In sixteenth-century Europe there arose a chorus of dissenting voices against the deep-set traditions and customs of the Roman Catholic church. Though these reformers collectively came to be known as the Protestant Reformation, they were often anything but united in their teaching and beliefs. Consequently, historians have noted that it might be more helpful to understand this era as having been one of “reformations” instead of a singular “Reformation.” However, one teaching that most Protestant reformers did agree upon was the role of women in the church – how women could or could not express their faith. One might even argue that the Protestants, in their zeal, devalued women and lessened their opportunity to be actively involved in the church. However, I believe the Anabaptists (considered by the Protestants to be the “radicals”) – through living in close communities in which everyone, both men and women, were expected to be active participants in their faith – provided a role for women in the church that the broader Protestant movement did not. In transitioning from Catholicism, Anabaptists heightened rather than lowered the value of the roles of women in the church.¹

Before and during the Reformation, the most devoted women in the Catholic Church could express their faith through taking vows of celibacy and dedicating their lives to the study of Scripture in a community of nuns. Even the more average Catholic laywomen had special means of expressing piety: for example, the veneration of St. Anne who, as the patron saint of pregnant women, had special significance for women. However, in the Reformation, Protestants changed all that; they rejected the idea that celibacy (as nuns) or veneration of women Saints were legitimate practices and pointed to marriage (and only marriage) as the highest calling and expression of piety for a Christian woman. Martin Luther went so far as to say, “Let them bear children to death, they are created for that.”² Zwingli, believing that women were intellectually inferior to men, stated that the Psalms were intended to teach women how to praise God.³ Merry Wiesner, in a work called “Women’s Response to the Reformation” writes, “Unmarried women were suspect, both because they were fighting their natural sex drive, which everyone in the sixteenth century felt to be much stronger than men’s, and because they were upsetting the divinely imposed order that made woman subject to man… Some radical groups allowed believers to leave their unbelieving spouses, but women who did so were expected to remarry quickly and thus to come under the control of a male believer.”⁴ These strong beliefs about women drove reformers to take radical and forceable actions to carry out their ideals. They stripped the laywomen of their saints while some like Martin Bucer even forced nuns to renounce their vows and leave their cloisters.

However, the Anabaptists appear to have been quite different. While the Protestants used force to enact change, the Anabaptists, rather than imposing reforms upon the Catholic church, retreated and created their own close communities for both men and women in the context of marriage and family. Some have even noted that Anabaptist communities were in some ways similar to Catholic monasteries – aside from embracing marriage and expecting the entirety of the church (not just the pious few) to be a part of these communities. The Anabaptist ideal, that every person within the church could and should excel in knowledge of the Scriptures and expression of piety, resulted in a distinct, active role being retained for women in the church. The highest calling of women was not only marriage and childbearing (though this was an important role); rather, it was to be educated in the Scriptures, to be involved in caring for the poor, and to pursue evangelism! Many women in Anabaptism played far from a passive role in the church. Wiesner again writes,

A good indication of the high degree of religious understanding among many Anabaptist women comes from their interrogations. They could easily discuss the nature of Christ, the doctrine of the Real Presence, and baptism, quoting extensively from the Bible. As a woman known simply as Claesken put it, ‘Although I am a simple person before men, I am not unwise in the knowledge of the Lord.’ Her interrogators were particularly upset because she had converted many people.⁵ (emphasis mine)

There are three main things to note about this excerpt from Wiesner. Firstly, the interrogation records of Anabaptist women demonstrate that they had a strong grasp of complex theology and could discuss it easily. Secondly, they knew their Bibles well and could quote extensively from it by memory. Thirdly, in the instance noted here, Claesken was upsetting to her interrogators because she was actively involved in evangelism! She was converting “many people” to the Anabaptist persuasion – this is a testimony of a woman who played an active and substantial role in her church. Though the Anabaptists (like the Protestants) did not support the Catholic idea of nuns’ monasteries (nor Saint veneration), they did not let this belief subvert and minimize the roles that women could play in the church. No, instead they increased them – instead of only letting the most pious few (i.e. celibate nuns) express their piety through the study of Scripture and the defense of the gospel, the Anabaptists enabled the whole church to experience this by creating close communities for all men and women in the church, both married and single. Though marriage was encouraged and viewed as a proper role for women in the church, they did not view this as the ultimate and only role a woman could play (as Luther expressed). As the interrogation reports exemplify, even married women such as Claesken had opportunity to be well studied in doctrine and Scripture and were willing and able to be outspoken in their faith.

Historian Carlos Eire observes that the three major contributions of the “Radicals” (i.e. the Anabaptists) were their redefinition of communal bonds (creating close communities), their separation of church and state, and their tendency to champion toleration and the right of every individual to choose his or her faith. He even goes so far as to say, “These three contributions to Western culture, one might argue, are among the most significant made by anyone in the sixteenth century. In many ways the Radicals [Anabaptists] were indeed ahead of their time.”⁶ All three of these distinctives (especially the first and last) contributed to encouraging and enabling women to take active roles in the church.

As we in the twenty-first century consider the differences in how the Anabaptists and Protestants viewed women in the church during the Reformation, which group do we most closely align ourselves with? Perhaps we are Anabaptists, grateful for the heritage we have received. Does the difference between the original Anabaptists and Protestants surprise us? Have we reverted to the original Protestant position that our Anabaptist forerunners stood so strongly against? Might we have, over the centuries, gradually traded places with our Protestant friends in our convictions about women’s roles in church?

1. Please note that the following observations are only meant to apply in general – they cannot be completely true in every single instance because of the diversity in many different Protestant and Anabaptist groups. ↩︎
2. Martin Luther, sammtliche Werke, vol. 20 (Erlangen and Frankfurt, 1826-57), 84. ↩︎
3. Werner O. Packull, Hutterite Beginnings (Harrisonburg, VA: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 40. ↩︎
4. Merry Wiesner, “Women’s Response to the Reformation,” in The German People and the Reformation, ed. R. Po-chia Hsia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 151, 153. ↩︎
5. Wiesner, “Women’s Response to the Reformation,” 162. ↩︎
6. Carlos M. N. Eire, Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 (USA: Yale University Press, 2016), 285. ↩︎

Featured image courtesy of Jan Luyken in the Martyr’s Mirror (Book 2, page 149). Public Domain.