Mission and the Reformation: Lessons from the Reformers and the Anabaptists

Scholarly interaction has ranged from arguing that the Reformers were indifferent toward mission to asserting that both Luther and Calvin had theologies of mission embedded in their understanding of the gospels and emphasis on preaching the word of God. On the other hand, during the same time period, the Anabaptists emerged as a movement with a radical and deliberate mission praxis. How can strains of a new and emerging Protestantism, in similar socio-political contexts, develop such different mission praxis? This paper explores this discrepancy between these two movements and then offers implications and questions for the 21st century church-in-mission