Fall 2025 · Vol. 54 No. 2 · pp. 245–257
The Courage to Love: The Zürich Anabaptism at Five Hundred Commemoration
On a sunny evening in late May of 2025, the bells of the Grossmünster church in Zürich, Switzerland, rang out for about half an hour. Joy and hope were evident in the crowd gathered after the worship service there commemorating the beginnings of the Anabaptist movement. Friends from different Christian traditions, cultures, and social classes embraced each other as an expression of divine love and a reconciled p. 246 community. Tears on the faces of descendants of persecuted Anabaptists in Europe reflected healing and new beginnings. Church leaders from thirteen global communions and three multilateral ecumenical organizations expressed their gratitude for an unforgettable day where a sense of unity, given as a gift of the Holy Spirit, overflowed among the worship participants, easing centuries of hostilities among churches.
Highlighting the five hundredth anniversary of the first baptisms in Zürich in 2025 might easily have become a celebration of the fragmentation of the church that occurred in the sixteenth century. In our conversations, it became clear that we needed to intentionally use the term commemoration rather than celebration.
Some people asked me to show them the official letter from Pope Leo XIV, read at the service by Cardinal Kurt Koch from the Vatican. Others mentioned the unforgettable words of Anne Burghardt, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, recalling the 2010 service of reconciliation between our global churches. The message of Pope Leo, the symbolism of anointing that evoked memories of reconciliation with the Lutherans, and the powerful shared statement with the World Communion of Reformed Churches, along with the ceremony of footwashing between General Secretary Setri Nyomi and myself as the Mennonite World Conference’s general secretary, were healing expressions of unity that will last forever.
It had been a busy week for us, the leaders of Mennonite World Conference (MWC). In the days leading up to the commemoration, we held our 2025 General Council, along with meetings of the MWC Executive Committee, Commissions, Networks, and the Young Anabaptists. 1 All these detailed gatherings took place in the context of celebrating the first one hundred years of MWC on May 25. Then, on May 29, MWC welcomed some thirty-five hundred Anabaptists from across the globe to “The Courage to Love: Anabaptism@500,” a day-long event in Zürich, Switzerland, remembering the start of the Anabaptist movement. Following a rich program of workshops, concerts, panel discussions, exhibitions, films, and historical walking tours, participants gathered for a worship service with ecumenical guests at the Grossmünster church, the historic church in the heart of the city where the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli once preached and where the Anabaptist movement first emerged. 2
But how was this commemoration organized? What values did we want to highlight in the liturgy, and how did we choose them? To answer these questions, we need to look back to 2016, when the MWC Executive Committee, consisting of two representatives from each continent, approved a proposal to mark the five hundredth anniversary of the Anabaptist movement in an initiative called “Renewal 2027,” a decade of annual regional events starting in 2017.
The proposal came from the leadership of the MWC Faith and Life Commission following conversations with me. 3 We agreed that the anniversary of the Anabaptist movement could offer an excellent opportunity p. 247 to celebrate, critique, and renew the theological tradition shaping MWC member churches. It could also promote broader conversations with other groups connected to Anabaptism and the wider Christian community. As secretary of the MWC Faith and Life Commission, John D. Roth had organized a planning meeting in 2015 in Hamburg, Germany, to set initial directions for this celebration. The Executive Committee endorsed these general plans at their July 2015 meeting in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and approved the final proposal in February 2016 during their session in Indonesia.
The Proposal
The initial planning focused on a ten-year series of events (2017–2027), hosted regionally with a thematic emphasis on a topic relevant to that region. 4 These events, coordinated with regularly scheduled MWC regional gatherings such as an Executive Committee meeting, General Council meeting, or a Global Assembly, are collectively known as “Renewal 2027,” which was later extended to 2028 because of the pandemic outbreak in 2021 and 2022. The goals of “Renewal 2028” include the following:
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to encourage and strengthen our global faith witness through theological/historical teaching and discussion focused on the Reformation and Anabaptist beginnings.
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to renew/deepen our understanding of Christian faithfulness as shaped by the Anabaptist movement.
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to promote “right remembering” through a focus on local church history within the larger context of the history of the Anabaptist (and Christian) tradition.
