Schwarzenau Brethren

Common card · No. 223675

The Schwarzenau Brethren, also referred to as the German Baptist Brethren, Dunkers, Dunkard Brethren, Tunkers, or simply German Baptists, are an Anabaptist group that dissented from Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed European state churches during the 17th and 18th centuries. German Baptist Brethren emerged in some German-speaking states in western and southwestern parts of the Holy Roman Empire as a result of the Radical Pietist revival movement of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Hopeful of the imminent return of Christ and desiring to follow Jesus in their daily life, the founding Brethren abandoned State churches and officially formed a new church in 1708. They thereby attempted to translate the New Testament idea of brotherly love into concrete congregational ordinances for all the members. The Brethren rejected some Radical Pietists’ focus on emotionalism and direct revelation, and emphasized early ("Apostolic" or "primitive") New Testament Christianity as the binding standard...

Read on Wikipedia · Image An adaptation of Jan Sommerfeld's illustration for the first printing of Jacob Boehme's works, edited by the Radical Pietist Georg Gichtel, and published in Amsterdam in 1682., Public domain