Amen. Okay. So, to recall yesterday, what we did was we—excuse me—we came up and started looking at some of the growth and persecution of the Swiss Brethren. I wanted to try to get to here, but it was good we had nice conversations and things that we didn't, so that's okay. So what I'm going to do now is to get into the seeds that started this new revival movement that led to the Amish. There's been a particularly good, interesting book just recently written, a two-volume set on Amish history by Leroy Beachy.
Anybody know Leroy Beachy? I guess maybe a lot of y'all do. And it's very nice. This is recently done. Very nice. He's an older man in the '80s. He did all these illustrations on his own, did his own design and everything, and I was impressed with him. Actually, I'm intimidated by him. So it's a very good work. And this is the first time an Amish history was written from an Amish person. Leroy Beachy, coming—what is he, New Order Amish now, or do you know Esther, or just a conservative Beachy?
I'm not—Is he a conservative Beachy? Okay. Very charming man. I was able to go to Germany with him, and I had him on the tour to show me all these nice places. So it was kind of fun to have him. I'm going to be quoting from or reading from that and some of the things I took in your paper I gave you came from that. He tries to present a little bit of a different slant on the Amish story.
He feels a bit jilted from the Amish heritage that, and if you read any kind of encyclopedias or things like that, it seems like Jacob Ammann always gets the black eye. And the heritage of Amish people today, or Beachy Amish today, kind of walk around with a bit of an intimidation, "Oh, you're the guys that caused all this problem." Feel. In general, I'll say this and then we'll get into it. Leroy Beachy's view is that this was a revival movement.
This was—although he wouldn't use that term—this was a renewal movement. It was a new group of brothers on fire for the Lord that were scattering through all this area preaching the gospel, and a whole new group of people came into existence, which then faced a church that's a generation or two old and the conflicts that that has. It's the conflicts that we have today, is it not? And so he presents it from a different light. When I was preparing for this study, I'd called John D.
Roth, who is the author of this Letters of the Amish Division. He's also the editor of the Mennonite Quarterly Review. And he's done a lot of studies in this. And I said, "Just help me get a balance between these different views." And I appreciate his thoughts on it, was that he believes that Leroy Beachy is bringing up a lot of great points and great illustrations about the Amish division, just perhaps stressing it a little too far the other way as well. So we can find our thoughts in that.
The nice thing about this that John D. Roth gave us, these are the primary sources. This little book are the letters that went back and forth between the Mennonites and the Amish. And so from this, we can get a nice idea. I tried to take from this for this lecture. So coming after Hans Landis, we ended yesterday with the death of Hans Landis. And after that, there was again, remember how they almost felt a little guilty? It seemed in even the court records.
They even said, "We put to death this godly man, the head of a leader in the Church of God." So after that, that was what, 1614? You got your packets? Yeah, 1614. In the year 1618, everybody got a really big distraction. I'm going to go over this a little bit more when we get into the Hutterites because they graphically record some of this big distraction. But the distraction is called the Thirty-Year War, starting in 1618. And the Thirty-Year War was absolutely brutal to Europe.
And the terrible thing about it, and the terrible thing about it, and the terrible thing of shame upon Christians is that this was a brutal war between so-called Christians. The Catholics and the Protestants now duking it out and fighting it out, and it literally ripped Europe apart. And unfortunately, many times the Anabaptists are caught right in the middle. Either the raids of the Protestants come in and they'll raid them, and the raids of the Catholics come in and they'll raid them.
And I'll read some of the details from the Hutterian Chronicles that actually diary some of these raids, and it's terrible. But during that time, there was an obvious distraction with what was happening in Europe. And okay. So I ask the question now. Number 12, were there any significant conversion stories from this time period? And we get to this person called one of my favorites, as you can imagine why, Lieutenant Heinrich Frick.
And Leroy Beachy sees him as kind of a domino that starts chipping away to this new movement of the Amish that started to come out. Lieutenant Heinrich Frick. Lieutenant Heinrich Frick was a well-to-do, notable citizen of Zurich, Switzerland, who had been converted and become a Mennonite in 1625. And when he did, he refused to come one day to muster the troops, to bring the troops out. He refused to come to the assembly. And he was not just a lieutenant, but he was a standard bearer.
Now, I got to say a little something about what it means in the military to be a standard bearer. You are the representation of the pride and the glory and the honor of your unit. You are the inside your breast needs to hold out what's true for your country and for your people. Heinrich Frick was the standard bearer. There's even a story I remember.
I don't suggest this book, but in War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, there's a time when Napoleon's coming over and fighting on the Russians and starting to take over the Russians. A standard bearer of the enemy is laying there dead, and he gathers all his people just to look at him. He's the standard bearer holding the flag. He brings his people there, dies an honorable man.
So I'm just bringing that up to you to say that the idea of a standard bearer would have been a pretty big and very patriotic position for Lieutenant Heinrich Frick. But he found the Bible. And apparently, some of the remnants there, even in Zurich, he got a hold of the word of God, and he got a hold of the words of Jesus, I assume. And he said, "Wow, what if Jesus really meant that?" Same thing happened to me, but much more dramatic with Heinrich Frick. So they would do this at times.
