions and give their money to whoever needed it.” They viewed the church as a visible community of the godly people who loved one another and cared for each other. Upon entering the community all personal ownership of wealth and goods was surrendered for the common good. The desire for personal possessions they believed was driven by self-interest and was contrary to the word of God. His followers were pacifists who believed that they were called to separate themselves from the world. Joining the group was not a commitment to be entered into lightly.

The Catholic Emperor, Ferdinand I, decreed that all who taught community of goods should be punished with beheading. But sixteenth century Europe was no longer totally under the control of the Emperor. The Lutheran leaders declared that the holding of possessions in common as a seditious act, and the penalty for those convicted was that they were to be killed with the sword. Persecution of the Anabaptists was severe and many of their number were executed or sent into exile. Their system of mutual aid was at times a necessity for the survival of those in the group. Eventually persecution forced most of the group to move to Moravia where, for a time, it was safer.

As the persecution grew, so did Hutter’s sense of mission. By the mid-1530s Hutterites numbered in their thousands. But even in Moravia persecution drove them out of their homes and for a time they had to live in the fields and forests. Hutter was arrested, mercilessly tortured and burned at the stake in 1536. His wife, Katherina, was executed shortly afterwards. His followers formed into groups of six or eight so as to be inconspicuous to the authorities. During this time, they sent missionaries out all over Europe, eighty percent of whom died as martyrs. Over the following 30-40 years the Hutterite Brethren grew to 30,000 baptised adults

In the centuries following the Reformation era, periods of vicious persecution saw the Hutterites chased from their lands to Transylvania, Russia, and eventually to the United States of America. Communities of the Hutterian Brethren remain today primarily in Canada and the United States of America with about 15,500 and 40,000 adherents respectively. I spent a couple of weeks in a Hutterite community in rural Australia.

I’m not saying we all need to go and live in community. But consider this – Is not the church to be a community of people visibly called together by Christ to love and care for each other? If that is the case, doesn’t that have financial implications? And consider this from the Hutterite Great Article Book:

“Not hard the word of God would be

if from self-interest we were free.”

Caspar Schwenckfeld was a noble and a knight of the Teutonic Order. That differentiated him from most of the radicals who were of peasant origins. He was a diplomat who became a lay theologian. His ideas spread, first of all, to his peers in the upper classes before gaining a more widespread acceptance.

He converted to Lutheranism at the very beginning of the Reformation and became a propagator of Luther’s ideas. However, after a few years, he found that he differed with Luther on significant points. He began to develop his own understanding of Christ, the church, and the sacraments. As we have already seen, disagreeing with one another during the Reformation was a serious business.

As an aside, to understand this, we need to appreciate the different sixteenth European century mindset:

Life was fragile, often short and eternity seemed near. To adopt heresy was considered to endanger the eternal well-being of the soul. So to propagate wrong beliefs was thought worse than murder. A murderer only impacted the years of the victim’s earthly existence, but one who spread heresy would bring eternal suffering to those who fell under their influence.

What I really like about Schwenckfeld was his desire to be conciliatory. He was one of the first in the Reformation era to write at length on tolerance and freedom of conscience. He honoured the Catholic Church as the mother who brought us to faith. He approached the Reformation theologians with humility

He sought to develop a middle way, what he called “the royal road” between the warring factions of the Reformation era. It was totally unacceptable to him that Christians should be involved in acrimonious debate about the eucharist, so he proposed a Stillstand (to cease partaking of the bread and wine until it could be done without inciting such division). After all, he argued, the true essence of the eucharist is the inward feeding on Christ.

For Schwenckfeld all physical things like the sacraments or scriptures were ineffective for carrying God’s grace. He believed that the essence of Christianity was its invisible realities – things like faith and love. The Lutherans said the written word of God carries God’s grace. But Schwenckfeld would have said, “No, the written word itself is lifeless. It is the word that God speaks in our hearts that brings life.” Lutherans argued from scripture, “Faith comes from hearing the word of God” (Romans 10.17). Schwenckfeld was deaf. He said if external hearing was necessary, deaf people could never be saved. What was important was hearing the inner word with “spiritual ears.”

Schwenckfeld never originally intended to start a new group or movement. His aim was to bring peace and conciliation between Christians. His early followers, while continuing their attendance at the established churches, called themselves “confessors of the glory of Christ”. They met together for “study, prayer, preaching, admonition and the answering of religious questions.” In parts of Germany whole congregations with their pastors became followers of Schwenckfeld’s teaching. Despite his own request, Schwenckfelder congregations began. The authorities did chase Schwenckfeld from place to place, but because he had contacts in high places, he found it much easier to avoid trial as a heretic than his Anabaptist contemporaries. His followers were persecuted by both Lutheran and Catholic authorities. They sought shelter for a time with Count Zinzendorf in Herrnhut and in the 1700s fled to Pennsylvania. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Schwenkfelder Church was established in the United States of America and today has around 3000 adherents, all in Pennsylvania.

Schwenckfeld states that the one church on earth is not something visible. “One should not mix anything physical into the definition of the church, nor bind anything like that to it… I am one with all churches in that I pray for them… I despise none… Christ the Lord has his own everywhere.” For him it was solely the Holy Spirit’s work in the hearts of men and women, bringing them forgiveness and binding them to Christ, that constituted the church. He believed that nothing of the visible structures and rituals was essential for the church.

He would say to us today to be conciliatory; to appreciate the breadth of the church; and accept that the church’s essential realities are those things like faith and love that are unseen and spiritual. “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them” 1 John 4.16