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to nurture a deeper sense of connection among member churches within MWC through a focus on our shared theology and history.
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to improve ecumenical (inter-church) relations, using these events as an opportunity to highlight ecumenical conversations where appropriate.
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to strengthen a sense of collective identity and witness with Anabaptist groups beyond MWC members.
Those planning the commemoration events would claim and celebrate the beginnings of the Anabaptist movement in the sixteenth century, but they would also consciously
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recognize and affirm the cultural and theological diversity of MWC member churches.
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reach out to Anabaptist groups who are not part of MWC. p. 248
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remain sensitive to our ecumenical commitments (particularly our commitment to “right remembering” in the reconciliation service with the Lutheran World Federation in 2010).
Why Commemorate Our Beginnings?
In 2017, when we inaugurated our decade of commemorative events, I offered the following explanation of our commemoration:
It is not about exalting a past event, nor the founders of a denomination, nor the Anabaptist movement in itself. Rather, Renewal 2027 is, as with many other Christian commemorations, an opportunity to generate identity, to reflect on our history, and to project ourselves towards the future with a spirit of hope and mission. The core question is not whether the dates are accurate but rather whether the purpose of their commemoration is worth it.
Commemorating Anabaptism’s beginnings is crucially important to our global church today. Many communities identify with the radical reformers of the 16th century because they are facing a similar context of suffering. In the midst of religious violence, social injustice, economic inequality, persecution and martyrdom, the Anabaptist movement developed specific Christian convictions. Nonviolence, the importance of community life, voluntary membership, and the pursuit of social justice emerged as a Christ-centred response to their context. At the same time, the first Anabaptists identified with the early church, whose values and principles motivated them to continue along the path they chose in their context.
Many churches in the global South affirm their faith identity not by direct ethnic descent, but by identifying with the early Anabaptist context of suffering and the principles they practiced. In those contexts, it is imperative to look forward and backward: we look back with gratitude for the example received, and we look in the present with repentance for harm done and pain caused in our desire to be faithful to our faith history. It is also relevant to prepare ourselves to respond to an uncertain future with a clear identity and Christ-centred convictions, as our ancestors did. 5
Build identity, reflect on our history with an emphasis on repentance, and look toward the future with hope and purpose—these were some of the values that guided my reflections during the early years of Renewal events. Plans for the commemoration in Zürich 2025 began immediately following the end of our first gathering in Augsburg in 2017. p. 249
Celebration or Commemoration in Zürich?
The first Renewal event, held in 2017 and led by Alfred Neufeld and John Roth, with the theme “Transformed by the Word: Reading Scripture Through Anabaptist Perspectives,” was a blessing in many ways. Dozens of participants from around the world enjoyed a day of diverse activities in Augsburg, where the word of the official trilateral dialogue on baptism among the Catholic Church, the Lutheran World Federation, and MWC had a prominent place in the program. At an evening dinner during meetings of the Executive Committee that followed that event, leaders of the MWC Faith and Life Commission met with several European leaders and me to discuss initial ideas about the 2025 anniversary. 6
As the conversation advanced, a pressing question emerged in my mind: how can we celebrate a division? How can we, a church that is called to bear witness to the ministry of reconciliation—a church that believes in peacemaking and conflict resolution—celebrate a fracture in the Body of Christ? It was clear that we could not speak about “celebration.”
To be sure, naming our anniversary events “Renewal” already diminished a sense of triumphalism or superiority over other churches; and from the outset we intended to approach these years as an opportunity to discern and repent for our sins as a church. However, highlighting the five hundredth anniversary of the first baptisms in Zürich in 2025 could easily become a celebration of the fragmentation of the church that occurred in the sixteenth century. In our conversations, it became clear that we needed to intentionally use the term commemoration rather than celebration.
Furthermore, I suggested that evening that since reconciliation is central to our faith as Anabaptists we needed to bring together our mother churches—the Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed churches—to testify to the healing God is bringing about among us and will continue to do in the process of reconciling everything under Jesus’ kingdom (Col 1:20).