You didn't have everyday military in those times. You'd do kind of like the reserves we had. And they would call up the troops, and Heinrich Frick one day didn't come. And it started to cause a problem. They tried to work with them, tried to explain to them, and finally they realized he was sticking and nothing was going to change. And that's a significant thing. I can remember when I was going through my own personal decisions to become a conscience objector.
And I remember at 5 o'clock on all the bases around the world, at 5 o'clock, they sound these trumpets from a loudspeaker. And no matter what you're supposed to do, either you're driving or something, you're supposed to get out of the car and salute to the direction of where you hear this national anthem being played or at the close of the day, your taps. And so I remember I was always trying to avoid that when I started going through these convictions.
But when that happened one time, I remember being caught in the car, and I was just reading the Daniel stories about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and about how they didn't bow. And I said, "All right, Tanya, we're going to stay in the car." And the guy in front of me, he got out of his car and he was like, he kept looking back like, "What are you doing?" And so to bring you to a totally different world, these things have lots of meaning attached to them.
I even saw him jot down my license number as he got back in his car. I mean, they're serious offenses to people in those kinds of a setting. So Lieutenant Heinrich Frick did not show up when they mustered the troops. Frick's refusal caused a new wave of persecution in Zurich. There had been some silence, but now, well, for a little bit, and now they brought it back.
During his trial, it was said in the records, "It is because of your bad example that the government has compelled to make a new strenuous effort to extinguish the movement." A record of the Anabaptist activities known as the Teufler Commission, the Anabaptist committee was actually created to dig out this little new groups of people. And one of those records, they have a testimony of a lady that comes from his town. And this lady from his town had this to say in the records.
The pastor's sister of the local Reformed Church in the area reported, "As an Anabaptist would be prone to do, he is occasionally seen on neighboring farms at nearby Mauschweden. He had formerly led an honorable conduct, had regularly attended preaching service, had as a child learned to read and practice the art of fencing." You know what fencing is? It's fencing with a sword. "And had been diligent in reading the Holy Scriptures. But now he is an Anabaptist, is disobedient, and has a large following.
Many local people admire him and are overtaken with 'the Anabaptist fantasy.'" I love that. When questioned, "Why are you giving up these things? Why are you giving up all this?" He answered, "Lack of church discipline." Interesting. "Infant baptism, militarism, and the oath." When asked where these meetings were held, he said, "First of all, only at night, usually in the forest, never during the day or on Sunday. Anabaptists only preach. They do not pressure one further.
But one must repent for preaching in itself does not make a person better." Good thought. All right. Frick, after all that, was thrown in prison. There in prison, they tortured him. They abused him. Or whatever they did for him, Heinrich Frick recanted. Oh, can you believe it? But he got out, and now what does he do? This is a man of honor. It pricked his heart. I can't take it. Kind of like member Hubmaier we talked about.
So he turned himself in and said that he recanting from his recanting, and he turned himself in back into the authorities. And of course, was arrested again. This time, Frick was actually the owner of two very nice farms and had a considerable amount of money. You can go see some of his farms still to this day, and his initials are written in one of the stones of the farm that he built in this area here. After this arrest, everything was confiscated.
After his prison sentence was done, he ended up just had nothing to go back to, and he just started to become, I guess, a traveling missionary in this area at least, a local traveling missionary. Despite these warnings, he continued his Anabaptist activity and was once again put back in prison in 1641, this time in the Oetenbach Prison. Now, I have a little picture of what's left of the Oetenbach Prison there today. That's the Limmat River.
Right upstream there, or right downstream there, is where Felix Manz was drowned. And if you're looking now from the Grossmunster side, looking across the river, that's what's left of the Oetenbach Prison. I'm just going to take a little side note to tell you a little something about the Oetenbach Prison. The Oetenbach Prison is a place where lots of Anabaptist martyrs were there. Actually, in the Ausbund, how many of you have ever sung from the Ausbund? All right. Very good. A lot of you. All right.
From the Ausbund, over 50 of the martyr songs were written from this prison. And so it was a particular interest to people who were suffering for the faith at that time. As a matter of fact, there's an interesting story. I'll just break in real quick here. When you got into that prison, things were pretty bad. There is even one story. I'm just going to give you a quick synopsis of it that's here in Leroy Beachy's account here. He gives the account where one young man, they really wanted to break his faith.
And so he was there, and they worked on him and tortured him and made him go hungry. And finally, he recanted. He was a young man. He got back out. He again said, "I can't believe I did that." He repented, went to his ministers, turned his life around, and started living a life again for Christ. And they arrested him again and put him back in the prison. This time, the prison guards were just out and out cruel to him, made him suffer, didn't feed him, and was basically starving him to death.
And there's an account where some of the hardened criminals are criminals from, imagine this kind of cheap stone and all that around here in the prison. And knowing that this poor young man was starving to death, one of the prisoners was taking his soup, and through the straw of his bed was shooting the soup through the crack in the wall so that this young man could have soup to lick up to be able to survive. Finally, he gave some impression that he might recant, so they started working with him.
But he wouldn't recant, so they kept giving him just a little bit of bread. They finally started giving him more bread and water. But his stomach, when you get to this point of starvation, you can't just start eating. And even though they started feeding him again, it was too late, and he starved to death there in that prison. So to understand, some of these people recanted, I'm not going to throw any stones. You know what I'm saying? There were some pretty hard conditions that they received.
