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34-644: This doctrine has its origin in the Radical Reformation within Anabaptism . The 1527 Schleitheim Confession by the Swiss Brethren, a group of Anabaptists of which Michael Sattler was part, is a publication that spread this doctrine. In this confession, the believer's baptism after a profession of faith is placed as an essential theological foundation. In 1644, the 1644 Baptist Confession of Faith published by Particular Baptists stated

68-631: A literary religion. Similarly, the canonization of the New Testament by the Early Christian Church became an important aspect in the formation of the separate religious identity for Christianity. Ecclesiastical authorities used the acceptance or rejection of specific scriptural books as a major indicator of group identity, and it played a role in the determination of excommunications in Christianity and in cherem in

102-544: A part of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy , conservative Christian scholarship affirms the following: Steve Falkenberg, professor of religious psychology at Eastern Kentucky University , observed: Conrad Hyers , professor of comparative religion at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota , criticizes biblical literalism as a mentality that: Robert Cargill responded to viewers' questions on

136-509: A passage is clearly intended by the writer as allegory, poetry, or some other genre, the Bible should be interpreted as literal statements by the author. Critics argue that allegorical intent can be ambiguous. Fundamentalists typically treat as simple history, according to its plain sense, passages such as those that recount the Genesis creation , the Genesis flood narrative and Noah's ark , and

170-738: A response to perceived corruption both in the Catholic Church and in the expanding Magisterial Protestant movement led by Martin Luther and many others. Beginning in Germany and Switzerland in the 16th century, the Radical Reformation gave birth to many radical Protestant groups throughout Europe. The term covers Radical Reformers like Thomas Müntzer and Andreas Karlstadt , the Zwickau prophets , and Anabaptist groups like

204-629: A result of the proliferation of the Radical Reformation teachings in the United States . Some early forms of the Radical Reformation were millenarian , focusing on the imminent end of the world. This was particularly notable in the rule of John of Leiden over the city of Münster in 1535, which was ultimately crushed by the combined forces of the Catholic Bishop of Münster and the Lutheran Landgrave of Hesse . After

238-483: A work not merely inspired by God but, in fact, representing the Word of God without possibility of error or contradiction. Biblical literalism first became an issue in the 18th century, enough so for Diderot to mention it in his Encyclopédie . Karen Armstrong sees "[p]reoccupation with literal truth" as "a product of the scientific revolution". The vast majority of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians regard

272-458: Is no gap between the culture in which the Bible was written and the culture of a modern reader. On the contrary, exegetical and interpretative principles come into play as part of the process of closing that cultural gap. The doctrine does deny that the Bible is a code to decipher, or that understanding it requires complex academic analysis as is typical in the historical-critical method of interpretation. Biblical literalists believe that, unless

306-596: Is one of the reasons that it has been a constant characteristic of all Mennonite bodies through the centuries. The Anabaptists of the Radical Reformation continue to inspire current community groups such as the Bruderhof and movements such as Urban Expression in the UK. Though most of the Radical Reformers were Anabaptist, some did not identify themselves with the mainstream Anabaptist tradition. Thomas Müntzer

340-416: Is used extensively by fundamentalist Christians, in contrast to the historical-critical method of mainstream Judaism , Catholicism or Mainline Protestantism . Those who relate biblical literalism to the historical-grammatical method use the word "letterism" to cover interpreting the Bible according to the dictionary definition of literalism. Alternatively, used as a pejorative to describe or ridicule

374-591: The Hutterites and the Mennonites . In Germany, Switzerland and Austria, a majority sympathized with the Radical Reformation despite intense persecution. Although the surviving proportion of the European population that rebelled against Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed Churches was small, Radical Reformers wrote profusely, and the literature on the Radical Reformation is disproportionately large, partly as

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408-580: The Judeo-Christian tradition seems to relate in part to a process of canonization of the Hebrew Bible , which occurred over the course of a few centuries from approximately 200 BCE to 200 CE. In the Jewish tradition, the highly regarded written word represented a direct conduit to the mind of God, and the later rabbinical school of Judaism encouraged the attendant scholarship that accompanied