In light of the reconciliation process that the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and MWC undertook several years ago, which culminated in the service of repentance and forgiveness hosted by the LWF in Stuttgart in 2010, we believed it would be possible to rely on the presence of the Lutheran Church in 2025. But what about the Reformed Church and what about the Catholics?
On the Path Toward Healing and Reconciliation
The Lutheran-Mennonite reconciliation process had begun in 1980 when the Lutherans invited Mennonites to a celebration of the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Augsburg Confession. Mennonites attended that p. 250 event, but they also noted the awkwardness of accepting an invitation to participate in that Lutheran milestone when the Augsburg Confession contains several articles that explicitly condemned the Anabaptists. That context led to a series of national and international dialogues, culminating in the 2009 report of the Lutheran-Mennonite International Study Commission, titled “Healing Memories: Reconciling in Christ.” 7 That report was followed in 2010 by the Lutheran World Federation’s service of repentance for the violence and persecution inflicted on Anabaptists. This act, known as the “Mennonite Action,” took place at the Eleventh Assembly of the LWF, held in Stuttgart.
From my predecessor, Larry Miller, I learned that a key element in enabling the international dialogue and Mennonite Action in Stuttgart was the relationship between the LWF general secretary, Ishmael Noko, and himself as the MWC general secretary. This relationship, developed through the annual meetings of the Conference of Secretaries of the Christian World Communions (CS CWC), facilitated planning for the dialogue and the visits each made to the other church’s global gatherings during those years. 8 After the Mennonite Action, connections established between LWF and MWC leaders continued in other contexts, such as when I invited the new LWF general secretary, Martin Junge, to speak at the MWC General Council in 2015 in Pennsylvania, and when I was invited to deliver a laudatory speech in his honor for receiving the Augsburg Peace Award, granted by the city of Augsburg in 2017.
Another example illustrating the significance of interchurch personal connections has been the relationship John Roth developed with key Lutheran leaders. Roth had previously been part of the Mennonite delegation for the international dialogue. In subsequent years, as MWC Faith and Life Commission secretary, he participated in the meetings of the LWF Task Force to follow up on commitments made at their Eleventh Assembly, establishing meaningful relationships with them. One of those relationships was with the current LWF general secretary, Anne Burghardt, who was a member of the LWF Task Force at that time.
Reformed Reconciliation
Interchurch personal relationships would continue to be a foundational aspect to facilitate the healing of memories with other global communions. As MWC general secretary, I have attended the CS CWC since 2012. A natural connection emerged around those meetings with two general secretaries of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC), Chris Ferguson and Setri Nyomi. After informal conversations, I was invited to p. 251 the WCRC General Council in the summer of 2017 and to their ecumenical service commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation in Wittenberg. It was there, at Luther’s church in Wittenberg, where I had the opportunity to officially express our readiness to explore a global process of reconciliation between MWC and the WCRC. A few months later, at the CS CWC hosted by MWC in Bogotá, Colombia, we agreed on an initial concept and a plan for an international dialogue between our global communions that would include a meaningful moment at the Zürich 2025 MWC event.
Interest in ecumenical dialogue between various Reformed and Mennonite groups had already increased significantly during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Joint Reformed-Mennonite worship services at the Fraumünster church in Zürich in March 1983—and again in June 2004 to mark the five hundredth anniversary of Heinrich Bullinger’s birth—were occasions for meaningful symbolic gestures of reconciliation, including a commemorative plaque along the Limmat River noting the execution of Felix Manz.
The first formal dialogue in the modern era occurred in the Netherlands between Reformed churches and churches of the Anabaptist tradition (1975–1978). 9 This was followed by an international dialogue between representatives from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the MWC (“Beyond Brokenness into God’s New Creation,” 1984-1989). 10 More recently, a notable exchange occurred in Switzerland between the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches and the Conference of Mennonites in Switzerland (“From Coexistence to Cooperation,” 2006–2009). 11 Since then, representatives of the Reformed Church of the Canton of Zürich have participated in many personal acts of hospitality and outreach with Mennonite counterparts in the U.S. The 2007 Täuferjahr in Canton Bern marked another important milestone of outreach and connection between the Swiss Reformed and Mennonites.