And that's where now Heinrich Frick found himself. But this time, there was a prison break, a very well-planned prison break. During a well-planned prison break, in the escape, a boat floated up to the riverside. You can see the river there. Floated up the riverside wall of the prison. There in the wall, they received the prisoners who actually chipped away on the riverside and then climbed into the boat and escaped. Interestingly enough, in the records, they seemed not that concerned about it.
They didn't send out a bunch of people after them. Sometimes they're just glad to get rid of people because it cost them to have prisoners. And the records say there wasn't a lot of investigation to go look for these people. So Heinrich Frick was at large again. Years later, though, betrayed by a trusted friend who seized him, dragged him back to the court, and there he was finally put into prison again as the Oetenbach Prison.
He was finally released again in 1656 and then headed for the Alsace there in that Eastern France area and became a preacher around this area. So it was an impressive time there with all this that was going on, with all these persecutions and all these things. It was very hard. Historian John D.
Roth, who I mentioned earlier, mentions about this general whole area to sum up this whole time period of the 1500s, that if you're going to sum up the people that were officially executed during that time, he comes up with a figure that he says, "The repression and persecution not only in Switzerland, but in South Central Germany, Austria, and throughout the Netherlands as well was often brutal." By the end of the 16th century, that's the 1500s, an estimated 4,000 Anabaptists suffered martyrdom for their
convictions.
Incredible. All right. So now we have Heinrich Frick there in Eastern France, Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, in the Alsace. And now we're coming in to say, "Okay, what's it like now?" Everybody pretty much is scattered. Okay. So again, there's Switzerland, and pretty much everybody is scattered to the areas here. This is in Germany. They call it the Palatinate. It's interesting.
When I was over there, I did not know this when I was becoming a conscience objector, that a lot of these people who they went at this time and settled when they hear about the Palatinate, I lived in the town of Kaiserslautern. And down the street from me was an early Amish church. I didn't know at the time. And I had a friend of mine who you see in my book was also a conscience objector.
He lived in a little town of Trippstatt, which was a very place where a Mennonite refugee was working there to fix up barns and stuff. And all this was around this area that I lived. Makes me wonder sometimes about principalities and stuff, but I don't know. Who knows? It was just interesting. But anyway, they went into this area in Germany, now in France, and also, of course, in the Emmental Valley, you could hide up in these mountains and regions and all that kind of a thing.
So what was it like to be a refugee at this time, and how did the community start to grow? Weary from the persecution, I have number 14 here. Weary from all persecution, the faithful continued to find other places. Fortunately, after the mass devastation of the 30-year war, after the 30-year war, the lords and the things said, "Hey, this is great. I'll take anybody who'll come in and fix up my castles and fix up my gardens and fix up my land." I mean, it was just devastated.
And that was a great opportunity for these refugees who said there would be, let's say, a lord here who has a destroyed castle. And so there'd be a group of them that would come there and get some work. Some would come here. Particularly in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, they also had lost their silver mining, and they were devastated by the 30-year war. So it was a very nice place for some of these to go. And so here's just a little quote here from a church record in this Alsace region of France.
And they have this to say from the church record, "When this sect sneaked into the village, the lordship of Rappenstein took in a number of them for three years, which he installed in the upper, the abandoned upper castle, where they were to clean up the gardens, which were completely grown up with brush and trees, to restore the living quarters into satisfactory condition, and to bring the grounds back to cultivation. These soon drew in others from Switzerland.
So that in a short time, there was a great swarm of Anabaptists which relocated here and there, but assembled in great numbers at the castle for their worship service. When this was forbidden them," and they no longer let them worship at the castle, "when this was forbidden them, they began holding their meetings outside of the village in hedges, gardens, and fields. May God impress the officials to uproot this weed and restore them to the pure church." Interesting quote, huh?
That quote gives you kind of an idea of how it happened, how the immigration in this area around here and how they came in there. They'd get an opportunity and then, "Hey, hey, guess what? It looks like our little lords here are going to let us grow," and they grew. And so that began to happen. And so one of the big areas, like I mentioned, was an area of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, which is there in Alsace. Again, looking on our map on page 79. Okay.
So just take that right over into the Alsace region there, and you can see where a lot of them went right there, northwest of Switzerland. Okay. Once their numbers grew, what effect did this have on the church? And here's a significant point to bring in that leads to our birth of the Amish. Of this little community of refugees, Anabaptists came into France. They started to organize. And on April 2nd, 1660, they held a meeting in which they officially accepted the Dordrecht Confession of Faith.
Now, at this time, remember, I'm just following the Swiss Brethren. Holland is now pretty much gone and had 75 years of peace and have developed. They're, matter of fact, getting into dealing with worldly things. And by that time, they're already pretty much compromising in a lot of places. Okay. So that's all been going on in Holland. They did produce this Dordrecht Confession of Faith. It was printed in German around 1650.
And now this new group of revised people got a hold of this and said, "Oh, this is what we're going to say. This is our statement of faith." And they embraced it, the Dordrecht Confession of Faith. And that was over there in this, again, Alsace area of France. But the brothers that were in the Emmental area, this area, were still surviving in this area outside of Bern and also some of these here in the Palatinate and around here. They never quite received the Dordrecht Confession of Faith.
