This standard introduction to the history of Anabaptism offers a vivid chronicle of the rise and spread of this vigorous Christian group. Estep provides a historical review of each Anabaptist leader’s influence and discusses their positions on such doctrines as infant baptism, the Trinity, pacifism, the swearing of oaths and civil authority. The author, wanting to impart more than just information, hopes “that through these pages the world of the sixteenth century may come alive, and the Anabaptists within it, with all their virtues and faults, their strengths and weaknesses, but above all with the faith and ideals that motivated them to witness in word and deed, in life and in death, for that truth which for them was worth the living and the dying.”
In this third edition, The Anabaptist Story has been substantially revised and enlarged to take into account the numerous Anabaptist sources that have come to light in the last half-century. Estep was also able to take advantage of the significant number of monographs and other scholarly research on Anabaptist themes that have appeared more recently. He challenges a number of assumptions held by contemporary historians of sixteenth-century Anabaptism and offers fresh insights into the historical movement to which we owe the notion of religious liberty that prevails today.
