ABSTRACT
In popular scholarly prejudice, Anabaptists were generally simple-minded folk with little appreciation for complex theological or philosophical problems. The implications for an understanding of friendship are at times more clearly given in the responses of the opponents to the Anabaptist authors of Schleitheim than in the Confession itself. Unlike the magisterial reformers, the Anabaptist paid attention to the qualities of community beyond constraint and command, moving in some cases to a vocabulary that included friendship and not merely the force of discipline, where it largely remained for Martin Luther and John Calvin. The textual exemplars examined here show that the Anabaptists retained and developed a conception and practice of friendship that could address secular, ecclesial, and private realms alike. A complete treatment of the conception of friendship among the Anabaptists would require us to consider the Anabaptist understanding of the relationship between church and saeculum, but space prohibits. Civic friendship may be a utilitarian association.
