Conrad Grebel baptizes in a kitchen
The first Anabaptist baptism
The date is preserved: January 21, 1525. The house belongs to Felix Manz's mother. It is evening. The city council has ruled against them that day — the position of the radicals on baptism has been formally condemned, and they have been given until the end of the week to have their children baptized or leave Zurich.
They gather instead.
The account says they were gripped by fear. They prayed together. They asked God to show them his will and to give them courage.
And then George Blaurock, a former priest, stands up and asks Conrad Grebel to baptize him with true Christian baptism upon his faith and his recognition of the truth.
Grebel does it. With water, on the head, in the name of the Trinity. An adult, requesting it, confessing his own faith.
Then Blaurock baptizes the others.
They understand what they have done. They are not naive. This act is illegal — the rebaptism of adults has been a capital offense under Roman law since the fifth century, when the emperors made Donatist rebaptism a crime. The Zurich city council will not protect them. The reformers they have broken with will not defend them.
They appoint each other to missionary work that night. They go out the next morning to preach.
Within three years, Felix Manz will be drowned in the Limmat River by the Zurich authorities — the first Protestant martyr executed by other Protestants.
The kitchen in Zurich is the birthplace of what will eventually become the Baptist, Mennonite, Brethren, and Pentecostal traditions — the largest wing of global Christianity in the twenty-first century.
“We were gripped with fear at what we were doing, but also with great joy, for we had found the Lord.”
— Account of the first Anabaptist baptism, c. 1525 AD
“Go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”
They were gripped with fear and with great joy. Both at once. The fear was appropriate — they knew what they were risking. The joy was also appropriate — they had found what they were looking for.
This is the texture of genuine obedience: not the absence of fear but the presence of joy alongside it, the recognition that what is being done is right even when it is costly.
The kitchen in Zurich is not an impressive venue for a movement that will shape hundreds of millions of Christians. But the most consequential things always seem to begin in small rooms with small groups of frightened people who have decided that obedience matters more than safety.
Where are you being called to obey in a small room with a small group, gripped by fear and also by joy? And is the fear a reason to stop or evidence that the thing is real?