Zürich Baptism Disputations (1525)
The Zürich council’s gradual reforms after the 1523 disputations left some of Zwingli’s followers impatient. Their disagreement soon reached infant baptism, a practice bound up with the city’s understanding of church membership. Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and others argued that baptism should follow a personal confession of faith. Zwingli and the council defended the baptism of infants and the civic church order with which it was joined. To address the widening division, the council held a public debate on January 17, 1525. Earlier differences about the speed of reform had become a dispute about the nature of the church itself: whether a parish community could be treated as Christian through infant baptism, or whether baptism belonged to confessing believers.1
Whoever will not do this must with wife and child, goods and chattels leave our city, jurisdiction, and domainZürich city councilOrder after the January 1525 debate3
The Debate and Its Outcome
The council ruled against the dissenters and ordered unbaptized children brought for baptism. Within days, members of the dissenting circle baptized one another as believers. Further hearings and debates followed during 1525, but the breach was already visible. Those later called Anabaptists formed congregations apart from the city’s church and endured prosecution for doing so.2
Why It Matters
This was more than a disagreement about the age of the person baptized. It put competing understandings of church membership and civil power into view. The Zürich debates mark a decisive beginning of the Radical Reformation and a painful example of Protestants coercing other Protestants.
