Brother,
You might find this book a very interesting read:
Reformers and Their Stepchildren | Leonard Verduin
http://www.grantedministries.org/reformers-and-their-stepchildren-leonard-verduin/
description:
Normally, when we are taught about the Reformation Era of church history, we are told that it was a battle between two sides: the established church on one side, which became the Roman Catholic Church, and on the other side, the "magisterial reformers,” like Luther and Calvin, whose followers became the various Protestant churches. Only occasionally is reference made to a third, very real group that was highly involved in the controversies of the time, a group usually called the "Radical Reformation” or the Anabaptists (re-baptizers). When this third group is mentioned, it is often assumed that they were nothing more than radical heretics and violent extremists who were rightly persecuted by Catholics and Protestants wherever they went.
The trouble with this picture is that it’s too simplistic, as the book The Reformers and Their Stepchildren by Leonard Verduin so ably demonstrates. In this well-researched book, Verduin examines the Anabaptist movement, from its diverse origins in the medieval period up to the Reformation Era. He classifies these Christians as the "stepchildren” of the reformers because, while they adopted the reformers’ emphases on the sufficiency of Scripture and justification by faith alone, they eventually split from the reformers on other issues. These issues””far from being heresies””are doctrines which many of us today hold dear: the separation of church and state, the baptism of believers alone, and the need to live holy lives. In short, the magisterial reformers did well to re-establish biblical views of Scripture and salvation, but failed to grasp the true nature of the church, while the stepchildren did grasp it and were severely persecuted for it, by both Catholics and Protestants. So while there were certainly dangerous and heretical groups among the Anabaptists, most of them believed doctrines very similar to modern, baptistic Christians.
Anyone interested in learning more about church history will consider this book a helpful corrective to the many false impressions regarding the Anabaptists. Ultimately, however, it is a story of standing for truth even though the whole world””including the visible church””stands against you.