442-549: The Münster rebellion , the small group of the Batenburgers continued to adhere to militant Anabaptist beliefs. Non-violent Anabaptist groups also had millenarian beliefs. The early Anabaptists believed that their reformation must purify both theology and the lives of Christians, especially their political and social relationships. Therefore, the church should not be supported by the state, neither by tithes and taxes, nor by

476-608: The Reformation , Martin Luther (1483–1546 CE) separated the biblical apocrypha from the rest of the Old Testament books in his 1534 Bible , reflecting scholarly doubts that had continued for centuries, and the Westminster Confession of 1646 demoted them to a status that denied their canonicity. American Protestant literalists and biblical inerrantists have adopted this smaller Protestant Bible as

510-535: The free church movement do not adhere to the doctrine of the believers' Church. Despite the nuances in the various evangelical movements, there is a similar set of beliefs for movements adhering to the doctrine of the believers' Church, the main ones being Anabaptism , Baptists and Pentecostalism . Radical Reformation Electors of Saxony Holy Roman Emperors Building Literature Theater Liturgies Hymnals Monuments Calendrical commemoration The Radical Reformation represented

544-542: The Bible literally, saying it is the actual word of God. That is similar to what Gallup has measured over the last two decades, but down from the 1970s and 1980s. A 49% plurality of Americans say the Bible is the inspired word of God but that it should not be taken literally, consistently the most common view in Gallup's nearly 40-year history of this question. Another 17% consider the Bible an ancient book of stories recorded by man." The high regard for religious scriptures in

578-527: The Biblical text as clear , and believe that the average person may understand the basic meaning and teachings of the Bible. The doctrine has resulted in an estimated 45,000 Protestant denominations, none of which hold exactly the same views. Such Christians often refer to the teachings of the Bible rather than to the process of interpretation itself . The doctrine of clarity of the text does not mean that no interpretative principles are necessary, or that there

612-619: The Jewish tradition. Origen (184–253 CE), familiar with reading and interpreting Hellenistic literature , taught that some parts of the Bible ought to be interpreted non-literally. Concerning the Genesis account of creation, he wrote: "who is so silly as to believe that God ... planted a paradise eastward in Eden, and set in it a visible and palpable tree of life ... [and] anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life?" He also proposed that such hermeneutics should be applied to

646-486: The Netherlands). The Hutterites also practiced community of goods . In the beginning, most of them were strongly missionary . Later forms of Anabaptism were much smaller and focused on the formation of small, separatist communities. Among the many varieties to develop were Mennonites, Amish , and Hutterites. Typical among the new leaders of the later Anabaptist movement, and certainly the most influential of them,

680-411: The dictionary definition of literalism : "adherence to the exact letter or the literal sense", where literal means "in accordance with, involving, or being the primary or strict meaning of the word or words; not figurative or metaphorical". The term can refer to the historical-grammatical method , a hermeneutic technique that strives to uncover the meaning of the text by taking into account not just

714-705: The emergence of several movements that were influenced by or could be considered part of the Radical Reformation, such as the English Dissenters . One of these dissenting groups that developed along convergent lines with the continental Radical Reformation was the Religious Society of Friends , commonly known as Quakers, led by George Fox and Margaret Fell , among others. In addition to the Anabaptists, other Radical Reformation movements have been identified. Notably, George Huntston Williams ,

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748-454: The gospel accounts as well. Church father Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) wrote of the need for reason in interpreting Jewish and Christian scripture, and of much of the Book of Genesis being an extended metaphor. But Augustine also implicitly accepted the literalism of the creation of Adam and Eve , and explicitly accepted the literalism of the virginity of Jesus 's mother Mary . In

782-516: The grammatical words, but also the syntactical aspects, the cultural and historical background, and the literary genre. It emphasizes the referential aspect of the words in the text without denying the relevance of literary aspects, genre, or figures of speech within the text (e.g., parable, allegory, simile, or metaphor). It does not necessarily lead to complete agreement upon one single interpretation of any given passage. This Christian fundamentalist and evangelical hermeneutical approach to scripture

