Reformation Apocalypticism: Münster’s Monster or Christian Nationalism

Reformation Apocalypticism: Münster’s Monster

THE YEAR IS 1530. Protestant thought sweeps like a tornado across a European terrain that has altered little for a thousand years. Caught in the storm, the influential town of Strasbourg (now in France) is gripped by the same fears rampaging through Germany and the Netherlands. The stage is set for revolution. Melchoir Hoffman, a furrier, mounts the pulpit to preach another of his fiery apocalyptic sermons. The New Revelation is about to be unleashed...

most agree Melchoir Hoffman’s preaching was the most significant factor in launching the radical wing of the Reformation. His emphasis on a literal millennial reign of Jesus Christ on earth gripped the imagination of the Anabaptist movement...

Matthys proclaimed he was none other than Enoch, the second witness of the Book of Revelation. With a flowing black beard, the tall, gaunt figure was now the bearer of prophetic authority. Doubters were confronted with threats and intimidation. Those failing to embrace the second Enoch would be cast into hell with the devil and his angels... 

If the reign of Christ was to begin, spiritual corruption from Roman Catholics and Lutherans (and all others failing to embrace Anabaptist doctrine) must be purged from the city. Dissenters should be executed...

Matthys now had the city in his grasp, controlling even the flow of information. All books except the Scriptures were burned in the cathedral square... 

 On Easter Sunday 1534, Matthys descended on Bishop Waldeck like one of the apocalyptic four horsemen—but the ride was short. The bishop’s armed guards came to his defense. Matthys was stabbed with a pike, then decapitated. His head was hoisted on a pole for the citizens lining the city walls to observe.

Obbe Philips, a follower of Hoffman who rejected Matthys’s violence, wrote of Matthys, “He was so violent that even his enemies … were terrified of him, and finally in a tumult, they became too powerful for him, they were so incensed that they did not just kill him … but hacked and chopped him into little pieces.”

The faithful remnant was undeterred. Jan van Leyden picked up the mantle, anointed himself king, and began his messianic reign by running naked through Münster in wild religious ecstasy. He appointed 12 men in charge of the affairs of the city, instigating a reign of terror and wild innovations including polygamy. He indulged himself in excesses while subjecting the citizens to austerity. The new millennial kingdom was to be short lived.

The Weight of History

On May 25, 1535, the bishop’s army broke into Münster and quickly captured the city. Killing lasted for two days. When the bodies were finally piled in the cathedral square, the stench was overwhelming. Bernhard Rothman probably perished in the assault, and van Leyden and Knipperdolling were captured, tortured and put to death. The hopes for a New Jerusalem ended in a debacle. 

Lutheran and Calvinist pessimism about human attempts to establish a Kingdom of God was reinforced.

 Even today they generally continue their suspicion of all forms of both pre- and postmillennialism. The events in Münster had simply been too monstrous.  

Anabaptism is a Christian movement which traces its origins to the Radical Reformation. The movement is generally seen as an offshoot of Protestantism.

Anabaptists require that baptismal candidates be able to make a confession of faith that is freely chosen and so reject the baptism of infants.

 Most Anabaptists adhere to a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount which precludes taking oaths, participating in military actions, and participating in civil government.

Protestant fundamentalists regard the Bible as foundational for faith, and believe that if the Bible were found to be flawed, Christianity would collapse. They therefore also feel concerned at the prospect of more than one meaning to a biblical passage, for their foundation would then seem more like shifting sand than solid rock.

 While they believe they base Christian faith on Scripture, in practice they base it on reason, or a particular deductive and inductive process by which they require Scripture to pass stringent rational and empirical assessments (Harris 2000).

 Their position stems from an epistemological anxiety that we cannot know anything of Christ or God if we cannot first be sure that the Bible is (factually) reliable.(Harriet A. Harris, “Fundamentalism(s),” in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies, ed. J. W. Rogerson and Judith M. Lieu, Oxford Handbooks (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 834.)

The colonists’ reasons for migration were varied, but John Winthrop’s leadership gave the movement a unified vision and a sense of Christian mission. As the Arabella neared Massachusetts Bay, Winthrop enunciated his vision in his famous lay sermon

 “A Modell of Christian Charity.” 

He compared the Puritan journey from England with Israel’s exodus from Egypt. They were escaping a land where a godless state governed the church and where the sins of centuries dominated the people’s thinking and way of life.

 They would build a new England in the New World—the Promised Land. Their success or failure would depend upon whether they were faithful to God’s covenant. Winthrop saw the Puritan migration to the New World as a chance to build a society governed by God’s true people and God’s principles for holy living. Might not New England become the very kingdom of God?