They had the Schleitheim Confession. But I think there was an assuming that these people, you were all from the same thing. Haven't we all accepted that? And it's one of the church problems that end up where you better make sure your fundamentals are clearly established because people start to assume things. You get into crisis, you end up with some problems. And we do here in a minute. The Dordrecht Confession spells out some of the things that the Schleitheim Confession does not.
I think the Dordrecht Confession is a very nice confession. It gives some nice things, some nice guidelines. I think you can abuse it, and I think people have abused it. Nevertheless, it does a nice confession. One of my favorite parts of it, we'll talk about this when we get to Holland, the whole doctrine about, did Jesus receive the flesh of Mary, or did she receive it from celestial flesh from God?
In the Dordrecht Confession, it just basically says, "We don't know." And I love confessions that on deep things like that can just settle things. And I appreciate that kind of a spirit. Okay. So pressing on, that was something that happened during that time. Also now in this area, okay, quickly, I mean, within about a 20-year period and all that, a lot of things started happening and developing.
You started to have a little bit more freedom, a little bit more free time to talk about doctrine, to establish your business. In 1670, there was a great purge of people being kicked out of Bern. That's a great picture, huh? Being kicked out of Bern. And then when they got into this area and started finding areas in the Palatinate and this thing again, a little bit more freedom from persecution, a little bit more time to study and to decide where you disagree with people too. All right?
They didn't continue that Marine Corps spirit of some of them, at least, of spreading the kingdom of God. And so sometimes they got into places that were theological problems. One particular incident, for instance, the bishop by 1692 here in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines was actually put on the tax roll of the bourgeois class, which means the well-to-do. So they were actually able to be able to collect enough money to have this kind of a feeling. So things a little bit quickly started to seem a little bit different.
Hans Reist, okay, next page 12, was one of those Swiss Brethren that was taken out during the 1670 purge, which about 700 families came from. When you read some of those accounts, Leroy Beachy gives them to us in his book. They're going on and on about today, 30 families came. Over here, 60 families. In this farm, 20 families. They'd be coming up the river as refugees. And Hans Reist was one of those people.
Hans Reist, also I get the impression when you read about Hans Reist, he was a very intelligent man, a very witty man, and a very capable man, and a very intelligent man. And so he was a great organizer, and he became the leader of the Swiss Brethren. He looks like he probably made promises not to return to Switzerland, although he did return to Switzerland and ended up coming back into the Emmental area where he lived and pastored his churches in that area. So he's one guy. Don't forget Hans Reist.
You got to know for the test, Hans Reist. Got to know him because he becomes the leader, the Mennonite side of the split. The other one that Leroy Beachy gives a lot of attention to is a man by the name of Ulrich Müller. Ulrich Müller came from the hometown that Lieutenant Heinrich Frick came from. And he got converted and began to share all over the place. You find court records of him all over this Emmental Valley, all over the different things. People arrested like that he stayed in this house.
And this man would lose his farm as a penalty just for letting Ulrich Müller stay at his house and preach that evening. And so he became a very big evangelist. There seems to have been some sort of a revival at this time in the Emmental Valley to which 200 new names came into the Anabaptist world. And this is one of the reasons that Leroy Beachy gives for that he doesn't call it a split. He calls it a group that never joined.
Semantics, I kind of lean more towards it's a split personally, but I appreciate the emphasis that Leroy is making. But he says this that, "Okay, even to the day, if I were to give you your surnames, I think most of y'all would be able to say, 'Oh, he comes from an Amish side or he comes from a Mennonite side.'" Right? When you hear, "If I was to say Stoltzfus, what side am I on?" If I was to say, "Oh, give me a Mennonite name." Yeah, exactly. Perfect. If I say Martin, you would say, "Okay.
If I was to say Waldner, you'd say what?" All right. Exactly. Okay. So you see that these families represent something. And he claims that his thought is if it would have been a split, an official split, those names would have been on both sides. But still to this day, Amish have Amish names, Mennonites have Mennonite names, and so they never quite came together. He brings up this interesting thing, and just skipping through to that, in page 13, you see that big plaque there?
That plaque is an interesting thing they found in the church in this area, in this Emmental area. This church, that huge plaque was actually it's huge. That picture doesn't give justice. I mean, you couldn't even hold it here. It's gigantic. And what it was was a proclamation of people that gave money to the church, to the building of the church, sounding your trumpet. And all those names, I think what does he say? There's 26 names on there, 26 names on there, and only two are not known Amish names.
So this area was a huge Amish area. And it was from that very place that the from that very particular place was especially where the Amish came from. They had given the name Oberland, which means the higher land. So if you look at here, this is the lower land. But if you get more up in the mountains, okay, in the mountainous region, that would be called the Oberlanders. So these are the Emmentalers along the Emmental River. And the Oberland are those that are more in the mountain people. Okay?