As MWC prepared to commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of our origins, this rich legacy of ecumenical encounters provided a strong foundation for renewed acts and expressions of reconciliation with the WCRC. It was through this history that, following the meeting in Bogotá in 2017, we engaged in a new dialogue that led to a shared statement of confession, gratitude, and commitment between the WCRC and MWC titled “Restoring Our Family to Wholeness: Seeking a Common Witness.” 12 That statement was officially received by the MWC General Council on May 28 and incorporated into the liturgy in the worship service in Zürich. p. 252
Catholic Reconciliation
The relationship with the Roman Catholic Church has been based on a similar framework of official dialogues. That encounter began with the international dialogue between the Catholic Church and MWC titled “Called Together to be Peacemakers,” 13 which took place from 1998 to 2003. This was followed by a second dialogue on the topic of baptism involving the LWF, “Baptism and Incorporation into the Body of Christ, the Church,” 14 from 2012 to 2017. However, the possibility of healing of memories with the Catholic Church was not addressed directly by the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity (DPCU) during those years.
The DPCU, formerly known as the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU), is a dicastery within the Holy See responsible for fostering dialogue and cooperation with other Christian communions. The DPCU facilitated the two dialogues with MWC mentioned above on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church, and before my time as general secretary, arranged an official meeting between an MWC delegation and the pope.
In my brief encounters with Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 and Pope Francis in 2016 and 2017, I was able simply to ask them not to forget the relationship with Mennonites. In September 2022, as Zürich 2025 approached, I had an initial meeting with Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the PCPCU. We discussed the idea of receiving a message from Pope Francis in 2025 regarding the relationship between Catholics and Anabaptists. I explained how this was important because of our history of persecution in the sixteenth century and the more recent history of discrimination and local persecution in some areas of Latin America.
Bishop Farrell was open to this idea and expressed a strong possibility of interest from Pope Francis in proceeding. After being appointed chair of the CS CWC at the end of 2022, I followed up on my conversation with Bishop Farrell at the CS CWC. At that time, we were very close to confirming a message from the pope. However, by 2024 there was a new secretary at the DPCU, Archbishop Flavio Pace. Although I was unsure if he would be open to following up on our request, I was pleased to receive an invitation from the DPCU to send an official MWC representative to the second session of the Sixteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. The event was held in Rome on the theme “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission.” That General Assembly, part of the Catholic Synodal process called for by Pope Francis, started in October 2021 and was scheduled to conclude in October 2024.
Anne-Cathy Graber from France, MWC secretary for ecumenical relations, agreed to represent our global communion at the four-week-long p. 253 event. In that context, she was able to establish a close connection with the new members of the DPCU. When I met Archbishop Pace at the CS CWC later that year, Graber had already fostered a personal relationship with him. In my conversation with Pace, we agreed that the best next step regarding a possible message from the Vatican was to arrange a private audience between Pope Francis and me. Pace quickly organized it, planning for early 2025. Unfortunately, the pope fell ill a few days before our meeting, and several weeks later, he passed away. As you can imagine, I was deeply saddened and frustrated. Standing before Pope Francis’s body prior to the funeral in the Vatican, I found myself asking God why we had lost such an incredible opportunity to heal our memories of persecution with the Catholic Church.
The uncertainty regarding Catholic participation in the Zürich event was immense. We had invited the Catholic Church to join our commemorations on May 29. We had anticipated their representative participating in the workshop on the trilateral dialogue on baptism, an ecumenical reception and lunch organized for that day, and in the worship service at the Grossmünster, where we had high hopes to receive a message from the pope. However, with Pope Francis’ funeral, the election of a new pope, and the busy days that followed for the Roman curia, we were unsure whether a representative from the Vatican would be able to attend.
