David J. Engelsma, The Sixteenth-Century Reformation of the Church, p. 63:
It is, however, the urgency of the conflict of the Reformed faith with Anabaptism in our day that needs to be sounded and appreciated. If one thinks only of the physical descendants of the Anabaptists, the Hutterites in South Dakota and the Amish in Indiana, he will regard the notion of a conflict as nonsense. But let him consider that the spiritual descendants of the Anabaptists dominate the American religious scene. Non-Roman Catholic religion in America is overwhelmingly Anabaptist. It rejects infant baptism; the covenant; total depravity; justification by faith alone; and sovereign, gracious predestination. Its gospel is salvation by free will and good works. It is anti-doctrinal and anti-confessional. It spurns the unity of the church as manifested in a denomination. It is individualistic; experience-centered; and millennial, dreaming the Anabaptist dream of the thousand-year, carnal reign of Christ on earth.
There is even in some quarters the surfacing of the latent Anabaptist characteristic of revolution. The latter-day Anabaptists are willing to resort to force against the state over their church-schools, over abortion, and over other laws that they judge oppressive and unjust.
There churches call themselves evangelical or fundamentalist. In fact, they are Anabaptist.
The preachers who are the successors of Carlstadt, Muntzer, Grebel, Hutter, and Joris are Billy Graham, Jack Hyles, Jerry Falwell, Ed Dobson, Bill Hybels, and the entire charismatic swarm.
In one of history’s ironies, the Anabaptists who once skulked in woods and fields, the outlaws of society, now worship in huge cathedrals and command the attention, and even deference, of the [American] president.
Handout in connection with the Belgic Confession Class on Article 1, “There is Only One God (I).”
