This episode is titled “Cracks.”One of the great concerns of the Roman Church at the outset of the Reformation was just how far it would go, not so much in terms of variance in Doctrines, although that also was a concern. What Rome worried over was just how many different groups the Faith would split into. After all, division wasn’t new. There’d already been a major break between East and West a half century before. In the East, the Church was already fragmented into dozens of groups across Central Asia.But up till the Reformation, the Western Church had managed to keep new and reform movements from splitting off. Most had eventually been subsumed back into the larger reach of the Church structure.The Reformation brought an end to that as now there were groups that defined themselves, not by the Roman Church, but by more local and national churches and movements. It didn’t take long till even some of the early Reformers began to worry about how far the break from Rome would go. The cracks that formed in the Church kept spreading, like a nick on a car windshield sends out just a tiny crack at first, but keeps spreading.The Reformation ended up spinning out dozens of groups; some big, many small.There were Lutherans, Presbyterians, Huguenots, Swiss Brethren, dozens of Anabaptist groups, Mennonites, Hutterites, etc. etc. etc..In Episode 90, we touched briefly on the tragedy that struck at Munster when the Anabaptist movement strayed from its moorings in God’s Word and replaced it with the lunacy of a couple of its leaders who went way off the rails in an apocalyptic frenzy that ended up destroying the town.Munster became a cautionary tale for other Anabaptists and Reformers. The explanation given for the tragedy was Munster’s abandonment of the pacifism preached and practiced by other Anabaptists. Anabaptists regarded the Sermon on the Mount as their guiding ethic and said it could only be followed by a Faith that was committed to the practice of a love that resigned consequences to God’s hands.A leading figure among the Anabaptists was Menno Simons, a Dutch Catholic priest.Simons was moved to reconsider the rightness of infant baptism when he witnessed the martyrdom of an Anabaptist in 1531. Five years later, the same year the leaders of Munster were executed, Simons left his position as a parish priest and embraced Anabaptism. He joined a Dutch fellowship, where his followers came to be known as Mennonites.Although persecution was fierce, Menno survived and spent his time traveling through Northern German and Holland, preaching and encouraging his followers. He also wrote a large number of essays of which Foundations of the Christian Doctrine in 1539, became the most important.Menno was convinced pacifism was an essential part of true Christianity, and refused to have anything to do with Anabaptists of a revolutionary flavor. He also held that Christians ought not offer any oaths, and shouldn’t take occupations requiring them. But he maintained Christians should obey civil authorities, as long as they weren’t required to disobey the Lord.Menno preferred to baptize by pouring water over the head of adults who confessed their faith publicly. He said neither baptism nor communion confer grace, but rather are outward signs of what takes place inwardly between God and the believer. Mennonites also practiced foot-washing as a reminder of their call to humility and a life of service.Even though the Mennonites were so manifestly harmless, they were classed as subversive by many governments simply because they wouldn’t take oaths and as pacifists refused to join the military. Persecution scattered them throughout Eastern Europe and Western Russia.Many Mennonites eventually left for the New World where they were offered religious tolerance. In both Russia and North America they ran into trouble when the authorities expected them to serve in the military and they declined yet again.