In the meantime, we started to receive official greetings from several world communions and multilateral ecumenical organizations. Sixteen of them confirmed their official participation at the reception and worship service in Zürich. Several others sent a message but were unable to attend. 15
Just a few days before the commemoration, we received news from Archbishop Pace: the Roman Catholic Church would be present at our event. Cardinal Kurt Koch, prefect of the DPCU, would join us on May 29 with a personal message from Pope Leo XIV. In the letter, the recently elected Pope Leo stated,
The motto chosen for your celebration, “The Courage to Love,” reminds us, above all, of the need for Catholics and Mennonites to make every effort to live out the commandment of love, the call to Christian unity, and the mandate to serve others. It likewise points to the need for honesty and kindness in reflecting on our common history, which includes painful wounds and narratives that affect Catholic-Mennonite relationships and perceptions up to the present day. How important, then, is that purification of memories and common re-reading of history that can enable us to heal past wounds p. 254 and build a new future through the “courage to love.” What is more, only in such a way can theological and pastoral dialogue bear fruit, fruit that will last (cf. John 15:16). . . .
With these sentiments, I assure you of my prayers that our fraternal relations will deepen and grow.
The Courage to Love
From the initial conversations in 2017 onward, we organized multiple meetings to plan the event in Zürich. By 2021, we had established a structure consisting of six teams: Logistics, Program, Registration, Communication, Volunteers, and Translation and Interpretation. Along with all the Mennonite staff and volunteers, the City Council of Zürich, the Reformed Church of the Canton of Zürich, and the Reformed Church of the City of Zürich also got involved. Discussions with the church and city officials about possible meeting spaces were initiated, and the Swiss Mennonite Conference confirmed its readiness to provide logistical support, a crucial factor in the success of the May 29 event.
The search for financial support for the event began in 2024, led by MWC Chief Development Officer Bruce Campbell-Janz. John Roth, who assumed responsibility for planning the program, assembled a diverse group of Mennonite theologians to serve as advisors on the content of the liturgy for the worship service at the Grossmünster. 16 During the planning of the content, the theme of the commemoration played a crucial role: The Courage to Love. That theme, inspired by the well-known Reformed slogan attributed to Ulrich Zwingli— “for God’s sake, do something courageous”—arose in a conversation between Roth, Liesa Unger, and Jürg Bräker. By 2022, the MWC leadership had approved it after some thoughtful deliberation.
Once the first draft of the liturgy’s content was prepared, the MWC officers became involved. Henk Stenvers, MWC president, Lisa Carr-Pries, MWC vice president, and Sunoko Lin, MWC treasurer, provided additional insights and recommendations for some changes to the liturgy. When we reached agreement, we forwarded the text to the LWF, the DPCU, and the WCRC. All of them proposed additional revisions. John Roth and I discussed these, taking into account the values and principles already established for Renewal 2028.
A specific suggestion to include the Nicene Creed in the liturgy called for further discussion. This was proposed by the DPCU as a symbol of Christian unity to be remembered especially this year, when many p. 255 churches mark the seventeen hundredth anniversary of the Nicaea Council. Could we include that creed in an Anabaptist liturgy? A response to that question again involved counsel from the team of theologians supporting John Roth’s work, along with other voices from different parts of our communion. Ultimately, we agreed to include it with this clarifying note in the program:
When Mennonites began to write confessions of faith in the sixteenth century, all started with God as Trinity in harmony with the Nicene Creed. But Mennonites also included a commitment to following the teaching and example of Jesus as an essential part of the Christian way. Now, in this 1700th anniversary year of the Nicene Creed, Mennonites, with renewed commitment to discipleship, join the universal body of Christ in praising Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
While finalizing the liturgy content, another question arose: Who would lead the worship? We aimed to include people from diverse cultures, Anabaptist traditions, ages, and genders. This was partly addressed through the involvement of musicians and ensembles from five continents. However, during our discussions, we realized that many former MWC officers would be in Zürich. As noted earlier, it was thanks to many of them that dialogue with other global communions was possible. The cultural, gender, and church diversity of MWC officers exemplified the diversity we sought. Additionally, we invited other MWC leaders who had engaged in ecumenical dialogues to join the officers. This approach acknowledged that our five-hundred-year commemoration was made possible through the ministry of many of our predecessors.
The countless details related to logistics, sound, video, printing materials, music, and aesthetics drew on the generous support of dozens of MWC leaders and volunteers. It is impossible to name all of them here—truly, this was a community effort!
