Daring! The Anabaptist Movement 1525 -2025
Daring! The Anabaptist Movement 1525 -2025
Though we are only just beginning a new decade, our shared history as Anabaptists beckons us to begin preparing for a significant event in the future. On a wintry January day in 1525—one that I imagine would not have been too dissimilar to a typical winter day here in Southwestern Ontario—a small group gathered in a home in the Swiss canton of Zurich and baptized each other. While this may seem rather quaint and mundane to us now, at the time it was a radical act that earned many in that small circle a martyrs’ death. 2025 is the 500th anniversary of this seemingly insignificant event that nevertheless birthed a movement of which we at Breslau Mennonite Church claim to be an ongoing part.
A group of European Mennonites has initiated a project entitled “Daring! The Anabaptist Movement, 1525–2025” that invites the global Anabaptist family on a five-year common path that reflects on our shared history, memory, and tradition in order to creatively shape our shared future together. Through focussing on different themes each year that in some way animated the faith of early Anabaptists, this project dares us to reconsider what being an Anabaptist Christian might mean in the 21st Century. The theme for 2020 is “Daring to live maturely” (cf. Eph. 4:12–14) which raises questions of what freedom of religion—much prized by early Anabaptists—looks like in a pluralistic society and what Anabaptist perspectives might have to contribute to these discussions today.
The adult Christian education committee (ACE) at BMC has decided to follow along with this broad theme in the hope that it will encourage us not only to reconnect with our shared history but also with other Christians—Anabaptist and otherwise—across the street and around the world. We envision that it will function more like a framework or “a way in” to conversations that we are already having here at BMC rather than setting an agenda to be slavishly followed. Our hope is that it might enliven our collective congregational conversation about what it means to be a disciple of the crucified Christ and we invite your comments, suggestions, and feedback throughout the year.
See document https://www.dropbox.com/s/ftd3eev9cpy29b2/Daring%21%201525-2025.pdf?dl=0