In support of Winthrop’s vision, the civil magistrates attempted to maintain both moral purity and theological conformity among the people. This led to the civil government’s domination of the New England church, one of the very reasons they had left England.

 The demand for theological conformity also led to the exiling of a number of well-known figures, including Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams. Despite the eventual failure of Winthrop’s “kingdom experiment,” his belief that America had a moral and spiritual mission to the world endures to this day in American political thought.(M.R. Norton, “Winthrop, John,” ed. J.D. Douglas and Philip W. Comfort, Who’s Who in Christian History (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1992), 730–731.)

Several American colonies followed the European example of having an established church, but when the new nation gained independence, none had sufficient power to become the dominant national religion.

 This contributed to the provisions for religious liberty and the separation of church and state guaranteed by the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

 Both as cause and effect, it provided for the denominational pattern of tolerance and freedom for every religious group as long as it does not subvert the state or violate the rights of others.

 Immigrants from nations with established Anglican, Reformed, Catholic, Lutheran or Orthodox churches were no longer part of a dominant national religion but of only a minority religious body coexisting with hundreds of others. Since there was no established “church,” “sects” could not be defined as splinters from it.(Daniel G. Reid et al., Dictionary of Christianity in America (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990).)

  Presbyterian General Assembly, Philadelphia was the chosen city was ironic: it was the cradle both of American Presbyterianism (being the location of the first presbytery in 1706 and the site of the first General Assembly in 1789) and of the nation (in which city both the Declaration of Independence, 1776, and the Constitution, 1789, were adopted). It was also quite a patriotic city and made it difficult to resist patriotic demands on the 1861 General Assembly to issue a strongly pro-Union statement.

Hodge made it abundantly clear in his writing and in the debate on the floor of the General Assembly over the Gardiner Spring Resolutions that he was a fervent Lincoln supporter and an ardent Union man.

 Nevertheless, because he firmly believed that the Gardiner Spring Resolutions decided a political question, something no assembly should do, Hodge, and those who joined him in protest, put it like this:

 We make this protest, not because we do not acknowledge loyalty to our country to be a moral and religious duty, according to the word of God, which requires us to be subject to the powers that be; nor because we deny the right of the Assembly to enjoin that, and all other like duties, on the ministers and churches under its care-

 but because we deny the right of the General Assembly to decide the political question, to what government the allegiance of Presbyterians as citizens is due, and its rights to make that decision a condition of membership in our Church.  

As for the demands of the 1865 General Assembly exceeding those of the civil government itself, that is startlingly true. Hodge wrote,

 The United States authorities require of those who participated in the rebellion, no expression of contrition, no renunciation of political theories, no avowal of approbation of the measures of the government for the preservation of the Union and abrogation of slavery, but the simple promise of obedience to the laws and allegiance to the government.

This is another indication that the ecclesiastical sphere was as politicized, if not more so, than the civil one. Hodge concluded,

 “It seems rather incongruous that a church court should assume to be more loyal than the government which it desires to support.”

Alan D. Strange, Empowered Witness: Politics, Culture, and the Spiritual Mission of the Church (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 62,84–85.

Theologians such as Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw in the rise of Hitler’s Germany a counterfeit eschatology that could not be opposed by the “God-consciousness” kingdom of Protestant liberalism.

 Hitler’s “thousand-year Reich” was a thinly veiled pagan reinterpretation of the “thousand-year reign” of Christ pictured in the Apocalypse. In the Barmen Declaration of 1934, Barth opposed the

“German Christian” movement that sought to co-opt Christian churches for the Nazi state.

(Russell D. Moore, “Personal and Cosmic Eschatology,” in A Theology for the Church (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2014),689- 690.)

“We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords—areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.”

Less than two weeks later two prominent Lutheran theologians at Erlangen—Althaus and Werner Elert—put together a document that was intended to express the “voice of genuine Lutheranism.” Called the Ansbach Proposal (Ratschlag), it was signed by six other persons.

It is formulated as a response to the Barmen Declaration.

The natural orders establish our entire natural existence and are the means by which God creates and preserves our earthly life. Christians are thankful for every order because they are tools for realizing the divine purposes. Recognizing this fact,

  we give thanks to God the Lord for bestowing the Führer (i.e. Adolf Hitler) as “a pious and faithful chief of state”

 upon our people in their time of need, just as we thank God for desiring to grant us “good government,” a government with “discipline and honor,” in the form of the National-Socialist state.