This revival of people seemed to have happened in the mountainous people. So they're called the Oberlanders, which becomes the birth themselves into the Amish. If you see there, I tried to give the pictures. That actually is the Yoder Seal of Arms and the Gingrich Seal of Arms. And if you look down at the bottom of that plaque, there's several of the Seal of Arms, the Coat of Arms. Excuse me. I'm saying Seal of Arms. The Coat of Arms for these names. And it's interesting to see those for typical Anabaptist names.
It's strange when you're there. I mean, today, even to this day, when you're walking through the cemetery, you think you're walking through an Amish cemetery. It's Kaufman. It's all these different things. And it's kind of impressive to see that even to the day. That's obviously where a lot of you have come from. All right. So Ulrich Müller becomes Miller in our English. He keeps this evangelism going.
And finally, he doesn't for some reason we don't know, he stops doing this, whether he was getting tired or wanted to pass on, or maybe he was one of the few leaders who knows how to pass on the torch to the next generation early enough. But he replaced and ordained a couple of brothers here by the name of Jacob Ammann, Isaac Kaufman, Nicholas Augsberger, and Joost Joder.
Interestingly, with I'll bring this for the Joder's sake, the Joost Joder, he was a there's a document of his where he was working for some in the church records. And they said he was an honorable, modest, wise man. And then when he became an Anabaptist, that's all scratched out in the record. Like, "Well, not anymore." So that was Joost Joder. These became elders in the church.
And particularly then when that great purge happened, when more and more persecution happened, these brothers ended up in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and the Alsace. They think Jacob Ammann was actually born in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines. All right. Let's find myself where I'm on these notes. 19. Considering the fact that the Oberlander Amish were a new group of revised Anabaptists, Leroy Beachy suggests that he does not consider it a split. One of the points that Leroy used to support this claim is their surnames.
I gave you that. So now we have the forming of the okay, let's read here the division from the source book. In the summer of 1693, the Mennonite congregations in the settlement of Alsace commissioned Jacob Ammann and several other ministers to make an investigative journey to the Emmental, an attempt to clarify the position of the Swiss Brethren ministers on several questions regarding church discipline.
There were repeated reports of the Emmentaler Mennonites attending public state church services and different accounts and the lack of church discipline. All right. So we're going to change gears now. Bring out your next packet. So now this church is growing. These zealous brothers are there. And the first thing that happens is you know how it is when you're a I hope you do. You know how it is. I do. When you're this radical, on fire for the Lord, you want to do everything you can.
And they were even concerned that those ladies were having babies so much that if you only had communion one time a day excuse me, one time a year, it'd be nice if we had it two times a year, then we could make sure they could come to communion. Why they couldn't come to communion otherwise, I don't know. But that's the first problem. But nevertheless, they were using that as a reason. And plus, they just wanted more. Yes, sir. I have an answer for that, brother. All right.
It's because they thought it a bit, should I say, shameful to be pregnant. You're right, brother. They didn't show up. You're right. Until after the third month or so, they didn't show up. You're right. I've been in trouble myself even in Lancaster County of using the pregnant word myself in different vocabulary. So you're right, even to this day. So thank you for bringing that up. So it was. It was. Anyway, that's why. Okay. Thank you. All right. So they told the Emmentalers.
Well, again, Hans Reist then comes down to discuss this and says, "Okay." And we start to see some of the wit of Hans Reist. But also, I don't know. This is me. It almost seems a little slippery. Jacob Ammann is one of these direct guys. He's a prophet. He's a zealot. He's like, "Give me an answer." And so he asked the Emmental brothers, "Well, how do you feel? Should there be communion twice a year or just once a year?" And let me find my place here. And to that answer, Hans Reist says this.
Jacob wanting a straight answer, Hans Reist saying, "If a person was worthy and could prepare himself properly and well, then one time would not be too much. But if a person could prepare himself properly and well, then one time would not be too few." Excuse me. Did I say one time? "If a person was worthy and could prepare himself properly and well, then two time" excuse me. You need to change that. It's a big error.
"Then two time would not be too much." In other words, if you could prepare yourself for communion, if you could go through that much self-introspection and prepare yourself for communion, then two times wouldn't be too much. But if you can do that, well, then one time is not too few. Okay. Well, just give me a direct answer. Okay? That was the answer. He also then gave the analogy of the priest going into only going one time into the sacrifice to offer a high sacrifice once a year. Yes, sir. How did they get off?
Earlier on, when they first Anabaptists first started meeting, you read how they would have communion nearly every time they were together. Good question, Andrew. Andrew's saying earlier we're reading in those sparks of the Swiss Brethren there around Zurich. We see a different feel. And here now, it is 150 years later from those days. We've traveled 150 years through all that persecution. And somewhere and we're going to talk about this particularly when we get to the Moravian Anabaptists.
Somewhere, the view of church as a community of brothers living for progressing and giving out the kingdom of God, sometimes we fight this constantly in our life, turns into church, Kirk, where you are there and you live your life and you come to church. And I don't know. There seems to be a balance that we have to find if we think that these people are too excessive in the early days and then what they came to in this day. But you are right.
In the early days, the idea was something that they were with each other all the time and had that kind of communion in that way. It's a good point you bring up. And we can bring that up later this week as well. Okay. Two elders, Hans Reist and Bendick Schneider, opposed his innovation, although it was decided to permit it. Ammann and Reist thus became the leader of opposing factions on the issue. But then quickly and I don't know. I have to wonder. Was there some offense here? Did you get offended? I don't know.
