Recent Currents in the Historiography of the Radical Reformation

• Published in: Church history Vol. 71; no. 3; pp. 523 - 535
• Main Author: Roth, John D.
• Format: Journal Article Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.09.2002; American Society of Church History
• Subjects: Anabaptist; Anabaptists; Analysis; Apologetics; Christian history; Christianity; Church history; Contemporary period; Evaluation; General subjects; Historians; Historical methodology; Historical research; Historiography; History; History and sciences of religions; Mennonite; Methods; Middle Ages, 600-1500; Nonviolence; Protestant theology; Radicalism; Swords; Theology; United States; Europe; Reformation (The); Historiography; Anabaptism; Methodology
• ISSN: 0009-6407; 1755-2613
• DOI: 10.1017/S0009640700130252

There can be no question but that the great principles of freedom of conscience, separation of church and state and voluntarism in religion, so basic in American Protestantism and so essential to democracy, ultimately are derived from the Anabaptists of the Reformation period. With these confident words, Harold S. Bender introduced the main theme of his presidential address at the fifty-fifth meeting of the American Society of Church History, held at Columbia University on 28 Dec. 1943. In the decades that followed, Bender's speech—which he titled.