  For this reason, we recognize that we are held responsible before God to assist the Führer in his work through our respective vocations and professions.

Backed up by thinking like this, many if not most German Lutherans remained loyal to Hitler to the end. He was still the authority ordained by God in the sense of Romans. 13.

 Also by accepting the doctrine of the orders one could arrive at the position articulated by Friedrich Gogarten:

 “The claim of the church upon man does not negate the claims of the state. For the church claims man in his eternal life while the state may claim the totality of his earthly existence.”

 Or, as Stapel crudely put it:

 “Everything concerning justice and morality belongs to the totalitarian state. Everything that concerns the kingdom of heaven belongs to the church.”

Richard V. Pierard, “The Lutheran Two-Kingdoms Doctrine and Subservience to the State in Modern Germany,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 29, no. 2 (1986): 202. 

Numerous scholars have traced Calvin’s political ideas. Among the various evaluations, Douglas Kelly identifies the

“sober Calvinian assessment of fallen man’s propensity to seize, increase, and abuse power for personal ends rather than for the welfare of the many.”

 He further explains:

 “Governmental principles for consent of the governed, and separation and balance of powers are all logical consequences of a most serious and Calvinian view of the biblical doctrine of the fall of man.”

David W. Hall, “Calvin on Human Government and the State,” in A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes: Essays and Analysis, ed. David W. Hall and Peter A. Lillback, The Calvin 500 Series (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2015), 411–412.

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated the third president of the United States on March 4, 1801, following one of the most bitterly contested presidential elections in American history.

In the days before the election, the Gazette of the United States, a leading Federalist newspaper, posed the “grand question” of whether Americans should vote for “GOD—AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT [John Adams]; or impiously declare for JEFFERSON—AND NO GOD!!!”

Jefferson’s Federalist foes did not invent the stinging accusation that he was an infidel. Years before, his ardent advocacy for disestablishment in Virginia had led many pious Americans to conclude that Jefferson was, if not an enemy of religion, at least indifferent towards organized religion’s vital role in civic life.

 The publication of his Notes on the State of Virginia in the mid-1780s exacerbated these fears. He wrote,

 “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

 This passage came back to haunt him in the 1800 campaign. Detractors said this proved he was an infidel or, worse, an atheist.

 In an influential pamphlet published in 1800, William Linn, a Dutch Reformed clergyman, warned that a vote for Jefferson “must be construed into no less than rebellion against God.”

 He added ominously that the promotion of an infidel to high office would encourage public immorality and lead to the “destruction of all social order and happiness.”

 Jefferson’s “favorite wish,” Mitchell charged, is- 

“to see a government administered without any religious principle among either rulers or ruled.”

 He repudiated the notion gaining currency among Jeffersonians that “Religion has nothing to do with politics.”

 Jeffersonian partisans denied that their candidate was an atheist and advanced a separationist policy that would eventually exert much influence on American politics.

 “Religion and government are equally necessary,” said Tunis Wortman, “but their interests should be kept separate and distinct.

 No legitimate connection can ever subsist between them. Upon no plan, no system, can they become united, without endangering the purity and usefulness of both—the church will corrupt the state, and the state pollute the church.”

Although Jefferson’s beliefs drew the most attention, John Adams was not immune from political smears on account of religion.

When President Adams recommended a national “day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer”

 in March 1799, political adversaries depicted him as a tool of establishmentarians intent on legally uniting a specific church with the new federal government.

 This allegation alarmed religious dissenters, such as the Baptists, who feared persecution by a state church. “A general suspicion prevailed,”

 Adams recounted a decade later,

 “that the Presbyterian Church [which was presumed to be behind the national day of prayer] was ambitious and aimed at an establishment as a national church.” 

Although disclaiming any involvement in such a scheme, Adams ruefully reported that he “was represented as a Presbyterian and at the head of this political and ecclesiastical project.

 The secret whisper ran through all the sects, 

“Let us have Jefferson, Madison, Burr, anybody, whether they be philosophers, Deists, or even atheists, rather than a Presbyterian President.”

Adams thought the controversy, which drove dissenters into Jefferson’s camp, cost him the election.

An anguished Jefferson compared his persecution at the hands of critics—especially among the New England clergy—with the crucified Christ:

 “from the clergy I expect no mercy. They crucified their Savior, who preached that their kingdom was not of this world; and all who practice on that precept must expect the extreme of their wrath.

 “The laws of the present day withhold their hands from blood; but lies and slander still remain to them.” 

The Danbury Baptists were a beleaguered religious minority in a state where Congregationalism was the established church. They celebrated Jefferson’s advocacy for religious liberty and chastised those who criticized him 

“because he will not, dares not assume the prerogative of Jehovah and make Laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ.” 