As our sixteenth-century forebears realized, the courage to love demands the involvement, work, and support of an entire community—a global communion. And in the end, reconciliation, healing, and forgiveness are not individual human endeavors; they can only be received as gifts from the Holy Spirit. p. 256
Notes
- The General Council serves as the highest decision-making authority in the MWC, comprising official delegates from member churches. In 2025, 111 member churches represent over 10,000 local congregations worldwide. The Council convenes every three years and is responsible for appointing the Executive Committee, which meets annually and functions similarly to a board of directors.
- The recording of the liturgy as well as the worship program are available at https://mwc-cmm.org/en/Zurich-livestream/
- Alfred Neufeld (Paraguay) served as chair; John D. Roth (U.S.) as secretary.
- In 2017, the Renewal event took place in Germany, with subsequent gatherings in Kenya (2018) and Costa Rica (2019). The 2020 event was canceled because of the pandemic; the 2021 Renewal took place as an online event. These were followed by the resumption of in-person celebrations in Indonesia (2022), Canada (2023), and Brazil (2024), prior to the 2025 commemoration in Switzerland. Future Renewal events are being planned by the Philippines in 2026 with the location of 2027 gathering still to be determined. The Renewal series will culminate with the MWC global assembly in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 2028.
- César García, “Renewal 2017: A Contextual and Global Commemoration,” Mennonite Life (Bethel College) 71 (2017); https://ml.bethelks.edu/
- Alfred Neufeld and John D. Roth, MWC Faith and Life Commission; Henk Stenvers (Netherlands), MWC Deacons Commission secretary; Liesa Unger (Germany), MWC chief international events officer; Jürg Bräker (Switzerland); and Hanspeter Jecker (Switzerland).
- Lutheran World Federation, Healing Memories: Implications of the Reconciliation between Lutherans and Mennonites (Leipzig, Germany: Lutheran World Federation, 2016).
- https://mwc-cmm.org/en/stories/sharing-gifts-other-church-communions/
- Fernando Enns and Jonathan R. Seiling, Mennonites in Dialogue: Official Reports from International and National Ecumenical Encounters, 1975-2012 (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2015), 309–25.
- Ibid., 373–88.
- Ibid., 327–71.
- The Mennonite delegation was led by the new MWC Faith and Life Commission chair, Tom Yoder Neufeld, and John Roth as MWC Faith and Life Commission secretary. See https://mwc-cmm.org/en/resources/restoring-our-family-to-wholeness-seeking-a-common-witness/
- Enns and Seiling, Mennonites in Dialogue, 19–114. p. 257
- https://mwc-cmm.org/en/resources/baptism-and-incorporation-body-christ-church/
- The official delegates at the worship service in Zürich were the following:
Neil Vigers, programme executive for unity, faith & order, Anglican Communion;
Oti Bunaciuo, vice president, Baptist World Alliance;
Paul Tché, president of the Christian Unity and Interfaith Ministry, Disciples of Christ World Communion;
Cardinal Kurt Koch, prefect, Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity (Roman Catholic Church);
Tim Gee, general secretary, Friends World Committee for Consultation (Quakers);
Christoph Amstad Schuler, ecumenical officer, International Old Catholic Bishops’ Conference / Union of Utrecht;
Anne Burghardt, general secretary, Lutheran World Federation;
Jørgen Bøytler, administrator, Moravian Church Worldwide Unity Board;
David Wells, vice chair, Pentecostal World Fellowship;
Jane Paone, commissioner, The Salvation Army;
Setri Nyomi, general secretary, World Communion of Reformed Churches;
Rosemarie Wenner, bishop, World Methodist Council;
Nicta Lubaale, general secretary, Organization of African Instituted Churches;
Casely Baiden Essamuah, secretary, Global Christian Forum;
Jerry Pillay, general secretary, World Council of Churches; and
Janet Epp Buckingham, director, Geneva Office to the United Nations, World Evangelical Alliance.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Seventh Day Adventist Church sent greetings but were unable to attend. - From Europe, Jürg Bräker, Anne-Cathy Graber, and Rainer Burkart offered counsel; from the U.S. and Canada, J. Nelson Kraybill, John Rempel, and Larry Miller.
