Under cover of darkness, a dozen or so men quietly walked through the falling snow in Zurich, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, 1525. The winter wind seemed to match the chill in their hearts as they made their way through the narrow streets to the home of Anna Manz, mother of Felix.

The city council had ordered them to stop meeting for Bible study. What should they do?

Once inside, they prayed for guidance. When the prayers ended, George Blaurock, a former priest, asked Conrad Grebel to baptize him. Grebel did so, and Blaurock proceeded to baptize the others. The Anabaptist movement was born.

When what they had done became known, the Bible study group was arrested and jailed. But as soon as they were released, they began to travel and preach.

Angered, the magistrates warned that anyone attending an Anabaptist ceremony would be drowned.

If they want water, council members reasoned, they shall have it.

Two years later, on Jan. 5, 1527, Felix Manz was martyred in Zurich, one of the first Anabaptists to be killed for their faith. Hands and feet bound, he was drowned in the Limmat River.

Many others would follow. It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 Anabaptists were executed during the Reformation years, although the true number is uncertain.

To us, the early Anabaptists seemed to have a simple demand: the right of every person to his or her own beliefs. To their contemporaries, they were a threat to the very fabric of society. Anabaptism was declared a heresy, punishable by death.

In fact, it was their persecutors that gave them their name: Anabaptist means “rebaptizer.” The early Anabaptists rejected the name, for they never considered the ceremonial sprinkling they received as infants to be a valid baptism. They called themselves Swiss Brethren.

Although baptism was a lightning rod that led to their persecution, it was just one of the issues that concerned them. More important was the nature of the church and its relation to government.

They found no justification in scripture for a church-state alliance. Instead, they believed the early church was a community of believers who had freely chosen to follow Jesus and rejected the claims of worldly power.

This rejection was most evident in their refusal to go to war. True Christians, Grebel said, do not “use worldly sword or war, since all killing has ceased with them.”

Despite the persecution, thousands joined. One ruler is reported to have said: “The more I execute them, the more they increase.”

Their testimony was a light to many. Even their critics were forced to admit that, as one wrote, the Anabaptists’ life was irreproachable — demonstrating humility, honesty and other virtues “in such measure that one would suppose they have the spirit of God.”

Not all early Anabaptists rejected violence, however. In 1535 a group seized control of the German city of Münster and prepared to usher in the kingdom of God through violence. Proclaiming the city their New Jerusalem, they forced people to receive baptism and join the movement or leave the city. Rebel leader Jan van Leyden crowned himself King David and instituted polygamy and community of goods.

But within months, the rebellion was put down and the leaders killed. Their bodies were hung in iron cages above the clock on St. Lamberts’ Church, a warning against future rebellion against state authority. The cages remain there today; visitors to Münster can find a display of captured Anabaptist weaponry in the city museum.

The debacle of Münster seriously damaged the Anabaptist cause. Even today, it is all that some Europeans know about Anabaptism. It gave the persecutors ironclad evidence that the Anabaptists posed a mortal threat to public order.

After Münster, the dispirited Anabaptists took heart through the ministry of Menno Simons. A former Dutch priest, Menno traveled widely to visit Anabaptist groups scattered around northern Europe, encouraging the persecuted believers.

Determined to prevent further violence, he preached an unswerving commitment to pacifism. He saved Anabaptism from rebellion and disintegration. In time, those who belonged to the movement became known as Mennonites.

The early Anabaptists left behind their testimonies of suffering for refusing the claim of worldly authority on their lives. Many of these testimonies were recorded in Martyrs Mirror, published in the Netherlands in 1660. One of the most moving accounts is found in a letter of a young woman, Janneken Munetdorp, to her newborn daughter, also named Janneken.

The child’s father had already been executed; the mother was reprieved only long enough to give birth. Writing from a prison cell in 1573, she said: “And now my dear lamb, I leave you this letter for a perpetual adieu and for a testament. Be not ashamed to confess our faith, since it is the true evangelical faith, another of which shall never be found.”

John Longhurst, a freelance journalist and frequent contributor to Anabaptist World, is part of River East Church in Winnipeg, affiliated with Mennonite Church Manitoba.