They expressed a heartfelt desire “that the sentiments of our beloved President, which have had such genial Effect already, like the radiant beams of the Sun, will shine & prevail through all these States and all the world till Hierarchy and tyranny be destroyed from the Earth.”

Daniel L. Dreisbach, “The Wall of Separation,” Christian History Magazine-Issue 99: Faith & the American Presidency (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today, 2008).  

 According to Lincoln in his Second Inaugural, the principle of “government of the people, by the people, for the people” was the “last, best hope of the earth,” a hope which Americans fighting to save the Union might “nobly save or meanly lose.”

 How might they lose it? The context of Lincoln’s address gives on explanation. Lincoln had noted that both North and South “read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.”

 Clearly, the prayers of both could not be answered because “the Almighty has his own purposes” which men might not understand, even after endeavoring to do their best in the light afforded them. This being so, there should be no room for pride or boasting on the part of the North, and victory, if it came, must be met.

 “with malice toward none; with charity for all.”

Lincoln’s insight, birthed in the pain of a civil war, is an example of the “nation under God” type of civil religion to which the Church can say “Yes.” 

To be “under God” does not mean to wrap the nation’s acts in a righteous mantle; it does not mean confusing the trappings of religion (whether it is “In God We Trust” on our coins or prayer in public schools) as the same as authentic faith.

 There may well be a place for religious imagery, including mottos on coins and prayer in the schools, as we negotiate that fine line between Church and State in our society, but even if such symbols are accepted in our society~ the civil religion represented by Lincoln reminds us that we should be humble in our judgments about our individual or national grasp of God’s will.

 Toleration of other’s faith commitments is required not only because we must live together in a pluralistic society, but also because we are imperfect and stand equally under God’s scrutiny. 

T. Furman Hewitt, “Civil Religion: Alive—And Sometimes Dangerous,” Faith and Mission 4, no. 2 (1986): 59.

Liberty today more than ever needs to be defended from totalitarian encroachments. Not only is there the brutality of reducing a populace to the level of abject slavery, with a controlled church to applaud its atheistic rulers; but also in western lands the burdens and budgets, the regulations and controls, become constantly more onerous. The tenth article of the bill of rights is almost a dead letter.

Can limitations on governments, can the protection of minorities from majority action, can individual rights and liberties be rationally maintained? Or does democracy mean mob rule?

“Natural Law and Revelation,” Christianity Today (Washington, D.C.: Christianity Today, 1957), 20.

Religious freedom means not only that the state cannot establish a Church, but that Christians individually and collectively retain the “freedom to distinguish between penultimate human powers [i.e., government] and ultimate divine powers ”

(Eric Gritsch, “An American Dilemma: God and the Constitution,” Report from the Capitol, 41 (July-August 1986).

  The government is not God; government stands under divine scrutiny no matter what policy or party dominates; government should not be identified, even tacitly, as an extension of the Church.

Christians who cherish true religious freedom cannot agree to the creation of a theocracy even were they to have overwhelming numerical superiority.

 We are not and never have been a “Christian” nation in a formal sense, but rather a nation with a religious self-understanding where Christians are free to worship and evangelize and influence from within that nation.

 At its best, the civil religion reminds us that we have not only freedom of and for religion (we are free to speak our opinions and we are free from the tyranny of a state which would tell us what to believe), we have freedom from religion if we wish it.

 The noble American experiment of a “free Church in a free state” is, however, a “fragile possession” which depends upon the good will and informed opinion of people, government and Churches.

Unfortunately, there are those among us who would gladly tell us what to believe and how to act. As one television preacher said: 

“I have a divine mandate to go right into the halls of Congress and fight for laws that will save America. He [God] has called me to take this action

 (Cited in Paul D. Simmons, “Religious Liberty Under Fire,” Report from the Capitol 41 (March 1986).

  A civil religion which either idolizes the State or puts a particular religious community or set of beliefs in control of the State is oppressive; it forgets the nature of the social contract in America, and it borders on idolatry and pride. 

A civil religion which is more true to the American experience as well as to Christian teaching remembers that the State is a penultimate authority and that the great danger to democracy and the pursuit of truth, including religious truth, is any tendency to “suppress dissent, control… thought and freedom of expression, muzzle… minds and ban books.”

T. Furman Hewitt, “Civil Religion: Alive—And Sometimes Dangerous,” Faith and Mission 4, no. 2 (1986): 57.

is this what Christian Nationalism looks like?  Lord have Mercy