But all of a sudden, the debate got turned off of communion to the he started saying, "Well, what about the Dordrecht Confession of Faith?" And so when asked directly about how he felt about communion, that's what Hans Reist said. Shortly after, the main issue of the controversy between the two men shifted rapidly to shunning. And how would y'all say that in your background? Meidung. That's the way you'd say it? Okay. Meidung. What's it? Meidung. Meidung. You had to say it in the Hutterish there. Okay.
Ammann asked two preachers, Nicholas Moser and Peter Geiger, who were called by Hans Reist to help settle the communion controversy in his own congregation, to ask Reist what he believed concerning the shunning. Learning that Reist opposed it, Jacob Ammann became very concerned. And then he also asked him how okay. So let's change the subject about communion. Let's start asking, "How do you feel about the Dordrecht Confession?" And we heard this story. I started hearing a story.
And you know how it is when you get into those church debates. I mean, have you been there? Usually, there's a story attached to it. Well, we heard that in your congregation, there was a lady. And this lady outwardly lied. This is the true story. Outwardly lied to the congregation. We don't know what the lie was. And then she denied it. And then she was actually found out by the deacons. And then when she was found out, she still fought against it until it was proven. Then she finally admitted that she was a liar.
And you didn't do anything about it. Is that church discipline? He's asking Hans Reist. "Do you confess the Dordrecht Confession of Faith, or do you not?" Hmm. So what does Hans Reist, the intelligent, witty man, say? "If I say yes to this, if I say yes to that," there's a little bit of a trap in there. So he avoids the question entirely. "So do you believe in church discipline?" He avoids the question. "Do you confess the Dordrecht Confession of Faith?" He won't give a direct answer. Okay.
Learning that Reist opposed it, Jacob Ammann became very concerned. "They had all received the Dordrecht Confession of Faith," he thought. So in Jacob's mind, by not saying yes, of course, I confess the Dordrecht Confession of Faith. If he'd at least threw him that bone, it might have gone far. But he wouldn't quite even say that. So without saying that he doesn't confess the Dordrecht Confession of Faith, and particularly the article on shunning, he felt that Hans Reist was apostasizing from the faith.
That was the crisis going through Jacob Ammann and the Amish brothers' minds. Ammann took three ministers, Uli Ammann, we think is his younger brother, one of my favorites of this period, Christian Blank, and Nicholas Augsberger with him on a tour of the churches to find out what the ministers in Switzerland believed about shunning. And then some interesting thing came out. Some of the brothers and the Emmental brothers said, "I think we should have the brotherhood here to decide these things." Good question.
I always think if I could break in here, Acts 15 doesn't leave you with just the elders for a reason. It was the entire multitude that finally came in and had to agree to the decision. And some of the Emmental brothers were saying, "I think we should bring in the brotherhood." To add to the crisis, add to the pressure, you see that little picture I have from Leroy Beachy's drawing? There was a warrant out for Jacob Ammann's arrest. They wanted him. They knew he was a traveling missionary. They wanted him.
And so while you're there having these little meetings, you have to sneak around because you could be thrown in prison any time. So to add that to the dynamic. So after he went around and found out that nobody would say, "I confess the Dordrecht Confession," he became more and more concerned. Discovering that only a few of them agreed with him, Ammann decided to call a meeting of all the Swiss ministers at Nicholas Moser's barn near Friedersmatt.
And that's where I showed you at the beginning there where that is now a little southeast of Bern in this Emmental Valley, not far down the road from this picture. However, even though letters were sent out beforehand and to gather all the ministers there, particularly Hans Reist, a lot of the ministers didn't show up. And particularly, Bishop Hans Reist didn't bother to show. Since the meeting was inconclusive, a second meeting was called. The first, I think they wanted like eight weeks.
And he said, "I can't wait eight weeks." Not to mention, there's people trying to kill him. So he convinced him down to two weeks. And they called for another meeting. This time, again, Hans Reist didn't show. But he gave a reason. He was raking his hay. Ouch. And he circulated a letter during this two-week period to all of his ministers saying, "Don't pay attention to the young ministers." Hmm. The stage is set for a big problem. Right? So they go ahead and have the meeting anyway.
When he hears that Hans Reist is not coming, he pulls out of his pocket he pulls out of his pocket against reasons that against Hans Reist. Oh, and one of the reasons when he did ask specifically, what was Hans Reist's answer? "Again, do you confess the Dordrecht Confession of Faith on shunning or not? Give me an answer." Here's the answer. "What goeth into the mouth does not defile the person. But what cometh out of the mouth, that defiles the man." See, he's a witty man. But he's not direct.
And that really bothered Jacob Ammann. Okay. And so I wrote in here, "Stop. Take a breath." And then I write, "There is never any situation bad enough that you can't make it worse." And this was one of those. I wondered if on that point, what they were saying because Peter Geiger talked to uses that line a couple of times. Were they saying that the issue here was people are going to the state church? And whether they should be shunning. He's saying, "Well, what do you do on the outside?" Yeah.
