The free church

the long version

The Left wing of the Reformation gave western civilization a heritage which this author calls the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. In this volume, the author examines that Left wing of the Reformation to show that the ingredients of political as well as ecclesiastical self-government, the resistance to authoritarianism and totalitarianism, and also an un-coerced consensus of Christian faith and discipline, have in the modern world, emanated from the sects and churches of the Left (and not the Right) wing of the Reformation. Here, the author documents the significance of the early Free Churches of Europe for the emergence of the democratic idea in the West.