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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Anti-Anabaptist Polemics: Dutch Anabaptism and the Devil in England, 1531-1660

Anti-Anabaptist Polemics: Dutch Anabaptism and the Devil in England, 1531-1660

Waite, Gary K.

Paperback

Series: Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies (New Series), Book 1

General Christianity

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1926599993
ISBN13: 9781926599991
Publisher: Herald Pr
Published: May 14 2023
Pages: 268
Weight: 0.80
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Anti-Anabaptist Polemics examines polemical works printed between 1531 (when the first known treatise on Anabaptism was printed in England) and 1660 (when the Restoration brought back royal control over religion after the Interregnum) to gauge how continental Anabaptism was understood, polemically distorted, and utilized as a weapon in the debates over religious diversity in England. In the process, Gary Waite argues that some of the weaponized elements of Dutch and German Anabaptism that were hurled about in thousands of hate-filled pamphlets and treatises over the century not only fed into fears of the devil and witchcraft, but inadvertently offered the discontented a number of innovative ideas to draw from, helping in fact to inspire the surge in new religious movements of the 1640s, even though the intention of the authors was to suppress, not encourage, dissent. Anti-Anabaptist Polemics fills significant gaps in our understanding of the development and impact of polemical publications against Anabaptism in England leading up to the Restoration.

Praise for Anti-Anabaptist Polemics

The Anabaptists demolished the conventions of early modern Europe - in theology, in politics and in socio-economic affairs. Although few and foreign in England, their reputation for breaking with traditional ways provoked outspoken denunciation there. Gary Waite has analysed the English writers who wrote against Dutch and German Anabaptism between 1531 and 1660, bringing out their habitual concentration on the horrors of the violence, communism, and polygamy of the outbreak at Münster in 1533-35. The English polemicists were eager to blacken the image of Separatists at home by drawing spurious parallels. The effect was to arouse anxiety among adherents of the established Church of England but also, paradoxically, to give ideas to some of those who created new religious movements in the 1640s. Because this study is so revealing about the nature and consequences of hate literature inspired by religion, it holds dismaying relevance for the twenty-first century.

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