816-618: The great categorizer of the Radical Reformation, considered early forms of Unitarianism (such as that of the Socinians , and exemplified by Michael Servetus as well as the Polish Brethren ), and other trends that disregarded the Nicene Christology still accepted by most Christians, as part of the Radical Reformation. With Servetus and Faustus Socinus , anti-Trinitarianism came to the foreground. The beliefs of

850-507: The interpretative approaches of fundamentalist or evangelical Christians, it can equate to the dictionary definition of literalism : "adherence to the exact letter or the literal sense". Fundamentalists and evangelicals sometimes refer to themselves as literalists or biblical literalists. Sociologists also use the term in reference to conservative Christian beliefs which include not just literalism but also biblical inerrancy . A 2011 Gallup survey reports, "Three in 10 Americans interpret

884-488: The magisterial reformers wanted to substitute their own learned elite for the learned elite of the Catholic Church , the radical Protestant groups rejected the authority of the institutional "church" organization, almost entirely, as being unbiblical. As the search for original Christianity was carried further, it was claimed that the tension between the church and the Roman Empire in the first centuries of Christianity

918-633: The movement are those of the Believers' Church . Unlike the Catholics and the more Magisterial Lutheran and Reformed ( Zwinglian and Calvinist ) Protestant movements, some of the Radical Reformation abandoned the idea that the " Church visible " was distinct from the " Church invisible ." Thus, the Church only consisted of the tiny community of believers who accepted Jesus Christ and demonstrated this by adult baptism, called " believer's baptism ". While

952-706: The same. In 1916, the Pentecostal Assemblies of God Statement of Fundamental Truths stated the same too. In 1967, the Believers' Church Conference was established at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky , in the United States, and is held every two or three years at a different Evangelical Bible college . Adherence to the doctrine of the believers' Church is a common feature of defining an Evangelical church in

986-465: The specific sense. A widely accepted definition of characteristics is that of the American historian Donald Durnbaugh , who summarizes the doctrine of the believers' Church in seven points: The doctrine of the believers' Church should not be confused with that of the free church , which is a concept designating the separate churches of states. Some Christian denominations that can be identified in

1020-432: The unnaturally long life-spans of the patriarchs given in genealogies of Genesis , as well as the strict historicity of the narrative accounts about the ancient Israelites , the supernatural interventions of God in history, and Jesus's miracles . Literalism does not deny that parables, metaphors and allegory exist in the Bible, but rather relies on contextual interpretations based on apparent authorial intention. As

1054-590: The use of the sword; Christianity was a matter of individual conviction, which could not be forced on anyone, but rather required a personal decision for it. Many groups were influenced by Biblical literalism (like the Swiss Brethren ), spiritualism (like the south German Anabaptists) and mainly absolute pacifism (like the Swiss Brethren, the Hutterites and the Mennonites from northern Germany and

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1088-466: Was Menno Simons , a Dutch Catholic priest who early in 1536 decided to join the Anabaptists. Simons had no use for the violence advocated and practiced by the Münster movement, which seemed to him to pervert the very heart of Christianity. Thus, Mennonite pacifism is not merely a peripheral characteristic of the movement, but rather belongs to the very essence of Menno's understanding of the gospel; this

1122-556: Was involved in the German Peasants' War . Andreas Karlstadt disagreed theologically with Huldrych Zwingli and Martin Luther, teaching nonviolence and refusing to baptize infants while not rebaptizing adult believers. Kaspar Schwenkfeld and Sebastian Franck were influenced by German mysticism and spiritualism. In 17th-century England, the tumultuous climate of the English Civil War and English Revolution saw

1156-498: Was normative, that the church is not to be allied with government sacralism , that a true church is always subject to be persecuted, and that the conversion of Constantine I was, therefore, the Great Apostasy that marked a deviation from pure Christianity. Biblical literalism Biblical literalism or biblicism is a term used differently by different authors concerning biblical interpretation . It can equate to

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