And in particular here, since they're talking about eating, they're saying that it's defiling to eat with a disciplined brother. So if I'm eating with Caleb and he's disciplined, then I'm defiling myself. And they're using that argument, "Not what comes into you defiles you, but what proceeds out of you." He says, "That's not the point. You're missing it." And then they get themselves into a little trap.
And the Mennonite, the future Mennonite brethren, start to go to 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and say, "No, that's not even talking about shunning. That's talking about communion. That only means that we don't eat and drink with people in communion. But we can do that outside of the communion setting." Jacob Ammann jumped on that, obviously, and decided that that was ridiculous. And that's one of the things we can talk about now in our discussion here in a minute. So they went on and it got worse. And yes, it got worse.
There is never any situation bad enough that you can't make it worse. I heard that analogy once at work. Some lady gave it as a kind of a little sentence sermon. And I heard him say that. And the analogy she gave was he heard about someone's daughter who was at someone's house and they were at a party where they shouldn't have been and they were drinking and they shouldn't have been. That was bad. But then the police came.
So instead of just turning herself in, getting home, and getting in trouble, she jumped out of the window. And jumped out of the window, she broke an ankle. It got worse. Then she got in her car and drove drunk and then got arrested with a DUI. Okay. There's nothing bad nothing you can do bad enough that you can't make it worse. And this got worse. All right? After this point of the controversy heated to a climax, Ammann put before him a meeting, a letter with six charges against Hans Reist.
And when he had heard the charges, he declared that Hans Reist is to be excommunicated. All right. After further controversial discussion, Ammann then then he started asking, "What about you, Nicholas Moser? Do you confess it? What about you, Peter Geiger? Do you confess it?" "Well, I'd like to confer with my brothers," Sultan said. "I would excommunicate him. Excommunicated." And they end up excommunicating a lot of these brothers. Now, again, they're not giving him direct answers. Okay?
But granted, we're going to see that even the Amish felt that this got too passionate, too quick. Okay? But nevertheless, you can see how just things can get this way. And being in church life, oh, let's learn some lessons from this, brothers. I wrote, "Stop. Take a deep breath." All right. Finally, the meeting broke up. Jacob Ammann, Peter Geiger said, he said, "Wait." And so after wait, wait.
When Jacob Ammann then gave him his excommunication and gave him his reasons why he excommunicated him, he got up to leave. And Peter Geiger grabbed his shirt and said, "Wait. Let me tell you my side of the story." And he ripped his shoulder away and walked out of the door. The rest is history. So that is what became of it. A little later, the Amish had a meeting nearby, which some would view, not Leroy Beachy, as the first Amish gathering.
I think you could clearly say I would kind of see it more as the people there of the movement there in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines. So it's interesting that this happened. So he went back home and he began to get into the different controversies. And they began to now write some different letters. So just in a brief summary, John D. Roth gives us these explanations on the issues that come back and forth with the letters. I won't go into great details with them of the letters. That was the dividing line between the two.
But I think it'd be good for us for historical purposes for look at this and for us to learn some lessons in it as well. The first one, obviously, we knew came up with the frequency of communion started to come into play there. The next thing that actually played at the beginning, and Uli Ammann said, "You're not being fair," when it got brought in at the end, was actually the issue of foot washing.
Interestingly enough, the Swiss brethren and the Hutterites, all those that originated from the original Swiss brethren, never actually picked up foot washing until later, until much later after this. When the newly revised people from the Emmental area got to Alsace and to Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and started looking at the Dordrecht Confession, they got excited about this foot washing thing and received it as a statement of faith. It is in the Dordrecht Confession.
And that became early on a part of the division because they said, "We all are even washing feet. And we don't have ever done that." And then later, when the Amish were apologizing and trying to come back into the Mennonites, the Mennonites said, "Well, we're not going to take you because you wash feet." It actually became that kind of a thing. And Uli Ammann calls them on it.
But it's interesting just to keep note that that did finally come into I think all the Mennonite churches, I would say these days, would practice foot washing. And that's become more common. Okay? Again, that's why we don't see it in the Hutterites as well. You never practiced foot washing. Yeah. The original Swiss brethren never had that practice. I like it. I think it's a very neat time. We do it.
The way we used to do it is we would have a time like the Church of the Brethren does it, where we do it before the communion. And it has a nice time of preparing and that type of thing. I've always been blessed with it. I do recognize, though, even in the early church, you don't see any wording of them actually doing it through the Ante-Nicene Fathers as well, just for your historic information.
The only mentioned quote on it is Origen, who mentions that it's washing feet is the humble acts you do for your brethren. But I like it. I like it. And it's in scripture. And I do. I'm in that. Okay. The procedure of church discipline, number three, Roth gives us. And in this question, who has the final say in the excommunication? Is it the brotherhood? Or is it a minister? Can a minister say, "I excommunicate you"? Or does it take the brotherhood to agree to that? That became an issue.
The Amish, actually, this was a Bible school for them. And they actually repented of this very act and said, "We were wrong. It takes a brotherhood to be able to excommunicate someone today, someone then." And still, technically, that's the way it would be practiced today from my understanding. Although if you disagree, things don't work out for you that well. But nevertheless, that's the idea. And that concept of the God working amongst the brethren, for me personally, I very much like that. Okay.
And then the salvation of the true-hearted, like Lucas just brought up here. One of the issues that came up that was fighting back and forth was, "Well, how do you consider your people who are not Anabaptists? How do we think of them?" Remember the Schleitheim Confession, how hard it was spoken of about them and what they should do and not go to their services and things. Well, how much should you put on that? And can you go to their service?
There's even some records where a man gave a neighbor a bottle of wine as payment to take his child to the Reformed Church to get him baptized so that he could keep his farm and pass inheritance on to his children. And so all these compromises are starting to face that. Here in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, they were suffering with that. And quickly after they got back, even in that congregation, they started to split over this.
And Jacob Ammann and the brothers there excommunicated some people for, again, for this type of attending of different church services. That was a hot issue. On the Emmental side of the coin, it was a little harder. A lot of these brothers were helping you. They were letting you preach in their barn and willing to get their barn taken. And so it was a little bit harder.
They had these more relationships that they had to deal with where these first-generation brothers here didn't quite weren't didn't have those ties. So good or bad, that made the dynamic a little bit more difficult. And then, of course, the five offenses calling for church discipline. What kind of thing can you discipline with? And then finally, the ban and shunning. And then the I gave you there. We won't read it all here today unless it comes up in our discussion.
The shunning of the separated comes up there in the ban, which becomes, of course, the most contentious part of it. I'm going to summarize to the end. And then we'll get to our discussion on this. When they get back, time to cool off, time to think about it. You start some apologizing. Maybe the brotherhood meeting down there in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines said, "Okay. You said what?" And I don't know. But they somehow, the brothers back, the Amish brothers, started to say, "Okay.
I think that we overstepped our bounds there." And in the letters of Amish division, you start to see a series of letters written by even Jacob Ammann, Uli Ammann in particular, and some of the brothers from the Amish of apologizing, saying, "Okay.
There was a problem here." But in that oh, and one of the most beautiful things that I see, and that's why Uli Ammann becomes one of my favorite figures during this time, was he said, "Look, I think it's fair to say there was fault on both sides." Oh, the voice of wisdom. And in all the church disputes that I've ever seen, I have seen that over and over again. And I particularly think that some of the wisdom that we can see in this is a lot of the Emmental brothers were even asking for this.
The Amish later saw this. If this would have been brought to the whole brotherhood before you start an entire church split, I wonder how much of the whole church would have agreed for all these splittings to happen. You get a bunch of hot-headed, things can happen more quickly. And so some of the wisdom is that they believed that they made some mistakes there. And in those first apologies, though, it's not what I call an apology. And this is the next lesson.
When you read through the letters, Uli Ammann saying, and Jacob Ammann and some of those brothers are saying, "We were wrong. We were hasty. I should not have excommunicated without the brotherhood." And they even say, "That was wrong. An elder should not have excommunicated without the voice of the brotherhood. But you're doing that too.
And you're not supposed to excommunicate without a brotherhood either." Uli Ammann then in his first apology and some of the I think it's Uli Ammann, and their apologies are saying, "We were wrong. But " and so we're sorry. We want to repent from you. But you do confess the Dordrecht Confession, don't you? So it's not an apology. When you've messed up, you really don't have a right to say. And it's bad because sometimes there are some things you've got to deal with.
An analogy I've given before in the past with going through church problems is, let's say I get mad at my son and I yell at him. Okay? And he did something that was really bad. But I've lost my temper and I yell at him. Right? Now we've got a double problem because my son did something that was wrong. But me as the father broke a bigger principle because I did something that was wrong in dealing with his wrong. I have to apologize. And that makes it more difficult.
And why the place of authority is so important that it's not much when I say, "You made me yell at you." It doesn't get deep enough. And I believe that some of the Amish here, when their first apologies, were saying that, "We're sorry. We repent. We want to come back into the church." But you do confess the Dordrecht Confession, don't you?
And of course, they fear that, "Forget it." And finally, towards the end, the Amish are so desperate in their apology, they say, "We hereby excommunicate ourselves because we are sorry." Again, even that one first said, "But you do confess the Dordrecht Confession." And then finally, the last, they finally say, "We excommunicate ourselves." And there's a beautiful letter towards the end of his letters, which they just laid it out as an apology and excommunicating themselves.
And still, unfortunately, the Mennonites never received that apology. And there was a rift that even went on. Even shortly right after this time and coming in now, this is 1693 going into 1700s, the Bern revival is all going. And they're cracking down to finally a gigantic exiling of hundreds and hundreds of families around Bern. And they put them on boats in Bern and shipped them downriver to Holland. Hopefully, from Holland, they would get sent to America because they wanted them out of the continent.
Fortunately, the brothers from the Mennonites from Holland were writing letters to the embassy in Bern. And the people in Holland, they interceded this. And the government of Holland say, "As soon as they set foot in Holland, they are free." And so that's how a lot of the Mennonites got into Holland. But even during that time, that happened just shortly after this, the Mennonites didn't want to be on the same boat with the Amish if they were sent down the river. Ouch.
And so that's the kind of thing that's happened. Let's take a quick break. And then let's get back and let's talk about some of the things, the theology of this discipline. And we'll go until either you run out of if we run out of discussions, I'll tell some more stories about the Amish, some interesting ones. And then.